BANCROFT 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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 No. 4. 
 
 Mormonism Exposed. 
 
 THE OTHER SIDE. 
 
 A CLERGYMAN'S VIEW OF THE CASE, 
 
 REV. JOHN C. K1IN1BALL, 
 
 Of Hartford, Conn. 
 
 Copied frorn "Tine Index," Boston, 
 
 1888. 
 
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 UTJTnjrriJ\mmnjTJTJTJTJTJu^^ 
 
No. 
 
 Mormonism Exposed. 
 
 SIDE. 
 
 A CLERGYMAN'S VIEW OF THE CASE 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JOHN C. 
 
 Of Hartford, Conn 
 
 Copied from "Tin Index," Boston, Mass. 
 
 1888. 
 
K5 
 
IT is a great satisfaction to find The Index, at this test 
 point of the Mormon question, acting in complete harmony 
 with its professions as the organ of free thought by giving to 
 each side of it a fair and equal hearing. A few years ago, it 
 was almost impossible to get a word into an eastern journal 
 aiming to solve it on any broad and generous principles; even 
 our well-known Unitarian paper, pre-eminent for its general 
 fairness, refusing, after printing columns against the Mormons, 
 to give on the other side the testimony of the United States 
 census, and of such men as Bishop Tuttle, Chief Justice 
 White, and tfye Hon. Hugh McCullough, simply correct- 
 ing its own mistakes. It is not by any means the greatest 
 question before the public, but it is one which touches some 
 points of religious freedom and of its relation to moral judg- 
 ments more deeply than any other. And it is one which, not 
 only on its own account, but in the interest of all religion, 
 needs full and frank discussion. 
 
 The first step in this, as in all such questions, is to do 
 justice to the Mormons themselves, recognize all that is worthy 
 and good among them, and then, from the vantage-ground of 
 this justice, assail what is wrong and bad. Mr. Potter speaks 
 of the difficulty of getting at the exact facts with regard to 
 their condition, such contradictory stories are told about them, 
 and ascribes the good said of them to the circumstance that 
 visitors in Utah for a short time see only the surface of things, 
 and are so dazed with its material prosperity as to make their 
 testimony of but little worth. This may be true in some 
 cases; but, on the other hand, it is to be remembered that the 
 bad which is told of them is quite as likely to rise from the 
 
prejudice, narrowness, and conflicting interests of those who 
 are at their very doors. Nearness of residence, where these 
 qualities exist, is very far from increasing the value of a per- 
 son's testimony. Who has implicit confidence in a Califor- 
 nian's denunciation of the Chinese, or in a western squatter's 
 diatribe against the Indians, or in a Protestant theologian's 
 strictures on Roman Catholicism? So with the criticisms of 
 Utah Gentiles on their Mormon neighbors. The religious 
 prejudice against them is immense a prejudice which is 
 aggravated still more by the sight of their material prosperity, 
 and also, it must be confessed, by their aristocratic bearing 
 and their social exclusiveness. And it is wonderful how this 
 prejudice blinds the eyes of otherwise sensible people to some 
 of the most common things about them, one writer from Salt 
 Lake City to the Christian Register, betraying an ignorance of 
 their family customs that every most casual visitor is sure to 
 see, another testifying to a prevalence of ignorance and 
 drunkenness among their young, that the slightest examina- 
 tion of local records would at once have disproved, and 
 another being apparently unacquainted with the fact of a 
 trial which must have taken place under her very ears. 
 
 Then, where this prejudice does not exist among the 
 observers themselves, the fear of it in others is often a cause 
 of the difficulty there is in getting at the exact facts. 
 Shortly after my own visit to Salt Lake City, I fell in with a 
 Baptist minister who had spent several months there for the 
 benefit of his health. We naturally compared notes about 
 our experiences; and he told me of the dislike and miscon- 
 ception, gathered up at home, with which he had gone to the 
 place, and how, little by little, they had been melted away, 
 and his dislike turned to admiration. I asked him why, for 
 the sake of justice, he did not publish in some eastern news- 
 paper the result of his observations. "Oh," he exclaimed, "it 
 would not do. I should only ruin my own reputation, and 
 nobody would believe me. I should either: be accused of 
 
having become a convert to polygamy or else of being a cred- 
 ulous fool whose eyes a little Mormon flattery had blinded to 
 its enormities." The editor of a popular magazine, returning 
 to its writer an article on Utah that, from the literary stand- 
 point, gave -a genial description of Mormon social life, said, 
 "I have no doubt that what you say is all true, but it would 
 ruin us to publish it." And two ladies, awhile ago, traveling 
 all the way from Salt Lake City to attend a woman's suffrage 
 convention, were not allowed to present the result of the 
 suffrage experiment in Utah, because their recognition, as they 
 were told, would compromise its friends too much here at the 
 east. 
 
 But in spite of all these difficulties, there are Gentiles 
 who have had the largeness of vision to look at Mormonism 
 as they would at any other religion, and the courage to 
 present what they have seen fairly to the public. Some 
 of them are men who have lived in Utah for years in daily 
 contact with its people^ so as to know for certainty whereof 
 they speak; while others, though visitors, were travelers and 
 public men of that world-wide experience which precludes 
 all thought of their having been dazzled or fooled by any 
 flattery or outside glitter. And as helping to throw reliable 
 light on this question of what the Mormons really are, and to 
 sustain what Mr. Curtis and others of us less known have 
 said from our own observations, let me quote briefly the testi- 
 mony of these indisputable authorities. 
 
 Rev. D. S. Tuttle, bishop of the Episcopal church in the 
 Utah Diocese, and a resident for some twelve years in Salt 
 Lake City, a man whose opportunity and capacity for fair 
 judgment no one can question, says of them in a lecture 
 delivered in New York and published in the Sun of November, 
 1877: "/ know that the people of the East have judged them 
 unjustly. We are accustomed to look on them as either a 
 licentious, arrogant, or rebellious mob, bent only on defying 
 the United States government and as deriding the faith of 
 
6 
 
 Christians. This is not so. / know them to be honest, faithful, 
 prayerful workers" 
 
 Hon. Hugh McCullough, ex-Secretary of the United 
 States Treasury, writes in the New York Tribune, of March 
 29, 1877: "The people of the United States are under obliga- 
 tions to the Mormons. One can hardly repress a feeling of 
 admiration for their courage, patience and power of endur- 
 ance. They have opened and improved a region which, but 
 for them, would have been neglected. They have brought to 
 the country many thousands of industrious, peaceable and 
 skilful people, and added largely to its wealth. Good judges 
 and honest officials should be sent them; and in other 
 respects, the federal government should let them severely 
 alone. Their history will afford abundant materials for philo- 
 sophical speculation, but there is no danger of their being a 
 political or social disturbance." 
 
 Bayard Taylor says: "We must admit that Salt Lake 
 City is one of the most quiet, orderly and moral places in the 
 world. The Mormons, as a people, are the most temperate of 
 Americans. They are chaste, laborious and generally cheer- 
 ful." 
 
 Dr. Miller, editor of the Omaha Herald, says: "To the 
 lasting honor of the Mormon people and system, for twenty- 
 five years such machines of moral infamy as whiskey 
 shops, harlotries, faro banks, and all the attendants of vice 
 and iniquity, were totally unknown in Utah. But now these 
 hydra-headed monsters are gaining foothold in Salt Lake 
 City; and the damning fact is that it is only by the surrepti- 
 tious evasion and overthrow of Mormon authority that these 
 and kindred curses now evade it." 
 
 Mrs. Emily Pitt Stevens, editor of the Pioneer, a woman's 
 journal, says: "In Salt Lake City there is less rowdyism, 
 drunkenness, gambling, idleness, theft, conspiracy against the 
 peace of society, and crime generally than in any other city of 
 the same population in the country, if not on the globe." 
 
Elder Miles Grant, the well-known Adventist preacher, 
 says: "There is less licentiousness in Salt Lake City than in 
 any other of the same size in the United States; and were we 
 to bring up a family of children in these last days of wicked- 
 ness, we should have less fear of 'their moral corruption in 
 that city than in any other." 
 
 General Thomas L. Kane, of Pennsylvania, after four 
 years' experience among them, says: "I have not heard a 
 single charge made against them as a community against 
 their habitual purity of life, their willing integrity, their tol- 
 eration of religious differences, their regard for the laws, their 
 devotion to the constitutional government under which we 
 live that I do not from my own observation or from the tes- 
 timony of others know to be false" 
 
 R. N. Baskin, Esq., United States prosecuting attorney in 
 Utah, and a strong anti-Mormon, testified before the Commil/- 
 tee on Territories of the United States House of Representa- 
 tives: "I have been for five years past a resident of Utah. I 
 must do the Mormons the justice to say that the question of 
 religion does not enter into their courts in ordinary cases. I 
 have never detected any bias on the part of jurors there in 
 this respect, as I at first expected. I have appeared in cases 
 where Mormons and Gentiles were opposing parties, and saw, 
 much to my surprise, the jury do what was right" a sworn 
 statement of a United States officer, which may well offset the 
 assertion of a recent writer in a religious newspaper that 
 "nine-tenths of the people of the Territory are pledged to 
 defeat the ends of justice," yet one which as a reply that 
 newspaper refused to print. 
 
 A special committee of the Nevada State Senate, appointed 
 to report on the question of annexing Utah to Nevada, say: 
 "Utah is without a territorial or county debt. The traffic in 
 spirituous liquors is under complete control. Gambling and 
 houses of ill-fame are no^fcolerated. Its school system is 
 unsurpassed in its adaptation to the wants of the masses" an 
 
8 
 
 official document which surely is of more weight than the 
 assertion of Prof. Harden, in the Christian Union, "that non- 
 Mormon teachers are excluded from their system of schools, 
 and that Mormon doctrines are assiduously taught." 
 
 Chief Justice White, of the United States Bench, in 
 charging the grand jury, at Salt Lake Jpity, Utah, February, 
 1876, says: "No matter how much I differ from them [the 
 Mormons] in belief, nor how widely they differ from the 
 American people in matters of religion, yet testing them and 
 it by a standard which the world recognizes as just, they 
 deserve higher consideration than has ever been accorded to 
 them. Industry, frugality, temperance, honesty, and, in every 
 respect but one the legislation against polygamy obedience 
 to law are with them the common practices of life. This 
 land they have redeemed from sterility and made the habita- 
 tion of a numerous people, where a beggar is never seen and 
 where almshouses are neither needed nor known." 
 
 With regard to the complicity of the Mormons in the 
 Mountain Meadows massacre, a crime with which even now 
 they are continually charged at the east the United States 
 district attorney who had charge of the case said, in his plea 
 at the trial: "I have been engaged constantly during the last 
 three months in sifting facts and everything related to or con- 
 nected with the massacre; and I have given the jury unanswer- 
 able documentary evidence, proving that the authorities of the 
 Mormon Church knew nothing of the butchery till after it was 
 committed. I have had all the assistance from the Mor- 
 monsany official could ask on earth in any case."* (See 
 report of the trial.) How could any testimony be more 
 explicit or authoritative? And yet I could not get these 
 words inserted in a professedly liberal religious paper at the 
 east as an answer to a charge already made in its columns 
 
 * These were the words of Mr. Sumner Howard, U. S. Prosecuting 
 Attorney for Utah, at the trial of JotffeJ). Lee, held at Beaver, Utah, Sep- 
 tember term, 1876. 
 
that the Mormons were guilty of the outrage, the exclusion 
 being as peremptory and complete as any facts bearing on the 
 anti-slavery side in a case before a United States court would 
 have been from the most one-sided pro-slavery journal at the 
 south before the war. 
 
 Capt. Burton, in his City of the Saints, published by 
 the Harpers in 1862, a very minute and impartial work, 
 says, among a multitude of other* things: "Mormonism is 
 emphatically the faith of the poor." "I cannot help think- 
 ing that morally and spiritually as well as physically its pro- 
 teges gain by their transfer from Europe to Utah," "In point 
 of mere morality, the Mormon community is perhaps purer 
 than any other of equal numbers." "The penalties against 
 chastity, morality and decency are exceptionally severe." "I 
 was much pleased with their religious tolerance. The Mor- 
 mons are certainly the least fanatical of our faiths, owning, 
 like the Hindus, that every man should walk his own way, 
 while claiming for themselves superiority in belief and prac-, 
 tice." 
 
 Among the more recent testimonies in the same direction 
 is that of James W. Barclay, M. P., an English visitor of fair 
 and temperate judgment, who says in his article, "A New 
 View of Mormonism," published in the January number of 
 the National Quarterly Review: "The Mormon community is 
 an enlarged family bound together by privilges and duties, 
 one principal duty being to care for the helpless and needy. 
 At the same time, every individual has full freedom of action. 
 There is no compulsion on any Mormon beyond the public 
 opinion of his fellows, and none is possible. All are equal. 
 There is no special or privileged class or caste. The people 
 in the fullest sense govern themselves" statements especially 
 to be commended to the attention of those who, in default of 
 anything else, charge Mormonism with being a vast and rigid 
 hierarchy, under which no one is free. "I apprehend that the 
 animosity to Mormonism is principally due to the efforts of 
 
10 
 
 the hosts of hungry office seekers who would find lucrative 
 posts in Utah, were the Mormons disfranchised; and to the 
 missionaries from the eastern States,* who come to turn the 
 Mormons from the error of their ways, and whose income 
 depends on the strength of the feeling they can excite. If 
 the Mormons could be disfranchised in a body, five hundred 
 lucrative posts in Utah would be open to Gentile office 
 seekers" and does Free Religion want to play into such 
 hands? "It is a mistake to suppose there are no educated 
 Mormon women. Some of them have written with ability in 
 defense of polygamy. The young ladies appeared as free and 
 independent as in other parts of the United States." "The 
 men of position correspond favorably with the same class in 
 the eastern States. I was much impressed by their ability, 
 courtesy and general intelligence. They have a quiet, self- 
 reliant, gentlemanly bearing." "In morality, the Mormons 
 greatly excel the Gentiles in their midst. The figures conclu- 
 sively prove that the Mormons are a sober, law-abiding 
 people, and singularly free from the grosser forms of vice, 
 whatever may be alleged to the contrary by ignorant or pre- 
 judiced enemies." "Let me say in conclusion that I went to 
 Utah prejudiced against the Mormons; but after seeing and 
 investigating them myself, I came to the conclusion that, 
 apart from polygamy there is much in the Mormon organiza- 
 tion to admire and respect, and that the Mormons are the sub- 
 jects of a greater amount of misrepresentation and unjust 
 abuse than any other community with which I am 
 acquainted." 
 
 Equally explicit and favorable is the testimony of Mr. 
 Phil Robinson, of the London Telegraph, an English traveler 
 of wide experience all over the world, and of unquestioned 
 reliability, who in 1882 spent three months in Utah. He says 
 in his Sinners and Saints, a very readable book: "I have seen 
 and spoken to and lived with Mormon men and women of 
 every class, and never in my life in any Christian country 
 
11 
 
 have I come in contact with more consistent piety, sobriety 
 and neighborly charity. I say this deliberately. Without a 
 particle of odious sanctimony, these folks are in their words 
 and actions as Christian as I ever thought to see men and 
 women." "The Mormons are a peasant people, with many of 
 the faults of peasant life, but with many of the best human 
 virtues as well." "The demeanor of the women in Utah, as 
 compared with, say Brighton or Washington, is modesty 
 itself; and the children are just such healthy, vigorous, pretty 
 children as one sees in the country or by the seaside in Eng- 
 land." "Utah-born girls, the offspring of plural wives, have 
 figures that would make Paris envious; and they carry them- 
 selves with almost oriental dignity. There is nothing, so far 
 as I have seen, in the manners of Salt Lake City to make me 
 suspect the existence of that licentiousness of which so much 
 has been written; but a great deal on the contrary to convince 
 me of a perfectly exceptional reserve and self-respect. It is 
 only a blockhead who could mistake the natural gayety of 
 the country for anything other than it is. I know, too, from 
 medical assurance, that Utah has the practical argument of 
 healthy nurseries to oppose to the theories of those who attack 
 its' domestic relations on physiological grounds." "A healthier 
 and more stalwart community I have never seen; while among 
 the women I saw many refined faces, and remarked that 
 robust health seemed the rule." "Mutual charity is one of 
 the bonds of Mormon union. It is published officially that 
 *the bishops of every ward are to see that there are no persons 
 going hungry.' What a contrast to turn from this text of 
 universal charity to the infinite meanness of those who can 
 write of the whole community of Mormons as 'the villainous 
 spawn of polygamy!' " "Instead of the Mormons being as a 
 class profane, they are as a class singularly sober in their 
 language, and indeed in this respect resemble the Quakers." 
 "The Mormons have always struggled hard to prevent the 
 sale of liquor; and it is not only the Mormon leaders, but 
 
12 
 
 the Mormon people that refuse to have drunkards among 
 them." 
 
 Equally strong is the testimony of Mr. Robinson against 
 the charge so often made by those who are obliged to admit 
 their virtues in all other respects that the people are priest- 
 ridden, the fact being that each one of them is himself a 
 priest, and that it is about as absurd to speak of Utah as 
 priest-ridden as it would be to speak of the rest of the country 
 as voter-ridden. "The payment of tithings is as nearly volun- 
 tary as the collection of a revenue necessary for carrying on 
 a government can possibly be allowed to be." "If the women 
 of Utah are slaves, their bonds are loving ones and dearly prized. 
 They are to-day in the free and unrestricted exercise of more 
 political and social rights than are the women of any other 
 part of the United States." "It is not true that the Church 
 interferes with the domestic relations of the people. When 
 I remember what classes of people their men and women are 
 chiefly drawn from, and the utter poverty in which most of 
 them arrive, I cannot in sincerity do otherwise than admire 
 and respect the system which has fused such unpromising 
 material of so many nationalities into one homogeneous 
 whole." 
 
 With regard to the misrepresentations of Mormonisiu, he 
 says: "Whence have the public derived their opinions about 
 it? From anti-Mormons only. I have ransacked the litera- 
 ture of the subject, yet I really could not tell any one where 
 to go for an impartial book about it later in date than Bur- 
 ton's Oity of the Saints, published in 1862. There is not, to my 
 knowledge, a single Gentile work before the public that is not 
 utterly unreliable from its distortion of facts. How can any 
 one have respect for the literature or the men who, without 
 knowing anything of the lives of Mormons, stigmatize them 
 as profane, adulterous and drunken? These men write of the 
 squalid poverty of the Mormons, of their obscene brutality, 
 of their unceasing treason toward the United States, of their 
 
13 
 
 blasphemous repudiation of the Bible, without one particle of 
 information on the subject, except such as they gather from 
 the books and writings of men whom they ought to know are 
 utterly unworthy of credit, or from the verbal calumnies of 
 apostates; and what the evidence of apostates is worth history 
 has long ago told us." "I am now stating facts; and I, who 
 have lived among the Mormons and with them, can assure 
 my readers that every day of my residence increased my 
 regret at the misrepresentation these people have suffered" 
 
 Still stronger is the evidence derived from official statis- 
 tics as to their intelligence and virtues. In Salt Lake City in 
 1881, the published reports show that the arrests for crime 
 were fourteen times as many among the Gentiles in proportion 
 to their numbers as among the Mormons; and taking the 
 Territory as a whole, the Gentile population furnished forty- 
 six convicts in the penitentiary where the Mormon popula- 
 tion, number for number, furnished one! According to the 
 United States census, Massachusetts has four times as many 
 convicts to the same population as Utah, four and a half 
 times as many idiotic and insane, and nine times as many 
 paupers. Utah, in school attendance, according to the same 
 authority, is ahead of Massachusetts; and with all that has 
 been said about the ignorance of its people and its immense 
 foreign immigration, its proportion of people who cannot 
 read or' write is put down as less than that of New England. 
 And still more striking, the women there, instead of being 
 kept in ignorance and subjection, are educated in the same 
 studies and to the same extent as the boys and men, and are 
 equally fitted to earn their own living out in the world and to 
 maintain an independent career a very significant fact, in 
 view of Mr. Potter's statement that polygamy "could gain no 
 foothold to-day among a people where woman should be edu- 
 cated as man's equal." 
 
 Most recent of all is an article by "H. H." (Mrs. Helen 
 Hunt Jackson), in the May number of the Century, on "The 
 
14 
 
 Women of the Beehive," not at all in sympathy with the 
 Mormon religion, and very strongly against polygamy, but 
 giving such testimony as the following to the virtues and 
 character of the Mormon people: "The more honest, indus- 
 trious, simple-minded and upright a man is, the better Mor- 
 mon he will be, if he be a Mormon at all. How these old- 
 fashioned virtues thrive on a diet of fanatical religion, the 
 prosperous farms of Utah give proof. The Mormon gospel is 
 a gospel of labor. Industry and simplicity of living are its 
 strongest precepts." "But it is the woman's view of it, her 
 position and belief with regard to it, which are most misrep- 
 resented and misunderstood by the world." "A true under- 
 standing of the conscientious, religious Mormon woman's 
 position and belief would work a revolution in the general 
 sentiment of the outside world, toward her." "There never 
 was a class or sect of women since the world began who have 
 endured for religion's sake a tithe of what has been and is 
 and forever must be endured by the women of the Mormon 
 Church. It has become customary to hold them as disreput- 
 able women, light and loose, unfit to associate with the vir- 
 tuous, undeserving of esteem. Never was a greater injustice 
 committed." "The passage of the Edmunds anti-polygamy 
 bill, disfranchising all perions living in polygamy and mak- 
 ing the practice of it a penitentiary offence, has, so far as can 
 at present be judged, only kindled new flames of self-sacrifice 
 in the hearts of Mormon women." "This sort of spirit in the 
 Mormon women was not reckoned on, probably, by those who 
 thought polygamy could be greatly affected by legislation." 
 "It is entirely within the power of the Mormon women to 
 turn any anti- poly gamy bill into a farce. There would not 
 be penitentiaries enough to hold them, nor funds to feed 
 them at the United States expense; and it is not easy to see 
 what further device the baffled authorities would employ." 
 "But true signs of the times no wise leaders will disregard. 
 The Mormon people as a people are too upright, industrious 
 
15 
 
 and moral, have worked too long and well, and achieved too 
 splendid a success, to have their future again imperiled by 
 being brought into active hostility with the majority of their 
 fellow-countrymen." 
 
 Now, what community on earth can present higher^ 
 stronger or more conclusive testimony as to its virtues and 
 intelligence than this? Ought it not to outweigh any amount 
 of statements made by narrow, bitter, prejudiced, partisan 
 leaders at home and abroad? It covers almost every possible 
 point of good citizenship those of education, patriotism, 
 liberty, domestic life, morals and religion, as well as of indus- 
 try, thrift and material well-being. And, in view of it, 
 w r as there ever a greater outrage attempted against a people on 
 earth, even under the most tyrannical government, than the 
 Edmunds bill, already passed, and the Hoar bill, now before 
 Congress? Compare the state of things in Utah revealed by 
 these accounts with what exists in our monogamous com- 
 munities at the east. Why, I live in a New England State 
 which in every one of these respects is inferior to Utah a 
 State where actually a larger proportion of the Protestant 
 men have more than one wife living than in Utah, the only 
 difference being that there they are all supported by their 
 husbands and made a part of the home, while here the first 
 ones have been driven out into the world to shift for them- 
 selves. 
 
 What does this difference show? Not indeed, as Mr. 
 Potter says, that polygamy in itself or for the country at large 
 is better than monogamy for in itself and elsewhere it is not 
 regarded as a religious principle, a view which makes all the 
 difference in the world but only that, for Utah and in con- 
 nection with the Mormon religion, it is producing no such 
 evils as to call for the interference of the general government. 
 It may be "a crime," but it is a crime legally, and not morally 
 a crime only as the breaking of the Loid's day is one in 
 Connecticut, and not as theft, slavery and murder are every- 
 
16 
 
 where. Marriage, in itself, whether monogamic or polygamous, 
 is intrinsically without moral character. It is simply a social 
 regulation : is, like Sunday, something which is made for man 
 and not man for that. It is a means to an end a means to 
 promote purity, domestic happiness, the proper care of chil- 
 dren, the elevation of the sexes, and the general well-being of 
 society. And which form of it is best, or whether any form of 
 it is best, and how and by whom it shall be performed, is to 
 be determined by its results in each community; for it is a 
 community interest, and of course by the will of each com- 
 munity. I believe in monogamy as our proper form of it, be- 
 cause it is our free choice, meets our hearts' need, and, in spite 
 of some great evils rising out of it, has proved itself best adapted 
 to promote oujj social welfare. Why should not the Mormons 
 be allowed in the same way and on the same grounds to 
 decide what form of it is best for them, exposed only to such 
 moral influences from without as all communities give each 
 other, the test being simply its results in their own case? To 
 be sure, polygamy in the past and in other communities "has 
 been connected with a low state of civilization," has served, 
 as Mr. Potter says, "to pander to and strengthen man's animal 
 passions, nd to keep woman in a state of subjection;" and, 
 theoretically, it seems to me, as it does to him, that it must 
 now inevitably do the same wherever it is. But the question 
 is not what it did in a past age and in other communities, or 
 what it ought theoretically to do everywhere now, but what it 
 does to-day actually in Utah. Government is concerned not 
 in upholding or putting down some special institution on 
 its own' account and in accordance with some ideal of 
 society, but in promoting and guarding the well-being of its 
 citizens under such ones as they themselves have chosen, it 
 being especially the fundamental principle of our own gov- 
 ernment that each community large enough to become a 
 State shall regulate all its own domestic affairs. And, if Utah 
 shows practically and here is where the force of the testi- 
 
17 
 
 inony quoted comes in that polygamy, guarded and pene- 
 trated by the Mormon religion, produces as much happiness, 
 intelligence, morality, freedom, and of all the virtues, pros- 
 perities and satisfactions of life for its citizens as monogamy 
 does in other communities for theirs, shows especially that 
 woman, instead of being "in a state of subjugation to man," 
 is freer, better paid, and has more civil rights than elsewhere, 
 then surely Free Religion and Christianity both, with their 
 emphasis on the spirit rather than on the letter, ought to be 
 the last ones to advocate, for the mere sake of upholding an 
 institution, that monogamy with its attendant evils, now 
 shown by statistics to be so much greater among the Gentiles 
 there, should be arbitrarily thrust on it by the Federal Gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 A while ago, at a woman's suffrage convention here in 
 New England, I heard a Baptist brother tell the ladies that 
 they ought to be willing to fail of getting their rights on Bible 
 grounds rather than to succeed in securing them by any 
 arguments outside of and contrary to Scrip 'ure. And once 
 an orthodox believer, disputing with his Unitarian neighbor 
 about the value of their two systems, on being hard pressed 
 with facts, shouted at last in desperation: "Well, I don't care! 
 I had rather be damned in orthodoxy than saved by Unitari- 
 anism." It is a loyality to the means rather than to the end, 
 which sounds ludicrous in their cases; and yet what is much 
 of the discussion about enforcing monogamy on Utah, what- 
 ever virtues polygamy may show, but a use of the same prin- 
 ciple? What but a saying it is better to have society fail of 
 its great ends on Gentile grounds than to succeed on those of 
 Mormonism; better to have it damned with a monogamy 
 which by actual count furnishes ninety eight per cent, of the 
 criminals in its penitentiary rather than saved by a polygarn}' 
 which furnishes only two! 
 
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