Chapter X (1)

Farther Observations at Great Salt Lake City.

[THE COURT-HOUSE.--P. K. DOTSON.]

One of my last visits was to the court-house on an interesting occasion. The _Palais de Justice_ is near where the old fort once was, in the western part of the settlement. It is an unfinished building of adobe, based on red sandstone, with a flag-staff and a tinned roof, which gives it a somewhat Muscovite appearance, and it cost $20,000. The courts and Legislature sit in a neat room, with curtains and chandeliers, and polished pine-wood furniture, all as yet unfaded. The occasion which had gathered together the notabilities of the place was this: Mr. Peter Dotson, the United States Marshal of the Territory, living at Camp Floyd, and being on the opposition side, had made himself--the Mormons say--an unscrupulous partisan. In July, 1859, he came from the cantonment armed with a writ issued by Mr. Delana R. Eckels, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and accompanied by two officers of the United States Army, to the Holy City for the purpose of arresting a Mr. Mackenzie--now in the Penitentiary for counterfeiting “quarter-masters’ drafts”--an engraver by profession, and then working in the Deserét store of Mr. Brigham Young. Forgery and false coining are associated in the Gentile mind with Mormonism, and inveterately so; whether truly or not, I can not say: it is highly probable that Mr. Bogus’s[215] habitat is not limited by latitude, altitude, or longitude; at the same time, the Saints are too much _en évidence_ to entertain him publicly. The marshal, probably not aware that the Territory had passed no law enabling the myrmidons of justice to seize suspicious implements and apparatus made _main forte_, levied, despite due notice, upon what he found appertaining to Mr. Mackenzie, a Bible, a Book of Mormon, and--here was the rub--the copper plates of the Deserét Currency Association. This plunder was deposited for the night with the governor, and was carried in a sack on the next day to Camp Floyd. Then the anti-Mormons sang Io pæans; they had--to use a Western phrase--“got the dead wood on Brigham;” letters traced back to officials appeared in the Eastern and other papers, announcing to the public that the Prophet was a detected forger. Presently, the true character of the copper plates appearing, they were generously offered back; but, as trespass had been committed, to say nothing of libel, and as all concerned in the affair were obnoxious men, it was resolved to try law. A civil suit was instituted, and a sum of $1600 was claimed for damage done to the plates by scratching, and for loss of service, which hindered business in the city. The unfortunate marshal, who was probably a “cat’s-paw,” had “caught a Tartar;” he possessed a house and furniture, a carriage and horses, all of which were attached, and the case of “Brigham Young, sen., _vs._ P. K. Dotson,” ended in a verdict for the plaintiff, viz., value of plates destroyed, $1668; damages, $648 66. The anti-Mormons declared him a martyr; the Mormons, a vicious fool; and sensible Gentiles asserted that he was rightly served for showing evil animus. The case might have ended badly but for the prudence of the governor. Had a descent been made for the purpose of arrest upon the Prophet’s house, the consequences would certainly have been serious to the last degree.

[215] Bogus, according to Mr. Bartlett, who quotes the “Boston
Courier” of June 12, 1857, is a Western corruption of Borghese,
“a very corrupt individual, who, twenty years ago or more, did a
tremendous business in the way of supplying the great West and
portions of the Southwest with counterfeit bills and drafts on
fictitious banks.” The word is now applied in the sense of sham,
forged, counterfeit, and so on; there are bogus laws and bogus
members; in fact, bogus enters every where.

The cause was tried in the Probate Court, which I have explained to be a Territorial, not a federal court. The Honorable Elias Smith presided, and the arguments for the prosecution and the defense were conducted by the ablest Mormon and anti-Mormon lawyers. I attended the house, and carefully watched the proceedings, to detect, if possible, intimidation or misdirection; every thing was done with even-handed justice. The physical aspect of the court was that which foreign travelers in the Far West delight to describe and ridicule, wholly forgetting that they have seen the same scene much nearer home. His honor sat with his chair tilted back and his boots on the table, exactly as if he had been an Anglo-Indian collector and magistrate, while by a certain contraction and expansion of the dexter corner of his well-closed mouth I suspected the existence of the quid. The position is queer, but not more so than that of a judge at Westminster sleeping soundly, in the attitude of Pisa’s leaning monster, upon the bench. By the justice’s side sat the portly figure of Dr. Kay, opposite him the reporters, at other tables the attorneys; the witnesses stood up between the tables, the jury were on the left, and the public, including the governor, was distributed like wall-flowers on benches around the room.

There is a certain monotony of life in Great Salt Lake City which does not render the subject favorable for description. Moreover, a Moslem gloom, the result of austere morals and manners, of the semi-seclusion of the sex, and, in my case, of a reserve arising toward a stranger who appeared in the train of federal officials, hangs over society. There is none of that class which, according to the French author, _repose des femmes du monde_. We rose early--in America the climate seems to militate against slugabedism--and breakfasted at any hour between 6 and 9 A.M. Ensued “business,” which seemed to consist principally of correcting one’s teeth, and walking about the town, with occasional “liquoring up.” Dinner was at 1 P.M., announced, not by the normal gong of the Eastern States, which lately so direfully offended a pair of Anglo-Hibernian ears, but by a hand-bell which sounded the _pas de charge_. Jostling into the long room of the ordinary, we took our seats, and, seizing our forks, proceeded at once to action, after the fashion of Puddingburn House, where

“They who came not the first call,
Got no meat till the next meal.”

Nothing but water was drunk at dinner, except when a gentleman preferred to wash down roast pork with a tumbler of milk; wine in this part of the world is of course dear and bad, and even should the Saints make their own, it can scarcely be cheap on account of the price of labor. Feeding ended with a glass of liquor, not at the bar, because there was none, but in the privacy of one’s chamber, which takes from drinking half its charm. Most well-to-do men found time for a siesta in the early afternoon. There was supper, which in modern English parlance would be called dinner, at 6 P.M., and the evening was easily spent with a friend.

[HISTORIAN AND RECORDER’S OFFICE.]

One of my favorite places of visiting was the Historian and Recorder’s Office, opposite Mr. Brigham Young’s block. It contained a small collection of volumes, together with papers, official and private, plans, designs, and other requisites, many of them written in the Deserét alphabet, of which I subjoin a copy.[216] It is, as will readily be seen, a stereographic modification of Pitman’s and other systems. Types have been cast for it, and articles are printed in the newspapers at times; as man, however, prefers two alphabets to one, it will probably share the fate of the “Fonetik Nuz.” Sir A. Alison somewhere delivers it as his opinion that the future historian of America will be forced to Europe, where alone his material can be found; so far from this being the case, the reverse is emphatically true: every where in the States, even in the newest, the Historical Society is an institution, and men pride themselves upon laboring for it. At the office I used to meet Mr. George A. Smith, the armor-bearer to the Prophet in the camp of Zion, who boasts of having sown the first seed, built the first saw-mill, and ground the first flour in Southern Utah, whence the nearest settlements, separated by terrible deserts, were distant 200 miles. His companions were Messrs. W. Woodruff, Bishop Bentley, who was preparing for a missionary visit to England, and Wm. Thomas Bullock, an intelligent Mormon, who has had the honor to be soundly abused in Mrs. Ferris’s 11th letter. The lady’s “wicked Welshman”--I suppose she remembered the well-known line anent the sons of the Cymri--

“Taffy is a Welshman, Taffy is a thief”--

is no Cambrian, but an aborigine of Leek, Staffordshire, England, and was from 1838 to 1843 an excise officer in her majesty’s Inland Revenue; he kindly supplied me with a plan of the city, and other information, for which he has my grateful thanks.

[216] See next page.

+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| THE DESERÉT ALPHABET. |
+---------------------+-------++------------------------------------+
| =VOCAL SOUNDS.= | 𐐘 Ga ||The sounds of the letters 𐐆, 𐐇, 𐐈, |
+---------+-----------+ ||𐐉, 𐐊, 𐐋 are heard in the words fit, |
|=Long.= | =Double.= | 𐐙 F ||net, fat, cot, nut, foot. |
| | | || |
| 𐐀 E | 𐐌 I | 𐐚 V ||𐐕, 𐐘, 𐐛, 𐐜, 𐐟 are heard in the words|
| | | ||_chee_-se, _ga_-te, s-_eth_, _the_, |
| 𐐁 A | 𐐍 Ow | 𐐛 Eth ||fl-_esh_. |
| | | || |
| 𐐂 Ah | 𐐎 Woo | 𐐜 The ||𐐡 is like _ir_ in st-_ir_; _are_ is |
| | | ||made by the combination of 𐐈 𐐡; 𐐥 is|
| 𐐃 Aw | 𐐏 Ye | 𐐝 S ||heard in l-_eng_-th. |
| | | || |
| 𐐄 O |=Aspirate.=| 𐐞 Z ||=Learn this Alphabet and appreciate |
| | 𐐐 H | || its advantages.= |
| 𐐅 Oo +===========+ 𐐟 Esh || |
| |=Articulate| || |
| | Sounds.= | 𐐠 Zhe || |
|=Short.= | 𐐑 P | || |
|𐐆} | | 𐐡 Ur || |
| }(This | 𐐒 B | || |
|𐐇}column | | 𐐢 L || |
| } of | 𐐓 T | || |
|𐐈}letters| | 𐐣 M || |
| }are the| 𐐔 D | || |
|𐐉} short | | 𐐤 N || |
| }sounds | 𐐕 Che | || |
|𐐊}of the | | 𐐥 Eng || |
| }above).| 𐐖 G | || |
|𐐋} | | || |
| | 𐐗 K | || |
+---------+-----------+-------++------------------------------------+

[FEDERAL OFFICIALS.]

At the office, the undying hatred of all things Gentile-federal had reached its climax; every slight offered to the faith by anti-Mormons is there laid up in lavender, every grievance is carefully recorded. There I heard how, at a general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, in September, 1851, Perry E. Brocchus, a judge of the Supreme Court, having the design of becoming Territorial delegate to Congress, ascended the rostrum and foully abused their most cherished institution, polygamy.[217] He was answered with sternness by Mr. Brigham Young, and really, under the circumstances, the Saints behaved very well in not proceeding to _voies de faits_. Mr. Brocchus, seeing personal danger, left the city in company with Chief Justice L. C. Brandenburg and Mr. Secretary Harris, whom the Mormons very naturally accused of carrying away $24,000, the sum appropriated by Congress for the salary and the mileage of the local Legislature, thus putting a clog upon the wheels of government. I also heard how Judge Drummond, in 1856, began the troubles by falsely reporting to the federal authority that the Mormons were in a state of revolt; that they had burned the public library, and were, in fact, defying the Union--how, bigotry doing its work, the officials at Washington believed the tale without investigation, and sent an army which was ready to renew the scenes of St. Bartholomew and Nauvoo. The federal troops were rather pitied than hated; had they been militia they would have been wiped out; but “wretched Dutchmen, and poor devils of Irishmen,” acting under orders, were simply despised. Their _fainéantise_ was contrasted most unfavorably with the fiery Mormon youth that was spoiling for a fight; that could ride, like part of the horse, down places where no trooper dared venture; that picked up a dollar at full gallop, drove off the invaders’ cattle, burned wagons, grass, and provisions, offered to lasso the guns, and, when they had taken a prisoner, drank with him and let him go--how Governor Cumming, after his entry, at once certified the untruthfulness of the scandal spread by Judge Drummond, especially that touching the library and archives, and reported that no federal officer had ever been killed or even assaulted by the Saints--how the effects of these misrepresentations have been and still are serious. In 1857, for instance, the mail was cut off, and a large commercial community was left without postal communication for a whole year: the ostensible reason was the troubled state of the Territory; the real cause was the desire of the Post-office Department to keep the advance of the troops dark. The Mormons complain that they have ever been made a subject of political capital. President Van Buren openly confessed to them, “Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you; if I took your part I should lose the vote of Missouri.” Every grievance against them, they say, is listened to and readily believed: as an example, a Mr. John Robinson, of Liverpool, had lately represented to her Britannic majesty’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs that his mother and sister were detained in Utah Territory against their will; the usual steps were taken; the British minister applied to the United States Secretary of State, who referred the affair to the governor of the Territory; after which process the tale turned out a mere _canard_. This sister had been married to Mr. Ferguson, adjutant general of the Nauvoo Legion; the mother had left the City of the Saints for Illinois, and had just written to her son-in-law for means by which she could return to a place whence she was to be rescued by British interference. To a false prejudice against themselves the Mormons attribute the neglect with which their project of colonizing Vancouver’s Island was treated by the British government, and the active opposition to be expected should they ever attempt to settle in the Valley of the Saskatchewan. And they think it poor policy on the part of England to “bluff off” 100,000 moral, industrious, and obedient subjects, who would be a bulwark against aggression on the part of the States, and tend materially to prepare the thousand miles of valley between the Mississippi and the Pacific for the coming railway.

[217] On the 5th of April, 1860, the Chamber of Representatives at
Washington passed a projected law to repress polygamy by a majority
of 149 to 60. Fortunately, the Committee of the Senate had no time
to report upon it, and the slave discussion assumed dimensions which
buried Mormonism in complete oblivion.

[CHILDREN OF THE SAINTS.]

At the office I also obtained details concerning education in Great Salt Lake City. Before commencing the subject it will be necessary to notice certain statements relating to the ingenuous youth of Utah Territory. It is generally asserted that juvenile mortality here ranks second only to Louisiana, and the fault is, of course, charged upon polygamy. A French author talks of the _mortalité effrayante_ among the newly-born, while owning, anomalously, that the survivors _sont braves et robustes_. I “doubt the fact.” Mr. Ferris, moreover, declares that there is “nowhere out of the Five Points of New York City a more filthy, miserable, and disorderly rabble of children than can be found in the streets of Great Salt Lake City.” As far as my experience goes, it is the reverse. I was surprised by their numbers, cleanliness, and health, their hardihood and general good looks. They are bold and spirited. The Mormon father, like the Indian brave, will not allow the barbarous use of the stick; but this is perhaps a general feeling throughout the States, where the English traveler first observes the docility of the horses and the indocility of the children. But, as regards rudeness, let a man “with whiskers under his snout,” _i. e._, mustaches, ride through a village in Essex or Warwickshire, and he will suffer more contumely at the hands of the infant population in half an hour than in half a year in the United States or in Utah. M. Remy, despite a “_vif désir_” to judge favorably of the Saints, could not help owning that the children are mostly _grossiers_, _menteurs_, _libertins avant l’âge_; that they use _un langage honteux, comme si les mystères de la polygamie leur avaient été révélés dès l’âge de raison_. Apparently since 1855 _cette corruption précoce_ has disappeared. I found less premature depravity than in the children of European cities generally. Mr. J. Hyde also brings against the juvenile Saints severe charges, too general, however, not to be applicable to other lands. “Cheating the confiding is called smart trading;” the same has been said of New England. “Mischievous cruelty, evidences of spirit;” the attribute of Plato’s boys and of the Western frontiers generally. “Pompous bravado, manly talk;” not unusual in New York, London, and Paris. “Reckless riding, fearless courage;” so apparently thinks the author of “Guy Livingstone.” “And if they outtalk their fathers, outwit their companions, whip their schoolteacher, outcurse a Gentile, they are thought to be promising greatness, and are praised accordingly. Every visitor to Salt Lake will recognize the portrait, for every visitor proclaims them to be the most whisky-loving, tobacco-chewing, saucy, and precocious children he ever saw.” This is the glance of the anti-Mormon eye pure and simple. Tobacco and whisky are too dear for childhood at the City of the Saints; moreover, twenty years ago, before Tom Brown taught boys not to be ashamed of being called good, a youth at many an English public school would have been “cock of the walk” if gifted with the rare merits described above. I remarked that the juveniles had all the promptness of reply and the peremptoriness of information which characterizes the Scotch and the people of the Eastern States. A half-educated man can not afford to own ignorance. He must answer categorically every question, however beyond his reach; and the result is fatal to the diaries of those travelers who can not diagnostize the disease.

[MORMON EDUCATION.]

Mormon education is of course peculiar. The climate predisposes to indolence. While the emigrants from the Old Country are the most energetic and hard-working of men, their children, like the race of backwoodsmen in mass, are averse to any but pleasurable physical exertion. The object of the young colony is to rear a swarm of healthy working bees. The social hive has as yet no room for drones, book-worms, and gentlemen. The work is proportioned to their powers and inclinations. At fifteen a boy can use a whip, an axe, or a hoe--he does not like the plow--to perfection. He sits a bare-backed horse like a Centaur, handles his bowie-knife skillfully, never misses a mark with his revolver, and can probably dispose of half a bottle of whisky. It is not an education which I would commend to the generous youth of Paris and London, but it is admirably fitted to the exigencies of the situation. With regard to book-work, there is no difficulty to obtain in Great Salt Lake City that “mediocrity of knowledge between learning and ignorance” which distinguished the grammar-schools of the Western Islands in the days of Samuel Johnson. Amid such a concourse of European converts, any language, from Hebrew to Portuguese, can be learned. Mathematics and the exact sciences have their votaries. There are graduates of Harvard, Dartmouth, and other colleges. I saw one gentleman who had kept a school in Portsmouth, and another, who had had a large academy in Shropshire, taught in the school of the 14th ward. Music, dancing, drawing, and other artlets, which go by the name of accomplishments, have many votaries. Indefatigable travelers there are in abundance. Almost every Mormon is a missionary, and every missionary is a voyager. Captain Gibson, a well-known name for “personal initiative” in the Eastern Main, where he was seized by the Dutch of Java, lately became a convert to Mormonism, married his daughter to Mr. Brigham Young, and in sundry lectures delivered in the Tabernacle, advised the establishment of a stake of Zion in the “Islands of the Seas,” which signified, I suppose, his intention that the Netherlands should “smell H--ll.” Law is commonly studied, and the practice, as I have shown, is much simplified by the absence of justice. A solicitor from London is also established here. Theology is the growth of the soil. Medicine is represented by two graduates--one of Maryland; the other, who prefers politics to practice, of New York. I am at pains to discover what gave rise to the Gentile reports that the Mormons, having a veritable horror of medicine, leave curing to the priests, and dare not arrogate the art of healing. Masterships and apprenticeships are carefully regulated by Territorial law. Every one learns to read and write; probably the only destitutes are the old European pariahs, and the gleanings from the five or six millions of English illiterati. The Mormons have discovered, or, rather, have been taught, by their necessities as a working population in a state barely twelve years old, that the time of school drudgery may profitably be abridged. A boy, they say, will learn all that his memory can carry during three hours of book-work, and the rest had far better be spent in air, exercise, and handicraft. To their eminently practical views I would offer one suggestion, the advisability of making military drill and extension movements, with and without weapons, a part of scholarhood. For “setting up” the figure, forming the gait, and exercising the muscles, it is the best of gymnastic systems, and the early habit of acting in concert with others is a long stride in the path of soldiership.

While it is the fashion with some to deride the attempts of this painstaking and industrious community of hard-handed men to improve their minds, other anti-Mormons have taken the popular ground of representing the Saints as averse to intellectual activity, despisers of science, respecters only of manual labor, and “_singulièrement épris de la force brutale_.” It is as ungenerous as to ridicule the proceedings of an English Mechanics’ Institute, or the compositions of an “Ed. Mechanics’ Magazine.” The names of their literary institutions are, it is true, somewhat pretentious and grandiloquent; but in these lands there is every where a leaning toward the grandiose. Humility does not pay. Modesty _laudatur et alget_.

As early as December, 1854, an act was approved enabling the Chancellor and Board of Regents of the University of the State of Deserét to appoint a superintendent of common schools for the Territory of Utah, and duly qualified trustees were elected to assess and collect for educational purposes a tax upon all taxable property. In the same year a pathetic memorial was dispatched to Congress, requesting that honorable body to appropriate the sum of $5000 to advance the interests of the University established by law in the City of Great Salt Lake. I know not whether it was granted. As yet there is no educational tax leviable throughout the Territory. Each district makes its own regulations. A city rate supports a school in each ward. The buildings are of plain adobe, thirty feet by twenty. They also serve as meeting-places on Sabbath evenings. There are tutoresses in three or four of the school-houses, who teach all the year round, whereas male education is usually limited by necessity to the three winter months. A certain difficulty exists in finding instructors. As in Australia, the pedagogue is cheaper than a porter, and “turning schoolmaster” is a proverbial phrase about equivalent to coming upon the parish.

The principal educational institutions in Great Salt Lake City have been the following:

1. The Deserét Universal Scientific.

2. The “Polysophical Society,” a name given by Judge Phelps.

3. The Seventies’ Variety Club.

4. The Council of Health, a medico-physiologio-clinical and matronly establishment, like the Dorcas Societies of the Eastern States.

5. The Deserét Theological Institution, whose President was Mr. Brigham Young.

6. The Deserét Library and Musical Society.

7. The Phrenological and Horticultural Society.

8. The Deserét Agricultural and Manufacturing Society, which has already been alluded to. It has many branch societies, whose members pay an annual subscription of $1.

9. The Academy founded in April, 1860, with an appropriation by the local Legislature of Church money to the extent of $2500. Science and art are to be taught gratis to all who will pledge themselves to learn thoroughly and to benefit the Territory by their exertions. The superintendent is Mr. Orson Pratt; and his son, Mr. O. Pratt, junior, together with Mr. Cobb, a Gentile, acts as teacher. At present those educated are males; in course of time a girl class will be established for accomplishments and practical education.

The Historian’s Office was ever to me a place of pleasant resort; I take my leave of it with many expressions of gratitude for the instructive hours passed there.

It will, I suppose, be necessary to supply a popular view of the “peculiar institution,” at once the bane and blessing of Mormonism--plurality. I approach the subject with a feeling of despair, so conflicting are opinions concerning it, and so difficult is it to naturalize in Europe the customs of Asia, Africa, and America, or to reconcile the habits of the 19th century A.D. with those of 1900 B.C. A return to the patriarchal ages, we have seen, has its disadvantages.

There is a prevailing idea, especially in England, and even the educated are laboring under it, that the Mormons are Communists or Socialists of Plato’s, Cicero’s, Mr. Owen’s, and M. Cabet’s school; that wives are in public, and that a woman can have as many husbands as the husband can have wives--in fact, to speak colloquially, that they “all pig together.” The contrary is notably the case. The man who, like Messrs. Hamilton and Howard Egan, murders, in cold blood, his wife’s lover, is invariably acquitted, the jury declaring that civil damages mark the rottenness of other governments, and that “the principle, the only one that beats and throbs through the heart of the _entire inhabitants_ (!) of this Territory, is simply this: _The man who seduces his neighbor’s wife must die, and her nearest relation must kill him_.” Men, like Dr. Vaughan and Mr. Monroe, slain for the mortal sin, perish for their salvation; the Prophet, were they to lay their lives at his feet, would, because unable to hang or behead them, counsel them to seek certain death in a righteous cause as an expiatory sacrifice,[218] which may save their souls alive. Their two mortal sins are: 1. Adultery; 2. Shedding innocent blood.

[218] The form of death has yet to be decided. They call this a
scriptural practice, viz., “to deliver such a one unto Satan for the
destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of
the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor., v., 5).

This severity of punishing an offense which modern and civilized society looks upon rather in the light of a sin than of a crime, is clearly based upon the Mosaic code. It is also, _lex loci_, the “common mountain law,” a “religious and social custom,” and a point of personal honor. Another idea underlies it: the Mormons hold, like the Hebrews of old, “children of shame” in extreme dishonor. They quote the command of God, Deuteronomy (xxiii., 2), “a mamzer shall not enter into the Church of the Lord till the tenth generation,” and ask when the order was repealed. They would expel all impurity from the Camp of Zion, and they adopt every method of preventing what they consider a tremendous evil, viz., the violation of God’s temple in their own bodies.

The marriage ceremony is performed in the temple, or, that being impossible, in Mr. Brigham Young’s office, properly speaking by the Prophet, who can, however, depute any follower, as Mr. Heber C. Kimball, a simple apostle, or even an elder, to act for him. When mutual consent is given, the parties are pronounced man and wife in the name of Jesus Christ, prayers follow, and there is a patriarchal feast of joy in the evening.

[_THE_ WIFE.]

The first wife, as among polygamists generally, is _the_ wife, and assumes the husband’s name and title. Her “plurality”-partners are called sisters--such as Sister Anne or Sister Blanche--and are the aunts of her children. The first wife is married for time, the others are sealed for eternity. Hence, according to the Mormons, arose the Gentile calumny concerning spiritual wifedom, which they distinctly deny. Girls rarely remain single past sixteen--in England the average marrying age is thirty--and they would be the pity of the community if they were doomed to a waste of youth so unnatural.

[DIVORCE.]

Divorce is rarely obtained by the man who is ashamed to own that he can not keep his house in order; some, such as the President, would grant it only in case of adultery: wives, however, are allowed to claim it for cruelty, desertion, or neglect. Of late years, Mormon women married to Gentiles are cut off from the society of the Saints, and, without uncharitableness, men suspect a sound previous reason. The widows of the Prophet are married to his successor, as David took unto himself the wives of Saul; being generally aged, they occupy the position of matron rather than wife, and the same is the case when a man espouses a mother and her daughter.

[THE VIRGIN’S END.]

It is needless to remark how important a part matrimony plays in the history of an individual, and of that aggregate of individuals, a people; or how various and conflicting has been Christian practice concerning it, from the double marriage, civil and religious, the former temporary, the latter permanent, of the Coptic or Abyssinian Church, to the exaggerated purity of Mistress Anna Lee, the mother of the Shakers, who exacted complete continence in a state established according to the first commandment, _crescite et multiplicamini_. The literalism with which the Mormons have interpreted Scripture has led them directly to polygamy. The texts promising to Abraham a progeny numerous as the stars above or the sands below, and that “in his seed (a polygamist) all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” induce them, his descendants, to seek a similar blessing. The theory announcing that “the man is not without the woman, nor the woman without the man,” is by them interpreted into an absolute command that both sexes should marry, and that a woman can not enter the heavenly kingdom without a husband to introduce her. A virgin’s end is annihilation or absorption, _nox est perpetua una dormienda_; and as baptism for the dead--an old rite, revived and founded upon the writings of St. Paul quoted in the last chapter--has been made a part of practice, vicarious marriage for the departed also enters into the Mormon scheme. Like certain British Dissenters of the royal burgh of Dundee, who in our day petitioned Parliament for permission to bigamize, the Mormons, with Bossuet and others, see in the New Testament no order against plurality,[219] and in the Old dispensation they find the practice sanctioned in a family, ever the friends of God, and out of which the Redeemer sprang. Finally, they find throughout the nations of the earth three polygamists in theory to one monogame.

[219] Histoire des Variations, liv. iv. “L’Evangile n’a ni révoqué
ni défendu ce qui avait été permis dans la loi de Moïse à l’égard du
mariage: Jesus Christ n’a pas changé la police extérieure, mais il
a ajouté seulement la justice et la vie éternelle pour récompense.”
So, in 1539, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, wishing to marry a second
wife while the first was alive, was permitted to “commit bigamy” by
the eminent reformers, M. Luther, Kuhorn (M. Bucer), Melancthon,
and others, with the sole condition of secrecy. In the present age,
the Right Rev. J. W. Colenso, D.D. and Bishop of Natal, “not only
tolerates polygamy in converts, but defends it on the ground of
religion and humanity.”

[POLYGAMY.]

The “chaste and plural marriage,” being once legalized, finds a multitude of supporters. The anti-Mormons declare that it is at once fornication and adultery--a sin which absorbs all others. The Mormons point triumphantly to the austere morals of their community, their superior freedom from maladive influences, and the absence of that uncleanness and licentiousness which distinguish the cities of the civilized world. They boast that, if it be an evil, they have at least chosen the lesser evil; that they practice openly as a virtue what others do secretly as a sin--how full is society of these latent Mormons!--that their plurality has abolished the necessity of concubinage, cryptogamy, contubernium, celibacy, _mariages du treizième arrondissement_, with their terrible consequences, infanticide, and so forth; that they have removed their ways from those “whose end is bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword.” Like its sister institution Slavery, the birth and growth of a similar age, Polygamy acquires _vim_ by abuse and detraction: the more turpitude is heaped upon it, the brighter and more glorious it appears to its votaries.

There are rules and regulations of Mormonism--I can not say whether they date before or after the heavenly command to pluralize--which disprove the popular statement that such marriages are made to gratify licentiousness, and which render polygamy a positive necessity. All sensuality in the married state is strictly forbidden beyond the requisite for insuring progeny--the practice, in fact, of Adam and Abraham. During the gestation and nursing of children, the strictest continence on the part of the mother is required--rather for a hygienic than for a religious reason. The same custom is practiced in part by the Jews, and in whole by some of the noblest tribes of savages; the splendid physical development of the Kaffir race in South Africa is attributed by some authors to a rule of continence like that of the Mormons, and to a lactation prolonged for two years. The anomaly of such a practice in the midst of civilization is worthy of a place in De Balzac’s great repertory of morbid anatomy: it is only to be equaled by the exceptional nature of the Mormon’s position, his past fate and his future prospects. Spartan-like, the Faith wants a race of warriors, and it adopts the best means to obtain them.

Besides religious and physiological, there are social motives for the plurality. As in the days of Abraham, the lands about New Jordan are broad and the people few. Of the three forms that unite the sexes, polygamy increases, while monogamy balances, and polyandry diminishes progeny. The former, as Montesquieu acutely suggested, acts inversely to the latter by causing a preponderance of female over male births: “Un fait important à noter,” says M. Remy, “c’est qu’il y a en Utah beaucoup plus de naissances de filles que de garçons, resultat opposé à ce qu’on observe dans tous les pays où la monogamie est pratiquée, et parfaitement conforme à ce qu’on a remarqué chez les polygames Mussulmans.” M. Remy’s statement is as distinctly affirmed by Mr. Hyde, the Mormon apostate. In the East, where the census is unknown, we can judge of the relative proportions of the sexes only by the families of the great and wealthy, who invariably practice polygamy, and we find the number of daughters mostly superior to that of sons, except where female infanticide deludes the public into judging otherwise. In lands where polyandry is the rule, for instance, in the Junsar and Bawur pergunnahs of the Dhun, there is a striking discrepancy in the proportions of the sexes among young children as well as adults: thus, in a village where 400 boys are found, there will be 120 girls; and, on the other hand, in the Gurhwal Hills, where polygamy is prevalent, there is a surplus of female children. The experienced East Indian official who has published this statement[220] is “inclined to give more weight to nature’s adaptability to national habit than to the possibility of infanticide,” for which there are no reasons. If these be facts, Nature then has made provision for polygamy and polyandry: our plastic mother has prepared her children to practice them all. Even in Scotland modern statists have observed that the proportion of boys born to girls is greater in the rural districts; and, attributing the phenomenon to the physical weakening of the parents, have considered it a rule so established as to “afford a valuable hint to those who desire male progeny.” The anti-Mormons are fond of quoting Paley: “It is not the question whether one man will have more children by five wives, but whether these five women would not have had more children if they had each a husband.” The Mormons reply that--setting aside the altered rule of production--their colony, unlike all others, numbers more female than male immigrants; consequently that, without polygamy, part of the social field would remain untilled.[221]

[220] Hunting in the Himalaya, by R. H. W. Dunlop, C.B., B.C.S.,
F.R.G.S., London, Richard Bentley, 1860.

[221] I am sure of the correctness of this assertion, which is thus
denied in general terms by M. Reclus, of the Revue des Deux-Mondes.
“A la fin de 1858, on comptaît sur le Territoire 3617 maris
polygames, dont 1117 ayant cinque femmes ou d’avantage: mais un grand
nombre de Mormons n’avaient encore pu trouver d’épouses; il est
probable même que le chiffre des hommes depasse celui des femmes,
comme dans tous les pays peuplés d’emigrans. L’équilibre entre les
sexes n’est pas encore établi.”

To the unprejudiced traveler it appears that polygamy is the rule where population is required, and where the great social evil has not had time to develop itself. In Paris or London the institution would, like slavery, die a natural death; in Arabia and in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains it maintains a strong hold upon the affections of mankind. Monogamy is best fitted for the large, wealthy, and flourishing communities in which man is rarely the happier because his quiver is full of children, and where the Hetæra becomes the succedaneum of the “plurality-wife.” Polyandry has been practiced principally by priestly and barbarous tribes,[222] who fear most for the increase of their numbers, which would end by driving them to honest industry. It reappears in a remarkable manner in the highest state of social civilization, where excessive expenditure is an obstacle to freehold property, and the practice is probably on the increase.

[222] The Mahabharata thus relates the origin of the practice in
India. The five princely Pandava brothers, when contending for a
prize offered by the King of Drona to the most successful archer,
agreed to divide it if any of them should prove the winner. Arjun,
the eldest, was declared victor, and received in gift Draupadi, the
king’s daughter, who thus became the joint-stock property of the
whole fraternity. They lived _en famille_ for some years at the foot
of Bairath, the remains of which, or rather a Ghoorka structure on
the same site, are still visible on a hill near the N.W. corner of
the Dhun. (Hunting in the Himalaya, chap. vii.)

The other motive for polygamy in Utah is economy. Servants are rare and costly; it is cheaper and more comfortable to marry them. Many converts are attracted by the prospect of becoming wives, especially from places where, like Clifton, there are sixty-four females to thirty-six males. The old maid is, as she ought to be, an unknown entity. Life in the wilds of Western America is a course of severe toil: a single woman can not perform the manifold duties of housekeeping, cooking, scrubbing, washing, darning, child-bearing, and nursing a family. A division of labor is necessary, and she finds it by acquiring a sisterhood. Throughout the States, whenever a woman is seen at manual or outdoor work, one is certain that she is Irish, German, or Scandinavian. The delicacy and fragility of the Anglo-American female nature is at once the cause and the effect of this exemption from toil.

[MORMON WOMEN.--POLYGAMY.]

The moral influence diffused over social relations by the presence of polygyny will be intelligible only to those who have studied the workings of the system in lands where seclusion is practiced in its modified form, as among the Syrian Christians. In America society splits into two parts--man and woman--even more readily than in England; each sex is freer and happier in the company of its congeners. At Great Salt Lake City there is a gloom like that which the late Professor H. H. Wilson described as being cast by the invading Moslem over the innocent gayety of the primitive Hindoo. The choice egotism of the heart called Love--that is to say, the propensity elevated by sentiment, and not undirected by reason, subsides into a calm and unimpassioned domestic attachment: romance and reverence are transferred, with the true Mormon concentration, from love and liberty to religion and the Church. The consent of the first wife to a rival is seldom refused, and a _ménage à trois_, in the Mormon sense of the phrase, is fatal to the development of that tender tie which must be confined to two. In its stead there is household comfort, affection, circumspect friendship, and domestic discipline. Womanhood is not petted and spoiled as in the Eastern States; the inevitable cyclical revolution, indeed, has rather placed her below par, where, however, I believe her to be happier than when set upon an uncomfortable and unnatural eminence.

It will be asked, What view does the softer sex take of polygyny? A few, mostly from the Old Country, lament that Mr. Joseph Smith ever asked of the Creator that question which was answered in the affirmative. A very few, like the Curia Electa, Emma, the first wife of Mr. Joseph Smith--who said of her, by-the-by, that she could not be contented in heaven without rule--apostatize, and become Mrs. Bridemann. The many are, as might be expected of the easily-moulded weaker vessel, which proves its inferior position by the delicate flattery of imitation, more in favor of polygyny than the stronger.

For the attachment of the women of the Saints to the doctrine of plurality there are many reasons. The Mormon prophets have expended all their arts upon this end, well knowing that without the hearty co-operation of mothers and wives, sisters and daughters, no institution can live long. They have bribed them with promises of Paradise--they have subjugated them with threats of annihilation. With them, once a Mormon always a Mormon. I have said that a modified reaction respecting the community of Saints has set in throughout the States; people no longer wonder that their missionaries do not show horns and cloven feet, and the federal officer, the itinerant politician, the platform orator, and the place-seeking demagogue, can no longer make political capital by bullying, oppressing, and abusing them. The tide has turned, and will turn yet more. But the individual still suffers: the apostate Mormon is looked upon by other people as a scamp or a knave, and the woman worse than a prostitute. Again, all the fervor of a new faith burns in their bosoms with a heat which we can little appreciate, and the revelation of Mr. Joseph Smith is considered on this point as superior to the Christian as the latter is in others to the Mosaic Dispensation. Polygamy is a positive command from heaven: if the flesh is mortified by it, _tant mieux_--“no cross, no crown;” “blessed are they that mourn.” I have heard these words from the lips of a well-educated Mormon woman, who, in the presence of a Gentile sister, urged her husband to take unto himself a second wife. The Mormon household has been described by its enemies as a hell of envy, hatred, and malice--a den of murder and suicide. The same has been said of the Moslem harem. Both, I believe, suffer from the assertions of prejudice or ignorance. The temper of the New is so far superior to that of the Old Country, that, incredible as the statement may appear, rival wives do dwell together in amity, and do quote the proverb “the more the merrier.” Moreover, they look with horror at the position of the “slavey” of a pauper mechanic at being required to “nigger it” upon love and starvation, and at the necessity of a numerous family. They know that nine tenths of the miseries of the poor in large cities arise from early and imprudent marriages, and they would rather be the fiftieth “sealing” of Dives than the toilsome single wife of Lazarus. The French saying concerning motherhood--“_le premier embellit, le second détruit, le troisième gâte tout_,” is true in the Western world. The first child is welcomed, the second is tolerated, the third is the cause of tears and reproaches, and the fourth, if not prevented by gold pills or some similar monstrosity, causes temper, spleen, and melancholy, with disgust and hatred of the cause. What the Napoleonic abolition of the law of primogeniture, combined with centralization of the peasant class in towns and cities, has effected on this side of the Channel, the terrors of maternity, aggravated by a highly nervous temperament, small cerebellum, constitutional frigidity, and extreme delicacy of fibre, have brought to pass in the older parts of the Union.

Another curious effect of fervent belief may be noticed in the married state. When a man has four or five wives, with reasonable families by each, he is fixed for life: his interests, if not his affections, bind him irrevocably to his new faith. But the bachelor, as well as the monogamic youth, is prone to backsliding. Apostasy is apparently so common that many of the new Saints form a mere floating population. He is proved by a mission before being permitted to marry, and even then women, dreading a possible renegade, with the terrible consequences of a heavenless future to themselves, are shy of saying yes. Thus it happens that male celibacy is mixed up in a curious way with polygamy, and that also in a faith whose interpreter advises youth not to remain single after sixteen, nor girls after fourteen. The celibacy also is absolute; any infraction of it would be dangerous to life. Either, then, the first propensity of the phrenologist is poorly developed in these lands--this has been positively stated of the ruder sex in California--or its action is to be regulated by habit to a greater degree than is usually believed.

[MRS. PRATT’S OPINION.]

I am conscious that my narrative savors of incredibility; the fault is in the subject, not in the narrator. _Exoneravi animan meam._ The best proof that my opinions are correct will be the following quotation. It is a letter addressed to a sister in New Hampshire by a Mrs. Belinda M. Pratt, the wife of the celebrated apostle. M. Remy has apparently dramatized it (vol. ii., chap. ii.) by casting it into dialogue form, and placing it in the mouth of _une femme distinguée_. Most readers, feminine and monogamic, will remark that the lady shows little heart or natural affection; the severe calm of her judgment and reasoning faculties, and the soundness of her physiology, can not be doubted.

“Great Salt Lake City, Jan. 12, 1854.

“DEAR SISTER,--Your letter of October 2 was received on yesterday.
My joy on its reception was more than I can express. I had waited
so long for your answer to our last, that I had almost concluded my
friends were offended, and would write to me no more. Judge, then,
of my joy when I read the sentiments of friendship and of sisterly
affection expressed in your letter.

“We are all well here, and are prosperous and happy in our family
circle. My children, four in number, are healthy and cheerful, and
fast expanding their physical and intellectual faculties. Health,
peace, and prosperity have attended us all the day long.

“It seems, my dear sister, that we are no nearer together in our
religious views than formerly. Why is this? Are we not all bound to
leave this world, with all we possess therein, and reap the reward
of our doings _here_ in a never-ending hereafter? If so, do we not
desire to be undeceived, and to _know and to do the truth_? Do we not
all wish in our very hearts to be sincere with ourselves, and to be
honest and frank with each other?

“If so, you will bear with me patiently while I give a few of my
reasons for embracing and holding sacred that particular point in the
doctrine of the Church of the Saints to which you, my dear sister,
together with a large majority of Christendom, so decidedly object. I
mean, a ‘_plurality of wives_.’

“I have a Bible which I have been taught from my infancy to hold
sacred. In this Bible I read of a holy man named Abraham, who is
represented as the friend of God, a faithful man in all things, a
man who kept the commandments of God, and who is called in the New
Testament ‘the father of the faithful.’ See James, ii., 23; Rom.,
iv., 16; Gal., iii., 8, 9, 16, 29.

“I find this man had a plurality of wives, some of which were called
concubines. See Book of Genesis; and for his concubines, see xxv., 6.

“I also find his grandson Jacob possessed of four wives, twelve
sons, and a daughter. These wives are spoken very highly of by the
sacred writers as honorable and virtuous women. ‘_These_,’ say the
Scriptures, ‘_did build the house of Israel_.’

“Jacob himself was also a man of God, and the Lord blessed him and
his house, and commanded him to be fruitful and multiply. See Gen.,
xxx. to xxxv., and particularly xxxv., 10,11.

“I find also that the twelve sons of Jacob by these four wives
became princes, heads of tribes, patriarchs, whose names are had in
everlasting remembrance to all generations.

“Now God talked with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob frequently, and his
angels also visited and talked with them, and blessed them and their
wives and children. He also reproved the sins of some of the sons
of Jacob for hating and selling their brother, and for adultery.
But in all his communications with them he never condemned their
family organization, but, on the contrary, always approved of it,
and blessed them in this respect. He even told Abraham that he would
make him the father of many nations, and that in him and his seed all
the nations and kindreds of the earth should be blessed. See Gen.,
xviii., 17-19; also xii., 1-3. In later years I find the plurality of
wives perpetuated, sanctioned, and provided for in the law of Moses.

“David the Psalmist not only had a plurality of wives, but the Lord
himself spoke by the mouth of Nathan the prophet, and told David that
_he_ (the Lord) had given his master’s wives into his bosom; but
because he had committed adultery with the wife of Uriah, and had
caused his murder, _he_ would take _his_ wives and give them to a
neighbor of his, etc. See 2 Sam., xii., 7-11.

“Here, then, we have the Word of the Lord not only sanctioning
polygamy, but actually giving to King David the wives of his master
(Saul), and afterward taking the wives of David from him, and giving
them to another man. Here we have a sample of severe reproof and
punishment for adultery and murder, while polygamy is authorized and
approved by the Word of God.

“But to come to the New Testament. I find Jesus Christ speaks very
highly of Abraham and his family. He says, ‘_Many shall come from
the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south,
and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of
God_.’ Luke, xiii., 28, 29.

“Again he said, ‘_If ye were Abraham’s seed ye would do the works of
Abraham_.’

“Paul the apostle wrote to the saints of his day, and informed them
as follows: ‘As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have
put on Christ; and if ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed,
and heirs according to the promise.’

“He also sets forth Abraham and Sarah as patterns of faith and good
works, and as the father and mother of faithful Christians, who
should, by faith and good works, aspire to be counted the sons of
Abraham and daughters of Sarah.