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 granted; nor will judges have any in concluding that laws to abolish wedlock, and to punish those who indulge in it are strictly within the province of legislative authority.

There is no extravagance in this anticipation. The indictments which sexual communism—free love—brings against the state of society of which singular marriages are the basis, are severe; and, in many respects their truth is beyond denial. If, on account of the elements of social anarchy it includes, polygamy should be forbidden, a thousand times more should monogamy. The characteristic facts of the latter, which defy concealment, are domestic infidelity and prostitution. There is ground enough upon which to agitate; and when the order whose calling it is to abolish have completed the works now in progress, it is not unreasonable to apprehend that the marriage relation will come next in their line of attack. It would be but another step in that communistic progress to which statesmen and jurisprudents have already afforded so large a measure of aid and encouragement.

As one of its objections to polygamy, the court ventures the opinion that the principles of civil government vary with the character of the domestic relations of the people. Says the Chief Justice:

In support of this conclusion he cites Dr. Francis Lieher, a philosopher, who infers from the fact of certain coincidences, that a certain form of domestic order is correlative with a certain form of civil institutes: in other words that polygamy and arbitrary government are inherently allied. If it could be shown that monogamy and popular government were invariably, or even generally, coincident, the argument would have some validity. As the case stands, it has none whatever. There is no evidence that the principles of civil government vary with either domestic or social conditions. Principles do not change. Forms and rules of administration differ, as the civil character of one people differs from that of another; but there is nothing intrinsic in the unlikeness between the custom of singular and that of plural wedlock to indicate the need even of difference in forms and rules of administration.

The notion intended to be conveyed appears, from the context, to be that a more vigorous and. absolute regimen is required