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 such restriction; for the public supports his concubines, and the relation is contingent upon the maintenance of his position.

Which is the more wholesome arrangement—the better state of society—the most in unison with the dignity of manhood and the purity of womanhood? Which is more significant of paternal loyalty and maternal truth, things of importance to the next generation? One is symbolical of human honor, faith and symplicity; the other of human meanness, selfishness and double-dealing. Which is which? Where is the rule by which, when these scenes and events stand, awaiting the final verdict, before the tribunal of the future, they are to be judged? Is it recorded in the act of Congress of 1862? Is it embalmed in the opinion of the Supreme Court of 1879? Assuredly in neither.

It is not proposed, in this inquiry, to examine the points under the law of evidence raised in the court below by the counsel for the defendant, nor to review the opinion of the court above, by which those of the former were sustained. The almost painful elaboration, by the latter, upon these—in striking contrast with its summary disposition of the principles involved in the main issue—would inspire a hope that the work was faithfully performed, in the face of the fact that the decisions were uniformly in favor of the prosecution. There is a point however under the laws, in respect to the qualifications of jurors, which invites examination; before proceeding to which, in order that the analysis may be intelligible, a survey of the situation is requisite.

Polygamy and bigamy are acts the knowledge of which has been present to the law as long, to say the least, as the English language has existed; the one as a custom, the other as a crime. Bigamy has been known, from the earliest period of English jurisprudence, as "a common law offense," polygamy was declared to be a crime by statute in the reign of that theological potentate James the First. In the United States, the characteristic distinction between the two acts has always been preserved. No lawyer at the bar, nor judge upon the bench, would have confounded the one with the other, any more than he would have overlooked the unlikeness between a purchase in open market and a robbery upon the highway.

The act of Congress of 1862 describes a polygamous marriage and calls it "bigamy," thereby creating a factions offense—a new-fashioned bigamy. Under the laws against the old-fashioned bigamy, only the party guilty of a fraud practised upon the other was