Page:History of Utah.djvu/438



Hist. Utah. 25

A large class of men refuse to take upon themselves the cost and cares of matrimony, preferring more free and cheaper indulgence. Of very many of these five mill- ions thus left to themselves, unmated, unsupported, forbidden to become plural wives, Christian civiliza- tion makes prostitutes or paupers. And this is the orthodox idea of the elevation of woman ! Make angels of light and happiness of one portion, while dooming the rest, under the hard heel of social despotism, to the depths of misery and despair. Nay, more : while the men are thus busied working upon the affections of women, taking advantage of their loneliness and poverty, and constantly adding to the numbers of the lost by seducing the pure from the paths of re- spectability, their sisters, mothers, wives, and daugh- ters are applying the scourge with all their might to these unfortunates, hoping thereby to gain further favor with the men by showing how much better are they than their most foully wronged sisters.

Such are the men, such the society, in which the foulest wrongs to women are so universally and con- stantly committed — wrongs which would put to blush savages, yea, and all the devils of darkness; such are the men who wage war on the plural-wife system, which would give to this class and all classes of wo- men home and honorable alliance.

Further than all this, polygamy claims that men or governments have no natural or moral right to forbid the practice, pass laws against it, and inflict punish- ments. Inherent human rights are above statutory law. Governments have no right to pass laws against gambling, prostitution, drunkenness, or any act of the individual resulting in injury only to himself He who harms another may be punished, not he who harms himself; otherwise, who is to determine what is or what is not harmful ? All men and women are every day doing things harmful to themselves, but which no one thinks of checking by legislation. By no line of logic can polygamy be rightly placed in the