That is a stereotyped caricature of the marriage relation, and has
poisoned the whole land. You might as well think that you can have an
arm in a state of mortification and yet the whole body not be
sickened, as to have those territories polygamized and yet the body of
the nation not feel the putrefaction. Hear it, good men and women of
America, that so long ago as 1862 a law was passed by Congress
forbidding polygamy in the territories and in all the places where
they had jurisdiction. Twenty-two years have passed along and five
administrations, armed with all the power of government, and having an
army at their disposal, and yet the first brick has not been knocked
from that fortress of libertinism.
Every new President in his inaugural has tickled that monster with the
straw of condemnation, and every Congress has stultified itself in
proposing some plan that would not work. Polygamy stands in Utah and
in other of the territories to-day more entrenched, and more brazen,
and more puissant, and more braggart, and more infernal, than at any
time in its history. James Buchanan, a much-abused man of his day, did
more for the extirpation of this villainy than all the subsequent
administrations have dared to do. Mr. Buchanan sent out an army, and
although it was halted in its work, still he accomplished more than
the subsequent administrations, which have done nothing but talk,
talk, talk.
I want the people of America to know that for twenty-two years we have
had a positive law prohibiting polygamy in the territories. People are
crying out for some new law, as though we had not an old law already
with which that infamy could be swept into the perdition from which it
smoked up. Polygamy in Utah has warred against the marriage relation
throughout the land. It is impossible to have such an awful sewer of
iniquity sending up its miasma, which is wafted by the winds north,
south, east, and west, without the whole land being affected by it.
Another influence that has warred against the marriage relation in
this country has been a