"Of the population of Salt Lake City, about 75 per cent. is Mormon,
and 25 per cent. non-Mormon. Of the suicides in Utah, 90 per cent.,
and of the homicides and infanticides 80 per cent., are committed
by the 17 per cent. of non-Mormons. . . . .
"The Mormons, as a people, are tolerant, temperate, peaceable, and
industrious. Temperance is in some cases carried to the extreme of
abstinence from alcohol of all kinds, tobacco, and tea. Before the
Federal Government exercised so much authority as now, drinking
saloons and other establishments of vice were prohibited; and,
although a few professing Mormons keep drinking saloons, they are
held in disgrace....
"Certain it is that, whatever the causes may be, there is among the
Latter-day Saints a mutual feeling of helpfulness and trust, and
whatever the Gentiles may say, the sentiments towards the heads of
the community are respect, confidence, and I might say affection.
I had the pleasure of traveling for some days in the company of
a Mormon Elder, a gentleman of great ability, intelligence and
courtesy, and I was much struck by the evident cordiality of
his reception by his co-religionists, as well as by his genuine
kindness, without any tinge of condescension towards his humbler
brethren. There was on both sides an evident feeling of perfect
equality combined with respect and affection. It is the same with
the President. So far as I observed and could learn, President
Taylor is regarded with greater respect by the Mormons than is the
President of the United States by its citizens, and at the same
time his office is open to all, and he is prepared to hear what the
humblest Mormon has to say."
Again I turn to the testimony of Mr. Robinson:
"I have seen and spoken to and lived with Mormon men and women of
every class, and never in my life, in any Christian country, {180}
have I come in contact with more consistent piety, sobriety and
neighborly charity. I say this deliberately, without a particle of
odious sanctimony, these folks are in their words and actions as
Christian as ever I thought to see men and women . . . The Mormons
are a peasant people, with many of the faults if peasant life,
but with many of the best human virtues as well....The demeanor
of the women in Utah, as compared with Brightan or Washington, is
modesty itself; and the children are just such healthy, vigorous,
pretty children as one sees in the country or by the sea-side in
England...... Utah-born girls, the offspring of plural wives, have
figures that would make Paris envious; and they carry themselves
with almost oriental dignity. There is nothing, so far as I have
seen, in the manners of Salt Lake City to make me suspect the
existence of that licentiousness of which so much has been written,
but a great deal on the contrary to convince me of a perfectly
exceptional reserve and self-respect. It is only a blockhead that
could mistake the natural gayety of the country for any other than
it is. I know, too, from medical assurance, that Utah has the
practical argument of healthy nurseries to oppose to the theories
of those who attack its domestic relations on physiological
grounds. . .. A healthier and more stalwart community I have never
seen; while among the women I saw many refined faces, and remarked
that robust health seemed the rule....
"Mutual charity is one of the bonds of Mormon union. It is
published officially that the bishops of every ward are to see
there are no persons going hungry.' What a contrast to turn from
this text of universal charity to the infinite meanness of those
who can write of the whole community of Mormons as 'the villainous
spawn of polygamy!' . . . Instead of the Mormons being as a class
profane, they are as a class singularly sober in their language,
and indeed in this respect resemble the Quakers.
"The payment of the tithings is as nearly voluntary as the
collection of a revenue necessary for carrying on a government
can possibly be allowed to be... It is not true that the Church
interferes with the domestic relations of the people. When I
remember what classes of people their men and women are chiefly
drawn from, and the utter poverty in which most of them arrive, I
cannot in sincerity do otherwise than admire and respect the system
which has fused such unpromising material of so many nationalities
into one homogeneous whole."--Sinners and Saints."
Bishop D. S. Tuttle, for years an Episcopal clergyman in Salt Lake
City, an opponent of "Mormonism," but an honorable one, in a lecture on
"Mormonism," delivered in New York and published in the New York _Sun_,
says:
"In Salt Lake City alone there are 17,000 Latter-day Saints. Now,
who are they? I will tell you, and I think, that after I have
concluded, you will look on them more favorably than you have been
accustomed to do. Springing from the centre of your own State
(N.Y.) in 1830, they drifted slowly westward until they finally
rested in the Basin of the Great Salt Lake. I know that the people
of the east have obtained the most unfavorable opinion of them,
and have judged them unjustly. They have many traits that are
worthy of admiration, {181} and they believe with fervent faith
that their religion is a direct revelation from God. We of the east
are accustomed to look upon the Mormons as either a licentious
arrogant or rebellious mob, bent only on defying the United States
Government and deriding the faith of the Christians. This is
not so. I know them to be honest, faithful, prayerful workers,
and earnest in their faith that heaven will bless the Church of
Latter-day Saints. Another strong and admirable feature in the
Mormon religion is the tenacious and efficient organization. They
follow with the greatest care all the forms of the old church."
I next quote from the contribution of the Rev. John C. Kimball of
Hartford, Connecticut, U. S. A., to _The Index_, published in Boston,
Mass., 1884. After introducing the testimony of a number of writers to
the general good character of the "Mormon" people, he says:
"Still stronger is the evidence derived from official statistics
as to their intelligence and virtue. In Salt Lake City, in 1881,
the published reports show that the arrests for crime were
_fourteen times_ as many among the Gentiles, in proportion to
their number, as among the Mormons; and taking the Territory as a
whole, the Gentile population furnished _forty-six_ convicts in
the penitentiary, where the Mormon population, number for number,
furnished one! According to the United States census, Massachusetts
has four times as many convicts to the same population as Utah;
four and a half times as many idiots and insane, and nine times
as many paupers. Utah in school attendance, according to the
same authority [the United States census for 1880], is ahead of
Massachusetts; and with all that has been said about the ignorance
of its people and its immense foreign immigration, its proportion
of people that cannot read and write is put down as less than that
of New England. And still more striking, the women there instead of
being kept in ignorance and subjection, are educated in the same
studies and to the same extent as the boys and men, are equally
fitted to earn their own living out in the world and to maintain an
independent career."
Captain Burton, of the British army, published in 1862, a book on the
"Mormon" people and faith called the _City of the Saints_. He says:
"Mormonism is emphatically the faith of the poor. . . I cannot
help thinking that morally and spiritually as well as physically
its proteges gain by their transfer from Europe to Utah. . . . In
point of more morality, the Mormon community is perhaps purer than
any other of equal numbers. . . . The penalties against chastity,
morality and decency are exceptionally severe. . . . I was much
pleased with their religious tolerance. The Mormons are certainly
the least fanatical of our faiths, owning like the Hindus, that
every man should walk his own way, while claiming for themselves
superiority in belief and practice."
{182} Testimony of like character and of equal respectability could
be adduced without limit, but we think sufficient is here set down to
convince people disposed in the least degree to be fair-minded, however
prejudiced they may previously, have been, that the reckless charges
of crime and immorality made against the Latter-day Saints in Utah by
their enemies, are wickedly false, and have been invented to deceive.
I ask you again to cast your eye over the statements presented to you,
and consider the character of the men who make them. They are not the
statements of the occasional tourist of a day, but the conclusions
of men of thought and travel and education, who visited Utah for the
express purpose of becoming acquainted with the strange faith, and, to
the world, the still stranger people.
"POLYGAMY."
I shall be told, however, that the "Mormons" believe in and some of
them practise a plurality of wives, and therefore they must be a bad
people. But not so fast. Before such a conclusion is drawn it will
be necessary to prove that a plurality of wives as practised by the
Mormons is in and of itself evil. That principle is as much a part of
the religious faith of the women as of the men, and is practised by and
with the consent of all parties concerned. It is practised because the
people believe that God has commanded it by revelation direct to the
Church, for the accomplishment of His own wise purposes--the rearing
of a purer and better race of people. Their faith in that revelation
is considerably strengthened by reading in the Holy Scriptures how God
favored and blessed with His approval that form of marriage among the
worthy patriarchs of old; nay, how even God Himself gave to David,
according to His own Word (2 Sam. xii., 7, 8), a plurality of wives;
thus becoming a party to the evil, if evil it was. But that which God
sanctions and approbates can never be said to be evil. And that God did
sanction the plural wife system of marriage and approve it is evident
from the lives of nearly all the patriarchs and prophets spoken of in
the Bible.
I know it is said by Christians that this was in very ancient times,
when people lived under the Mosaic Law, and that the law of carnal
commandments was superceded by the new dispensation under Christ.
Very well, then, shifting the controversy to what is known as the
Christian dispensation, we challenge {183} the whole world to produce
a single passage from the New Testament directly condemning the plural
marriage system of the old patriarchs, or a passage which, by fair
interpretation, even by implication condemns it. Such a passage cannot
be found. And yet the writers of the New Testament did not hesitate
to condemn in the most direct and positive manner every species of
sin;--strange, is it not, that they failed to condemn plural marriage,
if it was by them or their Master considered sinful? The fact becomes
more strange when it is understood that they lived in a country and
among a people who practised it. Furthermore, Abraham, Jacob, and
the prophets were frequently the theme of conversation and discourse
with the writers of the New Testament, and if the plural wife system
practised by them was sinful, is it not singular that no condemnation
of it should creep into the pages of the New Testament somewhere?
I apprehend that much of the prejudice existing against the marriage
system of the Latter-day Saints arises from confounding it with
the polygamy of the East--with the harems of Turkey, or the bigamy
occasionally practiced in Christian communities; yet we hope to show,
so far as may be shown in a few brief sentences, that there is not
and cannot be, from the very nature of society in Utah, anything that
resembles the Eastern harem, nor do the evils exist which grow out of
the ordinary case of bigamy.
In the first place, women in Utah are as free to marry whom they please
as they are in any part of the world. Mr. Phil. Robinson says:--
"It is a mistake to suppose there are no educated women in Utah: . . .
the young ladies appear as free and independent as in other parts
of the United States. . . . if the women of Utah are slaves, their
bonds are loving ones and dearly prized. They are today in the free
and unrestricted exercise of more political and social rights than
are the women of any other part of the United States."--"Saints and
Sinners."
To this add the testimony of Mr. Barclay, in the article from the
_Nineteenth Century_, before quoted:--
"The young ladies appear as free and independent as in other parts
of the United States; and, if I might hazard an opinion, the young
men of Mormondom will find considerable difficulty in persuading
them to be content with the share of a husband."
The women of Mormondom are as free to bestow or withhold their hands
in marriage as they are in England, and {184} there has not been a day
since 1862--the year in which the first law of Congress was passed
against polygamy--but what it has been within the power of the wife
or wives of a man to send him to the penitentiary, the United States
Courts being only too glad to entertain her suit, and break up the
polygamous family associations. Yet, in all these years, there have
not been half-a-dozen such cases. This entire freedom of women among
the "Mormons" robs their plural marriage system of every feature of
resemblance to the polygamy of the East; and what is here set down
proves that whatever of plural marriage exists in Utah, does so by the
mutual consent of all the parties concerned.
In common bigamy the first marriage is studiously concealed by the
party contemplating the second marriage. A man represents himself to
a lady as a bachelor, and under false pretences and fraud obtains
possession of her person. Soon she discovers that she has been
betrayed, deceived, degraded,--the sense of shame and sorrow following
producing indescribable misery. Nor has it been less productive of evil
to the first wife. Her happiness, too, has been wrecked by the perfidy
of the wretch she called husband. She has been neglected, abandoned,
made an outcast. Where she looked for loyalty, she found treason; where
she implicitly trusted, she has been deceived, and her misery and shame
is as great as the other victim's.
Now, none of these evils grow out of the plural marriage system of
the Mormons. In the first place, a plurality of wives, under certain
conditions and restraints, is one of the social institutions of the
Society of Utah, and has been for more than a generation. As before
remarked, it is practised because the "Mormon" people believe it is
commanded of God; it is therefore accepted by both man and woman as
part of their religious faith, and is regarded as such by the whole
population,--as well by those who do not practise it as by those who
do. Consequently it breeds no scandal; it brings no reproach. The
position of the plural wife is just as honorable, in every sense of
the word, as that of the first wife. She is, in fact, a wife, with all
the holy associations growing out of that relationship, and is honored
everywhere as such. The same ceremony which unites a man to his first
wife is employed to unite him to his second or third, and the same
authority--the authority of God--performs it.
As with the plural wife, so with the plural wife's children; {185} they
are equally honorable with the children of the first wife,--society
makes no distinction between them. When a man takes a plural wife no
concealment is made of his first marriage, nor is his first family
deserted; all is open and honest. There is no deceit, no fraud
practiced, nor can there be. The sanction of the first wife, and the
sanction of parents must be obtained, together with the sanction and
recommendation of the Bishop who presides over the branch of the
Church where the parties live, and who has to be able to state in his
recommendation that the parties are members of the Church in good
standing; that means that they are honest before God and man, virtuous,
faithful in discharging every religious and moral duty, and temperate
withal. And unless such a recommendation can be given, the relationship
cannot be contracted.
Such, in brief, is an outline of the conditions hedging about the
practice of this principle of plural marriage, against which Christians
can find no law, either in the Old or New Testament, which even so much
as bears the complexion of condemnation, but very much which will bear
witness of God's approval of it, even allowing His only-begotten Son,
so far as His earthly parentage is concerned, to come through such
a lineage, a number of his earthly progenitors being the offspring
of plural wives, and themselves practising it. Surely our Christian
friends, who look forward to reclining upon Abraham's bosom as one of
the highest privileges to be enjoyed in heaven, ought not to criticise
too severely the system of marriage which he practised.