blessings of education, where is there a Christian community in all our broad land that can hurl the first stone at the sober, industrious and peace-loving Mormon. A calm investigation of facts is alone sufficient to show that the animus of the crusade on the Mormons is plunder. The following are the kinds and percentage of taxes imposed by law on the people of Utah, and the taxes of no other Territory or State can make as favorable an exhibit:

Outside of city

Only 17 mills on the dollar including City tax. limits the tax is but 12 mills on the dollar. Every unprejudiced person in Utah knows that if the anti-Mormons were in control of the Territory, as they are scheming in Congress to be, that the Territory, and every county and city, would soon be overwhelmed with debt, and taxation under carpet-bag rule would soon become decupled.

We have seen the cause of the opposition of the commercial monopolist and of the legal fraternity; we now see why they have enlisted with them the political gamesters and governmental prostitutes, who scent in the air not only prospective offices, but plunder of as mean and despicable a character as ever disgraced a Roman consul in the later days of the Roman Republic. Adroitly fanning the spark of religious bigotry in the breast of the straight-laced Evangelical proselyter, ever ready to burst into flame, our Protestant pulpits throughout the land offer their prayers and "pass the plate" to hasten the day when Christian civilization shall break down the wall of social co-operation against which it is surging, when the proselyting dominie and the bedizened harlot, the rumseller and the pettifogger, the gambler and the long-faced hypocrite, may enter arm in arm to divide the spoils. Is it worth our while to break down this system for the inimitable privilege of extending Christian churches and hellish brothels; of erecting by the side of the school-house a gin mill with a faro-table accompaniment; of introducing the extortioner and usurer to fatten on the industry of unburdened farmers, and increase the business of the sheriffs at their expense; to convert peaceful hamlets into mining camps, and offer a premium for the importation of broken-down political adventurers rejected at home? The whole crusade is but a huge adventurer's raffle, in which prizes can only be won by ruthlessly trampling upon all moral decency and

natural right, in which the sleek hypocrite and the unblushing harlot jostle each other in their avaricious race for spoils, and push the soulless adventurers on with prayers and favors.

This crusade upon the peaceful and law-abiding inhabitants of Utah is only paralleled in modern history by the "No-Popery madness of our English ancestors, when crowds went wild with joy when a Catholic was sent to the scaffold; when test oaths were framed by jurists to fan the flame of religious bigotry, ostensibly in the interest of the State, but really for the personal aggrandizement of political prostitutes whose sole idea of heaven was the enjoyment of office and perquisites; when human vermin like Titus Oates, reeking with slander and falsehood, were honored and revered; when judges in the interest of the abstraction-the general will-trampled upon and derided every individual right and grew rich from harvesting where they had not sown. Judges, like Sir Thomas More, have sat on the bench and condemned poor old women to the stake for the imaginary crime of witchcraft to defend an equally imaginary social morality. Again, judges, like the infamous Jeffries, in the name of law and with the support of a hireling judiciary, have sent schoolgirls to prison and innocent men and women to the gallows, "general repute" being sufficient evidence in the eyes of bigoted or professional jurors.

America, like England, has her Tories. The fiction of "divine right to govern" is still loudly asserted by modern Jeffries, relying on modern Titus Oates and professional jurors, though the somewhat threadbare mantle of grace has been stretched to cover with its folds the hungry and ambitious pettifoggers we permit to misrepresent us in the halls of Congress. The same persecuting spirit that overflowed the narrow soul of the religious bigot in the interest of a Protestant State, to-day is rampant in equally contracted souls in the interest of the Commercial State. The penny-pinching trader, the strife-begetting pettifogger, the political prostitute and spoils gambler, flanked by various grades of Salvation Army exhorters and shameless harlots, with shrill and discordant voices cry out in the name of law to stifle liberty because, like their illustrious prototype Demetrius, the silversmith of Ephesus, "this our craft is in danger to be set at nought!"

B

CHAPTER V.

PLURAL MARRIAGE.

EFORE entering upon a discussion of the methods adopted

by the Government in Utah to suppress unlawful cohabitation, under what is known as the Edmunds act, it will be well to first obtain a somewhat clear and definite idea of what polygamy is in its American, or Mormon, form, and the reasons why a whole people cling to it with such tenacity. I have stated that I did not regard polygamy as the real issue, and have given reasons to show that the governing motive was at bottom an economic one, a desire to break down a social system founded upon co-operation and arbitration. In such a work it is not strange that facts should be distorted and gross misrepresentations should abound. It is not my purpose to enter upon the legal aspect of polygamy, or the abstract right or wrong of the institution, but merely whether it is such "an overt act against peace and good order," as to warrant the general crusade inaugurated. All we have here to consider is if Mormon plural marriage can be so designated.

The Colonial Congress which met in September, 1774, set forth their grievances in language so appropriate to the present state of affairs in Utah, that I must call the attention of the reader to their statements:

Resolved: I. That they are entitled to life, liberty and property, and have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever a right to dispose of either without consent.

II. That our ancestors were at the time of their emigration from the mother country entitled to all the rights, liberties and immunities of free and natural-born subjects within the realm of England.

III. That by such emigration they have neither forfeited, surrendered nor lost any of those rights.

IV. That the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right of the people to participate in their legislative councils.

V. That, therefore, the exercise of legislative power in several colonies, by a council appointed during the pleasure of the crown, is unconstitutional, dangerous, and destructive to the freedom of American legislation.

Our forefathers in adopting these resolutions were not deterred

by the Tory charge that they were assailing" the sacredness of law," but firmly placed themselves on natural rights, and became rebels to sustain them. Here the parallel ends, for the citizens of Utah have not, nor do they propose to, array themselves by overt acts against even unjust and tyrannical laws.

Let us also bear in mind that the practice has the sanction of the Old Testament and is nowhere condemned in the New; and that when entered into upon religious grounds the question under our laws is whether the relation in itself is such as to warrant extreme measures for the protection of society. This can only be determined by again appealing to the facts.

Taking the census of six years ago as basis for numerical statements, Utah had far more than double the population of Nevada, a State, and more than that of Kansas and Nebraska combined when they were admitted into the Union. How many women are there in what popular imagination pictures as a vast harem? In 1880 Massachusetts had a surplus of females of over 64,000. Over 64,000 condemned to be old maids and fail to fulfil the law of their being, or to fill the ranks of prostitutes crowding the streets of our cities. The census returns show twenty-two States having a surplus of females, while in Utah there are and always have been more males than females. The number of Mormons living in plural marriage does not exceed two per cent. of the entire male population. Emigrants are invariably sought in families, and if the statistics of Castle Garden are obtainable it will be seen that there is no difference in this respect between Mormon immigrants and others.

Is it then true that this minority of polygamists constitute an aristocracy, a new "slaveocracy," holding free expression of opinion. in abeyance? So far from this being true, we have seen the liberality of their legislation. Further, the Mormons have established woman suffrage, and as the new Edmunds bill now before Congress abolishes this right, ostensibly in the interest of women, I will cite certain sections from the Utah election laws.

In section 1 the following form of oath or affirmation is given:

I,

-, being first duly sworn, depose and say that I am over twenty-one years of age and have resided in the Territory of Utah for six months and in the precinct of one month next preceding the date hereof, and (if a male) am a ("native born, or naturalized," as the case may be) citizen of the United States, and a tax payer in this Territory; (or, if a female), I am

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native born,'

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or naturalized,' or the wife," widow," or daughter" (as the case may be) of a native born or naturalized citizen of the United States.

Subscribed and sworn to before me this

A.D.,

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18—.

day of

Assessor.

Section 13 provides that the voter shall, "on the name of the proposed voter being found on the registry list, and on all challenges being decided in favor of such voter," present his or her ballot to the proper official who shall deposit it in the ballot box, but that if any mark whatever" be found thereon, it shall be rejected, thus impartially preserving and protecting the secrecy of the ballot. The statement that a female who is a minor and an alien can vote under the laws of Utah, or that any mark or indorsement on a ballot is permissible, is utterly baseless and untrue.

The Utah Legislature, in their Memorial to Congress in 1882,

state:

When accused of exercising undue influence over the female portion of the population, and the idea was advanced that if the women in Utah were granted the right to vote, a remedy would at once be found, the Territorial Legislature promptly anticipated the proposed action of Congress, and passed an act conferring upon women in Utah, over twenty-one years of age, and with other proper qualifications, the elective franchise.

Again, when accused of making the Church dominate the State, by permitting ecclesiastical influence or priestly authority to assert influence at the polls by means of the marked ballot-which had been approved, and which many still believe to be the cheapest and best means of preventing illegal votes--the Legislature enacted a law providing for the registration of voters, repealing all election laws requiring numbered or otherwise marked ballots, and making them strictly secret.

So far is it from being true that undue influences exist at Utah elections, their law is far more liberal than that of many States. And the denial of all civil rights to polygamists can have no other effect than the disqualification of the prosperous well-to-do class, who in having the heaviest investments at stake are certainly conservative.

One feature of this perplexing question that should always be borne in mind is that it has its most ardent supporters among women. I assert that the most intellectual, the most moral, the most untrammeled of Mormon ladies indorse the system. And I assert this, knowing that Utah is the peer of any State in noble-minded women; women of culture and refinement constantly engaged in active work