The Mormon Abomination.
By Editor
SINCE the United States Supreme Court has decided that the laws against polygamy in Utah and other Territories are constitutional, a delegation of Mormon women has visited Washington to lobby on the subject. Their chief object seemed to be to enlist the sympathies, and thereby the influence, of Mrs. Hayes in favor of their demoralizing practices. In the mean time the church authorities in Utah continue to form unlawful alliances, and utter, in the boldest language, their contempt for the decision of the Supreme Court, and bid defiance to the Government of the United States. And the Utah delegate, an avowed violator of the laws of the United States, sits in his seat in Congress. The plea put forth by these Mormon women with which they confidently expected to move the sympathies of the country in behalf of their institution was this: to carry out these laws would be to declare all polygamous marriages illegal, which again would be a declaration that all children resulting from such marriages are illegitimate. They urge that the feelings of the wives should be respected, and especially that this army of children should not be branded as illegitimates. Is there any weight to their claim? Does reason or justice demand that this Government should listen to their plea? By no means. Their own actions, both past and present, cut them off from all consideration on such grounds. When "Wife No. 19," petitioned for a divorce and alimony from Brigham Young, his rejoinder was that she was not his wife. He had legally married a wife before he took Eliza, the plaintiff in the suit, and this wife was still living; and this was a bar against any other legal marriage. And, of course, if their union was not legal, she was not his wife, and therefore not entitled to the benefit of action in the court. What could the Court do under such circumstances? If it granted her petition it would be under a decision that the marriage between Young and Eliza was legal; which would again place polygamy on a legal footing in our Territories. Hence the Court, holding that the marriage was not legal, denied the petition of the complainant, and sustained the answer of Brigham Young. These Mormon women are altogether too late in making their claim. Their own prophet and head answered their plea several years ago, by publicly declaring that they were not legal wives, which was an open confession that all their children are illegitimate. And this declaration of Brigham Young was sustained by law—by the decision of the Court. We repeat, it is altogether too late for them to deny the position in which their prophet and the law placed them, which is, that they are living in prostitution. But leaving all this out of the question, there is another reason, sufficient of itself, why their plea should not be heard. Their illegal and immoral practice has been decided against by the highest tribunal in the land; and they are well aware that the evil which they deprecate must come on the heads of these women and children, unless the Supreme Court reverses its decision, and the General Government reverses its action. But for this they have no reason to hope. Now if they honestly deplore the contingency,—if they really have any pity for these poor women and their unfortunate children, we should expect they would do all that lies in their power to prevent other women from being subjected to such a humiliating standing under the law, and to avoid increasing the number of innocent children with the stamp of illegitimacy upon them. But their action is the very reverse of this. They come before the public hypocritically pleading for mercy in behalf of these poor women and children, while the abominable "endowment houses" are kept in active service, and they bid defiance to the Government and its laws. When they begin to show some sympathy for these unfortunate classes, and are willing to open their own eyes to their degradation, as declared by their own prophet; when they show some respect for government and law, then it will be time for them to ask for our sympathies. Not till then should either the Government or the people extend one particle of sympathy to these women. And never should any sympathy be allowed to flow out toward that system of illegality and immorality which has its seat at Salt Lake City. It is an insult to our civilization to ask the Government to sanction their practice. And it is an insult to Christianity—which we feel most deeply—to suffer such an abomination to flourish under its sacred name.