The day also on which I arrived in Salt Lake City was itself a memorable one, for it was the closing day of the fifty second annual conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—notable, beyond other conferences, as a public expression of the opinions of the leaders of the Mormon Church, at a crisis of great importance. The whole hierarchy of Utah took part in the proceedings, and it was fitly closed by an address from President Taylor himself, evoking such a demonstration of fervid and yet dignified enthusiasm as I have never seen equalled.
My telegram to the New York World on that occasion may still stand as my description of the scene.
"Acquainted though I am with displays of Oriental fanaticism and Western revivalism, I set this Mormon enthusiasm on one side as being altogether of a different character, for it not only astonishes by its fervour, but commands respect by its sincere sobriety. The congregation of the Saints assembled in the Tabernacle, numbering, by my own careful computation, eleven thousand odd, and composed in almost exactly equal parts of the two sexes, reminded me of the Puritan gatherings of the past as I imagined them, and of my personal experiences of the Transvaal Boers as I know them. There was no rant, no affectation, no straining after theatrical effect. The very simplicity of this great gathering of country-folk was striking in the extreme, and significant from first to last of a power that should hardly be trifled with by sentimental legislation. I have read, I can assert, everything of importance that has ever been written about the Mormons, but a single glance at these thousands of hardy men fresh from their work at the plough—at the rough vehicles they had come in, ranged along the street leading to the Tabernacle, at their horses, with the mud of the fields still upon them—convinced me that I knew nothing whatever of this interesting people. Of the advice given at this Conference it is easy to speak briefly, for all counselled alike. In his opening address, President Taylor said,—
"'The antagonism we now experience here has always existed, but we have also come out of our troubles strengthened. I say to you, be calm, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, and He will take care of us.'
"Every succeeding speaker repeated the same advice, and the outcome of the five days' Conference may therefore be said to have been an exhortation to the Saints 'to pay no attention whatever to outside matters, but to live their religion, leave the direction of affairs to their priesthood, and the result in the hands of God.'
"Bishops Sharp and Cluff challenged the Union to show more conspicuous examples of loyalty than those that 'brighten the records of Utah;' Bishop Hatch referred to a 'Revolutionary' ancestry; and Apostle Brigham Young (a son of the late President) alluded to the advocacy in certain quarters of warlike measures with which he was not himself in sympathy. 'I am not,' he said, 'altogether belligerent, and am not advocating warlike measures, but I do want to advocate our standing true and steadfast all the time. If I am to be persecuted for living my religion, why, I am to be persecuted. That is all. Dodging the issue will not change it. I have read the bill passed to injure us, but am satisfied that everything will come out all right, that the designs of our enemies will be frustrated, and confusion will come upon them.' Apostle Woodruff reminded the enemies of the Church that it 'costs a great deal to shed the blood of God's people;' and Apostle Lorenzo Snow said,—'I do not have any fear or trouble about fiery ordeals, but if any do come we should all be ready for them.'
"These and other references to possible trouble seem to show that the leaders of the Church consider the state of the public mind such as to make these allusions necessary. But loyalty to the Constitution was the text of every address, and even as regards the Edmunds Bill itself, Apostle Lorenzo Snow said,—'There is something good in it, for it legalizes every issue from plural marriages up to January 1, 1883. No person a few years ago could have ever expected such an act of Congress. But it has passed, and been signed by the President.' The expressions of the speakers with regard to polygamy were at times very explicit. The President yesterday said,—'Some of our kind friends have suggested that we cast our wives off, but our feelings are averse to that. We are bound to them for time and eternity—we have covenanted before high heaven to remain bound to them. And I declare, in the name of Israel's God, that we will keep the covenant, and I ask all to say to this Amen.' (Here, like the sound of a great sea-wave breaking in a cave, a vast Amen arose from the concourse.) 'We may have to shelter behind a hedge while the storm is passing over, but let us be true to ourselves, our wives, our families, and our God, and all will be well.' Again to-day he exhorted the Saints 'to keep within the law, but at the same time to live their religion and be true to their wives, and the principles Of their Church.' Several other speakers touched upon the fact of plurality being an integral doctrine of Mormonism, and not to be interfered with without committing an outrage against their religion. Retaliation was never suggested, unless the advice given to the congregation to make all their purchases at Mormon shops may be accepted as a tendency towards Boycotting. But the Church was exhorted to stand firm, to allow persecution to run its course, and above all, to be 'manly in their fidelity to their wives.' Nor could anything exceed the impressiveness of the response which the people gave instantaneously to the appeal of their President for the support of their voices. The great Tabernacle was filled with waves of sound as the 'Amens' of the congregation burst out. The shout of men going into battle was not more stirring than the closing words of this memorable conference spoken as if by one vast voice: 'Hosannah! for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth; He is with us now and will be for ever. Amen!'"
LEGISLATION AGAINST PLURALITY.
A people under a ban—What the Mormon men think of the Anti-Polygamy Bill—And what the Mormon women say of polygamy—Puzzling confidences—Practical plurality a very dull affair—But theoretically a hedge-hog problem—Matrimonial eccentricities—The fashionable milliner fatal to plurality—Absurdity of comparing Moslem polygamy with Mormon plurality—Are the women of Utah happy?—Their enthusiasm for Women's Rights.
UTAH, therefore, at the time of my visit was "a proclaimed district"—to use the Anglo-Indian phrase for tracts suspected of infanticide—and every Mormon within it had a share in the disgrace thrust upon it. Nor was the triumph of the Gentile concealed at the result. The Mormons, therefore, were consolidated, in the first instance, by the equal pressure of the new law upon all sections of the church alike; in the next by the openly expressed exultation of the Gentiles. I wrote at the time: "They feel that they are under a common ban. The children have read the Bill or have had its purport explained to them, and it is well known even among the Gentiles how keen the grief was in every household when the news that the Bill had passed reached Utah. Wives still shed bitter tears over the act of Congress which breaks up their happy homes, and robs them and their children of the protecting presence of a husband and father. The Bill was aimed to put a stop to a supposed self-indulgence of the men. But the Mormons have never thought of it in this light at all. They see in it only an attempt to punish their wives. And it is this alleged cruelty to their wives and children that has stubborned the Mormon men."
Meanwhile the Mormons' affect a contemptuous disregard Of the Commission and all its works. I have spoken to many, some of them leaders of local opinion, and everywhere I find the same amused indifference to it expressed. "We have too many real troubles," they say, "to go manufacturing imaginary ones. We must live our religion in the present and leave the future to God."
"But," I would say, "this is not a question of the future. All children born after the 1st of January, 1883, will be illegitimate—and in these matters Nature is generally very punctual. Now, are you going to break the law or going to keep it?"
Some would answer "neither," and some "both," but all would agree that there was no necessity for worrying themselves about evils which may never befall, and that the Edmunds Bill, with all its malignity and cunning, was "a stupid blunder," an "impossible" enactment, "an absurdity." So the questioning would probably end in laughter.
"But in spite of this expressed indifference to the working of the Bill, there can be little doubt that the more responsible Mormons have already made up their minds as to the course they will take. 'The people' will follow them of course, and forecasting the future, therefore, I anticipate that a small minority will break down under the pressure, and will return their plural wives to their parents, with such provision as they can make for their future support.
"Of the remainder, that is to say the bulk of the Mormons, I believe, indeed I feel convinced, that they will simply ignore the Bill so long as it ignores them, and that when it is put in force against them, they will accept the penalty without complaint. In some cases the onus of proving guilt will no doubt be made heavier by 'passive resistance,' and where the whole family is solid in throwing obstacles in the way of espionage, conviction will necessarily be very difficult. As a case in point may be cited the instance of the Mormon in Salt Lake City, who married a second wife and successfully defied both the law and the public to fix his relationship to the lady in question and her children. She herself was content with saying that her children were honourable in birth, and that the wedding-ring on her finger was a fact and not a fiction. But who her husband was neither the law nor the press could find out for two years, and only then by the confession of the sinner himself."
I was sitting one day with two Mormon ladies, plural wives, and the conversation turned upon marriage.
"But," said I, "now that you have experienced the disadvantages of plurality, shall you advise your daughters to follow your example?"
"No," said both promptly, "I shall not advise them one way or the other. They must make their own choice, just as I did."
"Choice, I am afraid, is hardly a choice though. Plurality, I fear, is too nearly a religious duty to leave much option with girls."
"Nonsense," said the elder of the two, "I was just as free to choose my husband as you were to choose your wife. I married for love."
"And do you really believe," broke in the other, "that any woman in the world would marry a man she did not like from a sense of religious duty!"
"Yes," said I, regardless of the fair speaker's scorn, "I thought plenty of women had done so. More than that, thousands have renounced marriage with men whom they loved and taken the veil, for Heaven's sake."
"Very true," was the reply, "a woman may renounce marriage and become a nun as a religious duty. But the same motive would never have persuaded that woman to marry against her inclinations. There is all the difference in the world between the two. Any woman will tell you that."
"Then you mean to say," I persisted, "that you and your friends consider that you are voluntary agents when you go into plurality? that you do so entirely of your own accord and of your own free choice?"
"Certainly I do," was the reply. "You may not believe us, of course, but that I cannot help. All I can say to you is, that if I had the last seven years of my life to live over again, I should do exactly what I did seven years ago."
"And what was that?" I asked.
"Refuse to marry a Gentile, to please my friends, and marry a polygamist to please myself. I had two offers from unmarried men, either of which my family were very anxious I should accept. But I did not care for either. But when my husband, who had already two wives, proposed to me, I accepted him, in spite of my friends' protests. And I would marry him again if the choice came over again."
"Then yours must surely be exceptional cases, for I cannot bring myself to believe that those who have been 'first' wives would ever consent to their husband's re-marriage, if their past could be recalled."
"But I was his first wife," said the elder lady, "and my husband's second wife was his first love. And if my past were recalled as you put it, I would give my consent just as willingly as I did twelve years ago." "Perhaps," said she, laughing, "you will call mine an 'exceptional' case too. But if you go through the Mormons individually, I am afraid you will find that the 'exceptional' cases are very large."
"And how about the minority?" I asked, "the wives whose hearts have been broken by plurality?"
"Well," was the reply, "there are plenty of unhappy wives. But this is surely not peculiar to polygamy, is it? There are plenty of women who find they have made a mistake. But is it not the same in monogamy? And yet, though our poor women can get divorces with no trouble, and at an expense of only ten dollars, and are certain of a competence after divorce, and of re-marriage if they choose, they do not do it. There is no greater disgrace attaching to divorce here than in Europe. Indeed allowances are made for the special trials of plurality, and mere unhappiness is in itself quite sufficient for a woman to get a divorce. Yet divorce is very rare indeed, not one-tenth as common as in Massachusetts, for instance."
"There are bad men amongst us just as there are everywhere," continued the other lady, "and a bad Mormon is the worst man there can be. But we are not the only people that have bad husbands among them."
And so it went on. I was met at every point by assurances as sincere as tone of voice and language could make them appear. Eventually I scrambled out of the subject as best I could, covering my retreat with the remark,—
"Well, my only justification in saying that I do not believe you, is this, that if I said I did, no one would believe me."
Of this much, however, I am convinced, that whatever may have been true thirty years ago—and there has not been a single trustworthy book written about Mormonism since 1862—it is not true to-day that the Church interferes with the domestic relations of the people. When there is a divorce the Church takes care that the man does not turn his wife adrift without provision. But as far as I have been able to learn, the authorities do not meddle in any other way between man and woman, so long, of course, as neither is a scandal to the community. When a scandal arises the Church takes prompt notice of it, and the offender, if incorrigible, is next heard of as "apostatizing," or, in other words, being turned out of Mormonism as unfit to live in it. But once married into polygamy, religion is all-powerful in reconciling women to the sacrifices they have to make, precisely, I suppose, in the same way that religion reconciles the nun to the sacrifices which her Church accepts from her.
Practical Plurality, then, is a very dull affair. I was disappointed in it. I had expected to see men with long whips, sitting on fences, swearing at their gangs of wives at work in the fields. I expected every now and then to hear of drunken saints beating seven or eight wives all at once, and perhaps even to have seen the unusual spectacle of a house full of women and children rushing screaming into the street with one intoxicated husband and father in pursuit. Everywhere else in the world wife-beating is a pastime more or less indulged in coram publico. In London, at any rate, men so arrange their chastisements that you can hear the screams from the street and see the wife run out of the front door on to the pavement. In Salt Lake City therefore, it seemed only reasonable to suppose that the amount of the screaming would be in proportion to the number of the wives, and that eventually ill-used families would be seen pouring simultaneously out of several doors, and scattering over the premises with hideous ululation. Where are the aged apostles who have so often been described as going about in their swallow-tail coats courting each other's daughters? Where are the "girl-hunting elders" and "ogling bishops"? Where are the families of one man and ten wives to be found taking the air together that pictures have so often shown us? Of course there are anomalies, and very objectionable they are. Thus one young man has married his half-aunt, another his half-sister, and three sisters have wedded the same man; but these instances are all "historical," so to speak, and have been so often trotted out by anti-Mormon book-makers, that they are hardly worth repeating. Nor does it appear to me to be of any force to begin raking to-day into the old suspicions as to what Mormons dead and gone used to do.
What is polygamy like to-day? That is the question. Polygamy to-day, then, has settled down into the most matter-of-fact system that is possible for such exceptional domestic arrangements. In the first place, it is not compulsory, and some of the leading saints are monogamous. About one-fourth of married Mormons are polygamous, and of these something less than three per cent are under forty years of age. The bill of 1862 making polygamy penal effected little or no difference in the annual average of plural marriages, but since 1877 there has been a very sensible decrease.
These facts, then, seem to prove first that polygamy, though accepted as a doctrine of the Church, is not generally acted upon—and why? For the best of reasons. Either that the men cannot afford to keep up more than one establishment, or that they are too happy with one wife to care to marry a second, or that the first wife refuses to allow any increase of the household—all of which reasons show that polygamy is controlled by prudential and domestic considerations, and is not the indiscriminate "debauchery" that so many of the public believe it to be. It is also evident that the younger Mormons are not so active in marrying as the elder men were at their age, for ten years ago the proportion of polygamous Mormons under forty years of age was much greater, which may mean that the inaction of Congress was gradually working towards the end which the action of '62 thwarted. By legislating against polygamy, plural marriages increased—1863 to 1866 being as busy years in the Endowment House as any that ever preceded them—while by letting polygamy severely alone they have been decreasing.
Polygamy in fact, by the relaxation of the regime, now that Brigham Young's personal government has ceased, has taken its place as an ordinary civil institution, entailing serious responsibilities upon those who choose to enter into it, and not carrying with it such promises of temporal advantage as at one time were reserved for the plurally wedded. There is not the same enthusiasm about it that there was, owing probably to the diffusion among the people of a better sense of the position of women and of the opinions of the world with regard to polygamy. Under the administration of President Taylor there has been a marked disinclination in the Church to interfere with the domestic relations of the community, except, as I have said before, when reprimand or punishment seemed to be called for; and it is reasonable therefore to argue that the material decline in the number of plural marriages between 1878 and 1882 would have continued, the proportion of young enthusiasts have gone on decreasing and, as the elders died out, the total of polygamists become annually less. Such, I would contend, is the reasonable inference from the facts I have given.
Polygamy, as a problem, reminds me of a hedgehog. But as the hedgehog may not be familiar to my American readers, let me explain. The hedgehog, then, is a small animal with a very elastic skin, closely set all over with strong sharp spines. A rural life is all its joy. In habits and character it assimilates somewhat to the Mormon peasant, being inoffensive, useful, industrious, prolific, and largely frugivorous. But when hunted it is otherwise. For the hedgehog, if closely pursued, takes hold of its ears with its hind paws and, tucking its nose into the middle of its stomach, rolls itself into a perfect ball. The spines then stand out straight and in every direction equally. Nor, thus defended, does the hedgehog shun the public eye. On the contrary, it lies out in the full sunlight, in the middle of the sidewalk or the dusty high-road, a challenge to the inquisitive attention of every passing dog. And you can no more keep a dog from going out of its way to reconnoitre the queer-looking object than you can keep needles away from loadstones. They do not all behave in the same way to it, though. The mutton-headed dogs sit down by it and contemplate it vacantly, and go away after a bit in a kind of brown study. The silly ones smell it too close, and go off down the road in a streak of dust and yelp. The experienced dogs sniff at it and trot on. "Only that hedgehog again!" they say. The malicious prick their noses and lose their temper, and then prick their noses worse and lose their tempers more. The puppy barks at it remotely, receding every time by the recoil of its own bark, till it barks itself backwards into the opposite ditch. But the hedgehog lies perfectly still, as round and as spiny as ever, in the middle of the high-road. All the dogs are much the same to it. Some roll it a little one way, and some roll it a little the other. It gets dusty or it gets wet. But there it lies as inscrutable, puzzling, and odious to passing dogs as ever. By-and-by when it is dark, and everybody has got tired of poking it and sniffing it and wondering at it, the hedgehog will quietly unroll itself and creep away to some secluded spot betwixt orchard and corn-field, and remote from the highways of men and their dogs.
I am particularly led to this moralizing because a Mormon has just been enumerating, at my request, some of the more extraordinary anomalies that he knows of in recent polygamy. I took notes of a few, and they seem to me sufficiently puzzling to justify a place in these pages.
A young and very pretty girl, in "the upper ten" of Mormonism, married a young man of her own class, but stipulated before marriage that he should marry a second wife as soon as he could afford to do so.
A young couple were engaged, but quarrelled, and the lover out of pique married another lady. Two years later his first love, having refused other offers in the mean time, married him as his second wife.
A man having married a second wife to please himself, married a third to please his first. "She was getting old, she said, and wanted a younger woman to help her about the house."
A couple about to be married made an agreement between themselves that the husband should not marry again unless it was one of the relatives of the first wife. The ladies selected have refused, and the husband remains true to his promise.
The belle of the settlement, a Gentile, refused monogamist offers of marriage, and married a Mormon who had two wives already.
A girl, distracted between her love for her suitor and her love for her mother, compromised in her affections by stipulating that he should marry both her mother and herself, which he did.
A girl, a Gentile, bitterly opposed at first to polygamy, married a polygamist at the solicitation of his first wife, her great friend.
Two girls were great friends, and one of them, getting engaged to a man (by no means of prepossessing appearance), persuaded her friend to get engaged to him too, and he married them both on the same day.
These are enough. Moreover, they are not isolated cases, and I believe I am right in saying that I can give a second instance, of recent date, of nearly all of them. Nor are these anonymous fictions like the "victims" of anti-Mormon writers. I have names for each of them. One of them tells me she could name "scores" of the same kind.
It appears to me, therefore, that the women of Utah have shaken somewhat the modern theories of the conjugal relation, and—with all one's innate aversion to a system which is capable of such odious abnormalisms—a most interesting and baffling problem for study. It is, as I said, a regular hedgehog of a problem. If you could only catch hold of it by the nose or the tail, you could scrunch it up easily. But it has spines all over. It is at once provocative and unapproachable.
I remember once in India giving a tame monkey a lump of sugar inside a corked bottle. The monkey was of an inquiring kind, and it nearly killed it. Sometimes, in an impulse of disgust, it would throw the bottle away, out of its own reach, and then be distracted till it was given back to it. At others it would sit with a countenance of the most intense dejection, contemplating the bottled sugar, and then, as if pulling itself together for another effort at solution, would sternly take up the problem afresh, and gaze into it. It would tilt it up one way and try to drink the sugar through the cork, and then, suddenly reversing it, try to catch it as it fell out at the bottom. Under the impression that it could capture it by a surprise it kept rapping its teeth against the glass in futile bites, and, warming to the pursuit of the revolving lump, used to tie itself into regular knots round the bottle. Fits of the most ludicrous melancholy would alternate with these spasms of furious speculation, and how the matter would have ended it is impossible to say. But the monkey one night got loose and took the bottle with it. And it has always been a delight to me to think that whole forestfuls of monkeys have by this time puzzled themselves into fits over the great Problem of Bottled Sugar. What profound theories those long-tailed philosophers must have evolved! What polemical acrimony that bottle must have provoked! And what a Confucius the original monkey must have become! A single morning with such a Sanhedrim discussing such a matter would surely have satiated even a Swift with satire.
Taking then polygamy to be the bottle, and the Gentile to be the monkey, it appears to me that the only alternatives in solution are these: Either smash the whole thing up altogether, or else fall back upon that easy-going old doctrine of wise men, that "morality" is after all a matter of mere geography.
An Oriental legend shows us Allah sitting in casual conversation with a man. A cockroach comes along, and Allah stamps on it. "What did you do that for?" asks the human, looking at the ruined insect. "Because I am God Almighty," was the reply.
Now, polygamy can be smashed flat if the States choose to show their power to do so. But no man who takes a part in that demolition must suppose that in so doing he will be accepted by the community as rescuing them from degradation. If left alone, polygamy will die out. Mormons deny this, but I feel sure that they know they are wrong when they deny it, for nothing but a perpetual miracle of loaves and fishes will make polygamy and families of forty possible when population and food-supply come to talk the position over seriously between them. The expense of plurality will before long prohibit plurality.
"The fashionable milliner" is the most formidable adversary that the system has yet encountered. A twenty-dollar bonnet is a staggering argument against it. When women were contented with sunshades, and made them for themselves, the husband of many wives could afford to be lavish, and to indulge his household in a diversity of headgear. But that old serpent, the fashionable milliner, has got over the garden wall, and Lilith[1]and Eve are no longer content with primitive garments of home manufacture.
No. Polygamy will before long be impossible, except to the rich; and in an agricultural community, restricted in area, and further restricted by the scarcity of water, there can never be many rich men. As it is, the cost of plurality was on several occasions referred to by Mormons whom I met during my tour, and I know one man who has for three years postponed his second marriage, as he does not consider that his means justify it; while I fancy it will not be disputed by any one who has inquired into polygamy that, as a general rule, prudential considerations control the system. Polygamy, then, I sincerely believe, carries its own antidote with it, and if left alone will rapidly cure itself. In the mean time the community that practises it does not consider itself "degraded," and those who take part in smashing it up must not think it does.
The Mormons are a peasant people, with many of the faults of peasant life, but with many of the best human virtues as well. They are conspicuously industrious, honest, and sober.
There is, of course, nothing whatever in common between Oriental polygamy and Mormon plurality. The main object, and the main result of the two systems are so widely diverse, that it is hardly necessary even to refer to the hundred other points of difference which make comparison between the two utterly absurd.
Yet the comparison is often made in order to prove the Mormons "degraded," and it is a great pity that such superficial and stupid arguments should be far more effective ones are at hand. Polygamy, though difficult to handle, is very vulnerable. The hedgehog, after all, will have to unroll some time or another. But to assault polygamy because the Mormons are "Turks" or "debauched Mahometans," or the other things which silly people call them, is monstrous.
The women have complicated the problem by multiplying instances of eccentric "affection." But with it all they persist in believing that they have retained a most exalted estimate of womanly honour. The men, again, have inextricably entangled all recognized ideas of matrimonial responsibilities. Yet they have not lost any of the manliness which characterizes the pioneers of the West.
Their social anomalies are deplorable, but they are not desperate. Education and the influx of outsiders must infallibly do their work, and any attempt to rob these men and women of the fruits of their astonishing industry and of the peaceful enjoyment of the soil which they have conquered for the United States from the most warlike tribes among the Indians, and from the most malignant type of desert, is not only not statesmanship, but it is not humanity.
Are the women of Utah happy? No; not in the monogamous acceptation of the word "happy." In polygamy the highest happiness of woman is contentment. But on the other hand her greatest unhappiness is only discontent. She has not the opportunity on the one hand of rising to the raptures of perfect love. On the other, she is spared the bitter, killing anguish of "jealousy" and of infidelity.
But contentment is not happiness. It is its negative, and often has its source in mere resignation to sorrow. It is the lame sister of happiness, the deaf-mute in the family of joy. It lives neither in the background nor foreground of enjoyment, but always in the middle distance. Tender in all things, it never becomes real happiness by concentration; having to fill no deep heart-pools, it trickles over vast surfaces. It goes through life smiling but seldom laughing. Now, in many philosophies we are taught that this same contentment is the perfect form of happiness. But humanity is always at war with philosophy. And I for one will never believe that perpetual placidity is the highest experience of natures which are capable of suffering the raptures of joy and of grief. I had rather live humanly, travelling alternately over sunlit hills and gloomy valleys, than exist philosophically on the level prairies of monotonous contentment. Holding, then, the opinion that it is a nobler life to have sounded the deeps and measured the heights of human emotions than to have floated in shallows continually, I contend that polygamy is wrong in itself and a cardinal crime against the possibilities of a woman's heart. A plural wife can never know the utmost happiness possible for a woman. They confess this. And by this confession the practice stands damned.
Physically, Mormon plurality appears to me to promise much of the success which Plato dreamed of, and Utah about the best nursery for his soldiers that he could have found. Look at the urchins that go clattering about the roads, perched two together on the bare backs of horses, and only a bit of rope by way of bridle. Look at the rosy, demure little girls that will be their wives some day. Take note of their fathers' daily lives, healthy outdoor work. Go into their homes and see the mothers at their work. For in Utah servants get sometimes as much as six dollars a week (and their board and lodging as well of course), and most households therefore go without this expensive luxury. And then as you walk home through one of their rural towns along the tree-shaded streets, with water purling along beside you as you walk, and the clear breeze from the hills blowing the perfume of flowers across your path in gusts, with the cottage homes, half smothered in blossoming fruit-trees, on either hand, and a perpetual succession gardens,—then I say, come back and sit down, if you can, to call this people "licentious," "impure," "degraded."
The Mormons themselves refuse to believe that polygamy is the real objection against them, and it will be found impossible to convince them that the Edmunds bill is really what it purports to be, a crusade against their domestic arrangements only. There are some among them who thoroughly understand the "political" aspect of the case, and are aware that "the reorganization of Utah" would give very enviable pickings to the friends of the Commission. Others, have made up their minds that behind this generous anti-polygamy sentiment is mean sectarian envy, and that this is only one more of those amiable efforts of narrow Christians to crush a detested and flourishing sect.
Jealousy, in fact, is the Mormons' explanation of the Edmunds bill. The Gentiles, they say, are hankering after the good things of Utah, and hope by one cry after another to persecute the Mormons out of them. But it is far more curious that the jealousy of their own sex should be suggested by Mormon women as the cause of their participation in the clamour against polygamy. Yet so it is; the Gentile women are, they say, "jealous" of a community where every woman has a husband! It is a perplexing suggestion, and so thoroughly reverses all rational course of argument, that I wish it had never been seriously put forward. Imagine the ladies of the Eastern States who have made themselves conspicuous in this campaign, who have fought and bled to rescue their poor sisters from slavery, to free them from the grasp of Mormon Bluebeards—imagine, I say, these ladies being told by the sisters for whom they are fighting, that they ought to be ashamed of themselves for being envious of the women in polygamy! Instead of being thanked for helping to strike the fetters of plurality off their suffering sisters, they are met with the retort that they ought to try being wives and mothers themselves before they come worrying those who have tried it and are content! They are requested not to meddle with "what they don't understand," and are threatened with a counter-crusade against the polyandry of Washington, New York, and other cities! But even more staggering is the fact that Mormon women base their indignation against their persecuting saviours on woman's rights, the very ground upon which those saviours have based their crusade! The advocates of woman's rights are a very strong party in Utah; and their publications use the very same arguments that strong-minded women have made so terrible to newspaper editors in Europe, and members of Parliament. Thus the Woman's Exponent—with "The Rights of the Women of All Nations" for its motto—publishes continually signed letters in which plural wives affirm their contentment with their lot, and in one of its issues is a leading article, headed "True Charity," and signed Mary Ellen Kimball, in which the women of Mormondom are reminded that they ought to pray for poor benighted Mr. Edmunds and all who think like him! Then follows a letter from a Gentile, addressed to "the truthful pure-hearted, intelligent, Christian women" of Utah, and after this an article, "Hints on Marriage," signed "Lillie Freeze." But for a sentence or two it might be an article by a Gentile in a Gentile "lady's paper," for it speaks of "courtship" and "lovers," and has the quotation, "two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one," and all the other orthodox pretty things about true love and married bliss. Yet the writer is speaking of polygamy! In the middle of this article written "for love's sweet sake," and as womanly and pure as ever words written by woman, comes this paragraph:—
"In proportion as the power of evil increases, a disregard for the sacred institution of marriage also increases among the youth, and contempt for the marriage obligation increases among the married until this most sacred relationship will be overwhelmed by disunion and strife, and only among the despised Latter-Day Saints will the true foundation of social happiness and prosperity be found upon the earth; but in order to realize this state we must be guided by principles more perfect than those which have wrought such dissolution. God has revealed a plan for establishing a new order of society which will elevate and benefit all mankind who embrace it. The nations that fight against it are working out their own destruction, for their house is built upon the sand, and one of the corner-stones in the doomed structure is already loosened through their disregard and dishonour of the institution of marriage."
Now what is to be done with women who not only declare they are happy in polygamy, but persist in trying to improve their monogamous sisters? How is the missionary going to begin, for instance, with Lillie Freeze?
If the Commission deals leniently with them, they will offer only a passive resistance to the law. But if there is any appearance of outrage, General Sherman may have some work to do, and it will be work more worthy of disciplined troops than mere Indian fighting. There would be abundance of that too, but the Mormons are themselves sufficient to test the calibre of any troops in the world. For they are orderly, solid in their adherence to the Church, and trained during their youth and early manhood to a rough, mountain-frontier life. They are in fact very superior "Boers," and Utah is a very superior Transvaal, strategically. Mormonism is not the wind-and-rain inflated pumpkin the world at a distance believes; it is good firm pumpkin to the very core. Nor are the Indians a picturesque fiction. They are an ugly reality, and under proper guidance a very formidable one. In the mean time there is no talk of war, and the Sword of Laban is lying quietly in its sheath. For one thing, the commission has given no "cause" for war; for another, the present hierarchy of the Church are men of peace.
Such, then, as I view it, is the position in Utah at the present time. Mormonism has taken up, in the phrase of diplomatic history, "an attitude of observation," and the future is "in the hands of the Lord God of Israel."
1. By the way, it is curious that it should be charged against the Mormons that they have made Adam a polygamist. It is not a Mormon invention at all. For, as is well known, legends far older than Moses' writings declare that Eve married into plurality, and that Lilith was the "first wife" of our great progenitor.
SUA SI BONA NORINT.
A Special Correspondent's lot—Hypothecated wits—The Daughters of Zion—Their modest demeanour—Under the banner of Woman's Rights—The discoverer discovered—Turning the tables—"By Jove, sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak!"
IT has been my good fortune to see many countries, and my ill-luck to have had to maintain, during all my travels, an appearance of intelligence. Though I have been over much of Europe, over all of India and its adjoining countries, Afghanistan, Beloochistan, Burmah, and Ceylon, in the north and west and south of Africa, and in various out-of-the-way islands in miscellaneous oceans, I have never visited one of them purely "for pleasure." I have always been "representing" other people. My eyes and ears have been hypothecated, so to speak—my intelligence been in pledge. When I was sent out to watch wars, there was a tacit agreement that I should be shot at, so that I might let other people know what it felt like. When run away with by a camel in a desert that had no "other end" to it, I accepted my position simply as material for a letter for which my employers had duly paid. They tried to drown me in a mill-stream; that was a good half-column. Two Afridis sat down by me when I had sprained my knee by my horse falling, and waited for me to faint that they might cut my throat. But they overdid it, for they looked so like vultures that I couldn't faint. But it made several very harrowing paragraphs. I have been sent to sea to get into cyclones in the Bay of Biscay, and hurricanes in the Mozambique Channel, that I might describe lucidly the sea-going properties of the vessels under test. I have been sent to a King to ask him for information that it was known beforehand he would not give, and commissioned to follow Irish agitators all over Ireland, in the hope that I might be able to say more about them than they knew themselves. It has been my duty to walk about inquisitively after Zulus, and to run away judiciously with Zulus after me. Sometimes I have taken long shots at Afghans, and sometimes they have taken short ones at me. In short, I have been deputed at one time and another to do many things which I should never have done "for pleasure," and many which, for pleasure, I should like to do again. But wherever I have been sent I have had to go about, seeing as much as I could and asking about all I couldn't see, and have become, professionally, accustomed to collecting evidence, sifting it on the spot, and forming my own conclusions. In a way, therefore, a Special Correspondent becomes of necessity an expert at getting at facts. He finds that everything he is commissioned to investigate has at least two sides to it, and that many things have two right sides. There are plenty of people always willing to mislead him, and he has to pick and choose. He arrives unprejudiced, and speaks according to the knowledge he acquires. Sometimes he is brought up to the hill with a definite commission to curse, but like Balaam, the son of Barak, he begins blessing; or he is sent out to bless, and falls to cursing. Until he arrives on the spot it is impossible for him to say which he will do. But, whatever he does, the Special Correspondent writes with the responsibility of a large public. It is impossible to write flippantly with all the world for critics.
Now, the demeanour of women in Utah, as compared with say Brighton or Washington, is modesty itself, and the children are just such healthy, pretty, vigorous children as one sees in the country, or by the seaside in England—and, in my opinion, nowhere else. Utah-born girls, the offspring of plural wives, have figures that would make Paris envious, and they carry themselves with almost Oriental dignity. But remember, Salt Lake City is a city of rustics. They do not affect "gentility," and are careful to explain at every opportunity that the stranger must not be shocked at their homely ways and speech. There is an easiness of manner therefore which is unconventional, but it is only a blockhead who could mistake this natural gaiety of the country for anything other than it is. There is nothing, then, 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 there is a great deal on the contrary to convince me of a perfectly exceptional reserve and self-respect. I know, too, from medical assurance, that Utah has also the practical argument of healthy nurseries to oppose to the theories of those who attack its domestic relations on physiological grounds.
But the "Woman's Rights" aspect of polygamy is one that has never been theorized at all. It deserves, however, special consideration by those who think that they are "elevating" Mormon women by trying to suppress polygamy. It possesses also a general interest for all. For the plural wives of Salt Lake City are not by any means "waiting for salvation" at the hands of the men and women of the East. Unconscious of having fetters on, they evince no enthusiasm for their noisy deliverers.
On the contrary, they consider their interference as a slur upon their own intelligence, and an encroachment upon those very rights about which monogamist females are making so much clamour. They look upon themselves as the leaders in the movement for the emancipation of their sex, and how, then, can they be expected to accept emancipation at the hands of those whom they are trying to elevate? Thinking themselves in the van of freedom, are they to be grateful for the guidance of stragglers in the rear? They laugh at such sympathy, just as the brave man might laugh at encouragement from a coward, or wealthy landowners at a pauper's exposition of the responsibilities of property. Can the deaf, they ask, tell musicians anything of the beauty of sounds, or need the artist care for the blind man's theory of colour?
Indeed, it has been in contemplation to evangelize the Eastern States, on this very subject of Woman's Rights! To send out from Utah exponents of the proper place of woman in society, and to teach the women of monogamy their duties to themselves and to each other! "Woman's true status"—I am quoting from their organ—"is that of true status companion to man, but so protected by law that she can act in an independent sphere if he abuse his position, and render union unendurable." They not only, therefore, claim all that women elsewhere claim, but they consider marriage the universal birthright of every female. First of all, they say, be married, and then in case of accidents have all other "rights" as well. But to start with, every woman must have a husband. She is hardly worth calling a woman if she is single. Other privileges ought to be hers lest marriage should prove disastrous. But in the first instance she should claim her right to be a wife. And everybody else should insist on that claim being recognized. The rest is very important to fall back upon, but union with man is her first step towards her proper sphere.
Now, could any position be imagined more ludicrous for the would-be saviours of Utah womanhood than this, that the slaves whom they talk of rescuing from their degradation should be striving to bring others up to their own standard? When Stanley was in Central Africa, he was often amused and sometimes not a little disgusted to find that instead of his discovering the Central Africans, the Central Africans insisted on "discovering" him. Though he went into villages in order to take notes of the savages, and to look at their belongings, the savages used to turn the tables on him by discussing him, and taking his clothes off to examine the curious colour, as they thought it, of his skin. So that what with shaking off his explorers, and hunting up the various articles they had abstracted for their unscientific scrutiny, his time used to be thoroughly wasted, and he used to come away crestfallen, and with the humiliating consciousness that it was the savages and not he that had gained information and been "improved" by his visit. They had "discovered" Stanley, not Stanley them. Something very like this will be the fate of those who come to Utah thinking that they will be received as shining lights from a better world. They will not find the women of Utah waiting with outstretched arms to grasp the hand that saves them. There will be no stampede of down-trodden females. On the contrary, the clarion of woman's rights will be sounded, and the intruding "champions" of that cause will find themselves attacked with their own weapons, and hoisted with their own petards. 'With the sceptre of woman's rights the daughters of Zion will go down as apostles to evangelize the nation. 'Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?' The Daughter of Zion!"
Mormon wives, then, are emphatically "woman's-rights women," a title which is everywhere recognized as indicating independence of character and an elevated sense of the claims of the sex, and as inferring exceptional freedom in action. And I venture to hold the opinion that it is only women who are conscious of freedom that can institute such movements as this in Utah, and only those who are enthusiastic in the cause, that can carry them on with the courage and industry so conspicuous in this community.
A Governor once went there specially instructed to release the women of Utah from their bondage, but he found none willing to be released! The franchise was then clamoured for in order to let the women of Utah "fight their oppressors at the polls," and the Mormon "tyrants" took the hint to give their wives votes, and the first use these misguided victims of plurality made of their new possession was to protest, 20,000 victims together, against the calumnies heaped upon the men of Utah "whom they honoured and loved." To-day it is an act of Congress that is to set free these worse-than-Indian-suttee-devotees, and whether they like it or not they are to be compelled to leave their husbands or take the alternative of sending their husbands to jail.
It reminds me of the story, "Sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak." A man sitting in a restaurant saw his neighbour eating his steak without mustard, and pushed the pot across to him. The stranger bowed his acknowledgment of the courtesy and went on eating, but without any mustard. But the other man's sense of propriety was outraged. "Beefsteak without mustard—monstrous," said he to himself; and again he pushed the condiment towards the stranger. "Thank you, sir," said the stranger, but without taking any, continued his meal as he preferred it, without mustard. But his well-wisher could not stand it any longer. He waited for a minute to see if the man would eat his beef in the orthodox manner, and then, his sense of the fitness of things overpowering him, he seized the mustard-pot and dabbing down a great splash of mustard on to the stranger's plate, burst out with, "By Jove, sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak!"
In the same way the monogamist reformers, having twice failed to persuade the wives of Utah to abandon their husbands by giving them facilities for doing so, are now going to take their husbands from them by the force of the law. "Sua si bona norint" is the excuse of the reformers to themselves for their philanthropy, and, like the old Inquisitors who burnt their victims to save them from heresy, they are going to make women wretched in order to make them happy. Says the Woman's Exponent: "If the women of Utah are slaves, their bonds are loving ones and dearly prized. They are to-day in the free and unrestricted exercise of more political and social rights than are the women of any other part of these United States. But they do not choose as a body to court the follies and vices which adorn the civilization of other cities, nor to barter principles of tried worth for the tinsel of sentimentality or the gratification of passion."
It is of no use for "Mormon-eaters" to say that this is written "under direction," and that the women who write in this way are prompted by authority. Nor would they say it if they knew personally the women who write thus.
Moreover, Mormon-eaters are perpetually denouncing the "scandalous freedom" and "independence" extended to Mormon women and girls. And the two charges of excessive freedom and abject slavery seem to me totally incompatible.
I myself as a traveller can vouch for this: that one of my first impressions of Salt Lake City was this, that there was a thoroughly unconventional absence of restraint; just such freedom as one is familiar with in country neighbourhoods, where "every one knows every one else," and where the formalities of town etiquette are by general consent laid aside. And this also I can sincerely say: that I never ceased to be struck by the modest decorum of the women I meet out of doors. After all, self-respect is the true basis of woman's rights.
This aspect of the polygamy problem deserves, then, I think, considerable attention. An Act has been passed to compel some 20,000 women to leave their husbands, and the world looks upon these women as slaves about to be freed from tyrants. Yet they have said and done all that could possibly be expected of them, and even more than could have been expected, to assure the world that they have neither need nor desire for emancipation, as they honour their husbands, and prefer polygamy, with all its conditions, to the monogamy which brings with it infidelity at home and prostitution abroad. Again and again they have protested, in petitions to individuals and petitions to Congress, that "their bonds are loving ones and dearly prized." But the enthusiasm of reformers takes no heed of their protests. They are constantly declaring in public speeches and by public votes, in books and in newspapers—above all, in their daily conduct—that they consider themselves free and happy women, but the zeal of philanthropy will not be gainsaid, and so the women of Utah are, all else failing, to be saved from themselves. The "foul blot" of a servitude which the serfs aver does not exist is to be wiped out by declaring 20,000 wives mistresses, their households illegal, and their future children bastards!
"By Jove, sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak!"
COULD THE MORMONS FIGHT?
An unfulfilled prophecy—Had Brigham Young been still alive?—The hierarchy of Mormonism—The fighting Apostle and his colleagues—Plurality a revelation—Rajpoot infanticide: how it was stamped out—Would the Mormons submit to the same process?—Their fighting capabilities—Boer and Mormon: an analogy between the Drakensberg and the Wasatch ranges—The Puritan fanaticism of the Saints—Awaiting the fulness of time and of prophecy.
"I SAY, as the Lord lives, we are bound to become a sovereign State in the Union or an independent nation by ourselves. I am still, and still will be Governor of this Territory, to the constant chagrin of my enemies, and twenty-six years shall not pass away before the Elders of this Church will be as much thought of as kings on their thrones." These were the words of Brigham Young on the last day of August, 1856. And the Bill was passed in 1882.
Had Brigham Young been alive then, that prophecy would assuredly have been fulfilled, for the coincidence of recent legislation with the date he fixed, would have sufficed to convince him that the opportunity for a display of the temporal power of his Church which he had foretold, had arrived. Once before with similar exactness Brigham Young fixed a momentous date.
He was standing in 1847 upon the site of the Temple, when suddenly, as if under a momentary impulse, he turned to those who were with him and said, "And now, if they will only let us alone for ten years, we will not ask them for any odds."
Exactly ten years later, to the very day, and almost to the very hour of the day, the news came of the despatch of a Federal army against Salt Lake City. Brigham Young called his people together—and what a nation they were compared to the fugitive crowd that had stood round him in 1847!—and simply reminding them of his words uttered ten years before, waited for their response. And as if they had only one voice among them all, the vast assemblage shouted, "No odds."
And then and there he sent them into Echo canyon—and the Federal army knows the rest.
Had he been alive to-day, that scene would probably have been repeated.
But Brigham Young is not alive. And his mantle has not fallen upon any of the Elders of the Church. They are men of caution, and the policy of Mormonism to-day is to temporize and to wait. All the States are "United" in earnest against them. Brigham Young always taught the people to reverence prophecy, but he taught them also to help to fulfil it. But nowadays Mormons are told to stand by and see how the Lord will work for them. And thus waiting, the Gentiles are gradually creeping up to them. Every year sees new influences at work to destroy the isolation of the Church, but the leaders originate no counteracting influences. Their defences are being sapped, but no counter-mines are run. As Gentile vigour grows aggressive, Mormonism seems to be contracting its frontiers. There is no Buonaparte mind to compel obedience. Mahomet is dead, and Ali, "the Lion of Allah," is dead, and the Caliphate is now in commission.
President Taylor is a self-reliant and courageous man, but for a ruler he listens too much to counsel. Though not afraid of responsibility, it does not sit upon him as one born to the ermine. Brigham Young was a natural king. President Taylor only suffices for an interregnum. Yet now, if ever, Mormonism needs a master-spirit. Nothing demoralizes like inaction. Men begin to look at things "from both sides," to compromise with convictions, to discredit enthusiasm. This is just what they are doing now. At one of the most eventful points of their history, they find the voices of the Tabernacle giving forth uncertain sounds. Their Urim and Thummim is dim; the Shekinah is flickering; their oracles stutter. They are told to obey the laws and yet to live their religion. In other words, to eat their cake and have it; to let go and hold tight—anything that is contradictory, irreconcilable, and impossible.
Meanwhile, wealth and interests in outside schemes have raised up in the Church a body of men of considerable temporal influence, who it is generally supposed "outside" are half-hearted. The Gentiles lay great stress on this. But no one should be deceived as to the real importance of this "half-heartedness." In the first place, a single word from President Taylor would extinguish the influence of these men politically and religously, at once and for ever. A single speech in the Tabernacle would reduce them to mere ciphers in Mormonism, and the Church would really, therefore, lose nothing more by their defection than the men themselves. But as a matter of fact they are not half-hearted. I know the men whom the outside world refers to personally, and I am certain therefore of my ground when I say that Mormonism will find them, in any hour of need, ready to throw all their temporal influence on to the side of the Church. The people need not be apprehensive, for there is no treason in their camp. There may be "Trimmers," but was there ever a movement that had no Trimmers?
The hierarchy in Utah stands as follows:—
President—John Taylor. Counsellors to the President—Joseph F. Smith, G. Q. Cannon. Apostles—Wilford Woodruff, Franklin Richards, C. C. Rich, Brigham Young, Moses Thatcher, M. Lyman, J. H. Smith, A. Carrington, Erastus Snow, Lorenzo Snow, S. P. Teasdel, and J. Grant. Counsellors to the Apostles—John W. Young, D. H. Wells.
Now in the present critical situation of affairs the personnel of this governing body is of some interest. President Taylor I have already spoken of. He is considered by all as a good head during an uneventful period, and that he is doing sound, practical work in a general administrative way is beyond doubt. But it is his misfortune to come immediately after Brigham Young. It is not often in history that an Aurungzebe follows an Akbar. But his counsellors, Apostles Cannon and Joseph Smith, are emphatically strong men. The former is a staunch Mormon, and a man of the world as well—perhaps the only Mormon who is—while the latter is "the fighting Apostle," a man of both brains and courage. Had he been ten years older he would probably have been President now. Of the remainder the men of conspicuous mark are Moses Thatcher, an admirable speaker and an able man, Merion Lyman, a very sound thinker and spirited in counsel, and D. H. Wells—perhaps the "strongest" unit in the whole hierarchy. He has made as much history as any man in the Church, and as one of its best soldiers and one of its shrewdest heads might have been expected to hold a higher rank than he does. He was one of the Counsellors of Brigham Young, but on the reconstruction of the governing body, accepted the position of Counsellor to the Twelve. These five men, should the contingency for any decisive policy arise, will certainly lead the Mormon Church.
I was speaking one day to a Mormon, a husband of several wives, and was candidly explaining my aversion to that co-operative system of matrimony which the world calls "polygamy," but which the Saints prefer should be called "plurality." When I had finished, much to my own satisfaction (for I thought I had proved polygamy wrong), my companion knocked all my arguments, premises and conclusion together, into a cocked hat, by saying,—
"You are unprejudiced—I grant that; and you take higher ground for your condemnation of us than most do. But," said he, "you have never referred to the fact that we Mormons believe plurality to be a revelation from God. But we do believe it, and until that belief is overthrown angels from Heaven cannot convince us. You spoke of the power and authority of the United States. But what is that to the power and authority of God? The United States cannot do more than exterminate us for not abandoning plurality. But God can, and will, damn us to all eternity if we do abandon it."
Now what argument but force can avail against such an attitude as this? The better the Mormon, the harder he freezes to his religion—and part of his religion is polygamy—so important a part, indeed, that the whole future of the Saints is based upon it. The "Kingdom of God" is arranged with reference to it. The hopes of Mormons of glory and happiness in eternity depend upon it, and in this life men and women are perpetually exhorted to live up to it. It is pure nonsense therefore—so at least it seems to me—to request the Mormons to give up plurality, and keep the rest. You might just as well cut off all a man's limbs, and then tell him to get along "like a good and loyal citizen," with only a stomach.
Force of course will avail, in the end, just as it did in India when the Government determined to stamp out female infanticide among the Rajpoots. There, the procedure was from necessity inquisitorial (for the natives of the proscribed districts combined to prevent detection), but it was eventually effectual. It was simply this. Whenever a family was suspected of killing its female infants, a special staff of police was quartered upon the village in which that family lived, at the expense of the village, and maintained a constant personal watch over each of the suspected wives during the period immediately preceding childbirth. Nothing could have been so offensive to native sentiment as such procedure, but nothing else was of any use. In the end the suspects got wearied of the perpetual tyranny of supervision, and their neighbours wearied of paying for the police, and infanticide as a crime common to a whole community ceased after a few years to exist in India. Now if the worst came to the worst, something of the same kind is within the resources of the United States. Every polygamous family in the Territory might be brought under direct police supervision at the cost of their neighbours, and punishment rigidly follow every conviction. This would stamp out polygamy in time.
But it would be a long time, a very long time, and I would hesitate to affirm that Mormon endurance and submission would be equal to such a severe and such a protracted ordeal. There is nothing in their past history that leads me to look upon them as a people exceptionally tolerant of ill-usage.
The infanticidal families in India were, it is true, of a fighting caste and clan, but the suspected families were only a few hundreds in number. They could not, like the Mormons, rely upon a strength of twenty-five thousand adult males, an admirable strategic position, and the help, if necessary, of twenty thousand picked "warriors" from the surrounding Indian tribes; and it is mere waste of words to say that the consciousness of strength has often got a great deal to do with influencing the action of men who are subjected to violence. And I doubt myself, looking to the recent history of England in Africa, and Russia in Central Asia, whether the United States, when they come to consider Mormon potentialities for resistance, will think it worth while to resort to violence in vindication of a sentiment. The war between the North and the South is not a case in point at all. There was more than a mere "sentiment" went to the bringing on of that war. Remember, I do not say that the Mormons entertain the idea of having to fight the United States. I only say that they would not be afraid to do it, in defence of their religion, if circumstances compelled it. And I am only arguing from nature when I say that those "circumstances" arrive at very different stages of suffering with different individuals. The worm, for instance, does not turn till it is trodden on. The grizzly bear turns if you sneeze at it. And I am only quoting history when I say that thirty thousand determined men, well armed, with their base of military supplies at their backs, could defend a position of great strategical strength for—well, a very considerable time against an army only ten times as numerous as themselves—especially if that army had to defend a thousand miles of communications against unlimited Indians.
It was my privilege when on the editorial staff of the Daily Telegraph in London to tell the country in the leading columns of that paper what I thought of the chances of success against the Boers of the Transvaal. I said that one Boer on his own mountains was worth five British soldiers, and that any army that went against those fanatical puritans with less than ten to one in numbers, would find "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon" too strong for them, and the Drakensberg range an impregnable frontier. As an Englishman I regret that my words were so miserably fulfilled, and England, after sacrificing a great number of men and officers, decided that it was not worth while "for a sentiment" to continue the war.
The points of resemblance between the Mormons and the Boers are rather curious.
The Boers of the Transvaal, though of the same stock as the great majority of the inhabitants of British Africa, were averse to the forms of government that had satisfied the rest. So they migrated, after some popular disturbances, and settled in another district where they hoped to enjoy the imperium in imperio on which they had set their longings. But British colonies again came up with them, and after a fight with the troops, the Boers again migrated, and with their long caravans of ox and mule waggons "trekked" away to the farthest inhabitable corner of the continent. Here for a considerable time they enjoyed the life they had sought for, established a capital, had their own governor, whipped or coaxed the surrounding native tribes into docility, and, after a fashion, throve. But yet once more the "thin red line" of British possession crept up to them, and the Boers, being now at bay, and having nowhere else to "trek" to, fought.
They were not exactly trained soldiers, but merely a territorial militia, accustomed, however, to warfare with native tribes, and, by the constant use of the rifle in hunting game, capital marksmen. So they declared war against Great Britain, these three or four thousand Boers, and having worked themselves up into the belief that they were fighting for their religion, they unsheathed "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon," threatened to call in the natives, and holding their mountain passes, defied the British troops to force them. Nor without success. For every time the troops went at them, they beat them, giving chapter and verse out of the Bible for each whipping, and eventually concluded their extraordinary military operations by an honourable peace, and a long proclamation of pious thanksgiving "to the Lord God omnipotent." To-day, therefore, Queen Victoria is "suzerain" of the Transvaal, and the Boers govern themselves by a territorial government. To their neighbours they are known as very pious, simple, and stubborn people; very shrewd in making a bargain; very honest when it is made; a pastoral and agricultural community, with strong objections to "Gentiles," who, by the way, are never tired of reviling them, especially with regard to alleged eccentricities in domestic relations.
Am I not right, then, in saying that the resemblance between the Boers and the Mormons is "curious"?
When I speak of the Mormons as being prepared to accept the worst that the commission under the Edmunds bill may do, it should be understood that this readiness to suffer does not arise from any misconception of their own strength. The Mormons are thoroughly aware of it; indeed, the figures which I have given (25,000 adult males and 20,000 Indians) are not accepted by all of them as representing their full numbers. They fully understand also the capabilities of their position for defence, and are not backward to appreciate the advantages which the length of the Federal communications would give them for protracting a campaign.
Under the circumstances, therefore, the argument of a leading Mormon, that "if the United States really believe the people of Utah to be the desperate fanatics they call them, any action on their part that tends to exasperate such fanatics is foolhardy," may be accepted as quite seriously meant. For the Mormons, if bigoted about anything at all, are so on this point—that they cannot be crushed. As the elect of God, specially appointed by Him to prepare places of worship and keep up the fires of a religion which is very soon to consume all others, they cannot, they say, be moved until the final fulfilment of prophecy. The Jews have still to be gathered together, and "the nations from the north country" whose coming, according to the Bible, is to be so terrible, are to find the Mormons, "the children of Ephraim," ready prepared with such rites and such tabernacles that the "sons of Levi," the Jews, can perform their old worship, and, thus refreshed, continue their progress to the Holy Land. "And their prophets shall come in remembrance before the Lord, and they shall smite the rocks, and the ice shall flow down at their presence, and a highway shall be cast up in the midst of the great deep. And they shall come forth, and their enemies shall become a prey unto them, and the everlasting hills shall tremble at their presence." For this time, these men and women among whom I have lived are actually waiting!
Of course, we ordinary Christians, whose religion sits lightly upon us, cannot, without some effort, understand the stern faith with which the Mormons cling to their translations of Old Testament prophecy. Nor is it easy to credit the fierce earnestness with which, for instance, the Saints look forward to the accomplishment of the promise that they shall eventually possess Jackson County, Missouri. But if this spirit of intense superstition is not properly taken into account by those who try to make the Mormons alter their beliefs, they run the risk of underestimating the seriousness of their attempt. If, on the other hand, it is properly taken into account, the difficulty of forcing this people to abandon their creeds will be at once seen to be very grave.
Except, perhaps, the Kurdish outbreak on the Persian frontier some three years ago, there has been no problem like the Mormon one presented to the consideration of modern Europe. In the case of the Kurds, two nations, Turkey and Persia, were within an ace of war, in consequence of the insurgents pretending that a point of religion was involved, and popular fanaticism very nearly slipping beyond the control of their respective governments.
When living at a distance from Salt Lake City, it is very difficult indeed to recognize the truth of the situation. Until I went there I always found that though in a general way the obstacles to a speedy settlement were admitted, yet that somehow or another there was always the afterthought that Mormonism was only an inflated imposture, and that it would collapse at the first touch of law. It was allowed on all hands that the position was a peculiar one, but it was hinted also that it was an absurd one. "No doubt," it was argued, "the Mormons are an obstinate set of men, but after all they have got common sense. When they see that everybody is against them, that polygamy is contrary to the spirit of the times, that all the future of Utah depends upon their abandonment of it, that resistance is worse than senseless," and so on, they will give in. Let opinion as to the "bigotry" of the Mormons or their capacity for mischief be what it might, there was always a qualifying addendum to the effect that "nothing would come of all this fuss." The Mormons, in fact, were supposed to be "bluffing", and it was taken for granted therefore that they had a weak hand.
But in Salt Lake City it is impossible to speak in this way. A Mormon—a man of absolute honesty of speech—in conversation on this subject declared to me that he could not abandon plurality without apostatizing, and rather than do it, he would burn his house and business premises down, go away to the Mexicans, die, if necessary. Now, that man may any day be put to the very test he spoke of. He will have to abandon polygamy, or else, if his adversaries are malicious, spend virtually the whole of his life in jail. Which will he do? And what will all the others of his way of thinking do? Will they defy the law, or will they try to break it down by its own weight—that is to say, load the files with such numbers of cases, and fill the prisons with such numbers of convicts that the machinery will clog and break down? The heroic alternatives of burning down their houses, going off to Mexico, and dying will not be offered them. Their choice will simply lie between monogamy (or celibacy) and prison, two very prosaic things—and one or the other they must accept. Such at any rate is the opinion of the world.
But the Mormons, as I have already shown, do not admit this simplicity in the solution at all. From the point of view of the law-makers, they allow that the option before them is very commonplace. But the law-makers, they say, have omitted to take into consideration certain facts which complicate the solution. For though, as I have said, the majority may be expected to accept such qualified martyrdom as is offered, and "await the Lord's time", yet there can be no doubt whatever that strict Mormons will not acquiesce in the suppression of their doctrines, and among so many who are strict is it reasonable to expect that there will be no violent advisers? Their teachers have perpetually taught them, and their leaders assured them that prophecy had found its fulfilment in the establishment of the Church in Utah. Here, and nowhere else, the Saints are to await "the fulness of time" when the whole world shall yield obedience to their government, and reverence to their religion. The Rocky Mountains, and no other, are "the mountains" of Holy Writ where "Zion" was to be built; and they, the Mormons, are the remnant of Ephraim that are to welcome and pass on the returning Jews. How, then, can the Saints reconcile themselves to another exodus? Mexico, they say, would welcome them; but if the richest lands in the world, and all the privileges they ask for were offered them, they could not stultify revelation and prophecy by accepting the offer. Moreover, they have been assured times without number that they should never be "driven" again, and times without number that their enemies "shall not prevail against them." To many, to most, this, of course, now points to some interposition of Divine Providence in their favour. The crisis may seem dangerous, and the opposition to them overwhelming. But they are convinced—it is no mere matter of opinion with them—that if they are only patient under persecution and keep on living their religion, the persecution will cease, and the triumph of their faith be fulfilled. Europe and America, they believe, are about to be involved in terrific disasters. Wars of unprecedented magnitude are to be waged, and natural catastrophes, unparalleled in history, are to occur. But, in the midst of all this shock of thrones, this convulsion of the elements, Zion on the Mountains is to be at peace and in prosperity. It will be the one still harbour in all the ocean of troubles, and to it, as to their final haven, all the elect of all the nations are to gather. The prudent, therefore, looking forward to this apocalypse of general ruin, counsel submission to the passing storm, endurance under legal penalties, and fidelity to their doctrine.