“Washington, January 31, 1885.
“My dear Sir: I am glad that the topics of Mormonism and the reorganization of the South are to be discussed in your lectures in Boston. Massachusetts is an old State. Her people dwell under institutions which have been ripening for two hundred and fifty years; but in the West, in the heart of the Continent, and in the South we are laying foundations still. If Mormonism live and grow, the Christian family will not be an element in the civilization of the great Central States of the future. If the 30,000,000 of the colored race who within fifty years will inhabit the States of the South are to be a race of peasants, denied their practical and equal share in the Government by such processes as have prevailed in recent years, the republic itself cannot continue. The Russian ‘despotism tempered by assassination’ is quite as desirable as Republicanism tempered by both assassination and fraud. In the warfare with these things, the school and the Christian Church are to be our most potent instruments. They can accomplish more than any political party. I have contemplated with the greatest satisfaction the noble work in this cause of our New England churches and of the associations they have organized.
“I am yours, very truly,
“George F. Hoar.”
It is, indeed, true that the school and the Christian Church are more “potent instruments” for the overthrow of polygamy than any laws of our political legislators. Law does not reach the evil, for it rests upon a strong religious conviction. Law cannot reach it. To make a law that a man shall not be fanatical is to waste paper on which something sensible might be written; for Congress to undertake to keep people from becoming fanatics is unspeakably ludicrous. Legislation in that direction is intrusive. Law provides for the punishment of an overt act, and is absolutely powerless as to a man’s eccentricity.
We do not mean to assert that the laws against polygamy should be stricken from our statute-books. Far from it. On the contrary, it is a shame to our country that they have been allowed so long to be nullified. Let us thank God that during the past two years they have been enforced. They should be most rigidly enforced, although no such system of inquisition and prying into the most sacred relations of husband and wife through their children should be instituted in the name of purity and justice, as the Mormons claim is being now carried on there, and which called forth an earnest protest by the women of Utah at a mass-meeting in the theatre of Salt Lake City March 6th, 1886. Besides, other crimes in the Territory should not be overlooked in zeal to punish that particular crime. The laws should be impartially executed. Moreover, I believe the penalty for the crime should be made to correspond better with the gravity of the crime. Six months’ imprisonment seems a very small penalty for such an enormous crime against society; the Mormons purchase martyrdom at too cheap a price. It should be increased to three or five years’ imprisonment.
Nevertheless, no matter what the law may be, it cannot alone overcome this evil. It may make the evil unpopular. It may act upon some as an educator, and cause them to lose their implicit confidence in their leaders; and, indeed, such is said to be the fact in Utah now. Dr. McNiece, in his letter to the writer from Salt Lake City, dated February 12th, 1886, says: “The people are beginning to lose faith in their leaders. The Lord is not coming down on the Wahsatch Mountains with horses and chariots of fire to deliver the persecuted (?) Saints, as Orson Pratt used to predict. In fact, the people are beginning to doubt about the Lord’s being on their side at all.” Now, that is a good sign; and it is, doubtless, true of the more enlightened among the Mormons; but upon the masses of the people, the only effect will be to weld them closer together; and I cannot but think that the leaders are glad that they can raise the cry of persecution. That cry puts down all internal dissension, and unites the people against a common enemy. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” has passed into a proverb.
But the plan which we propose has nothing of persecution in connection with it, and thus it will leave room for internal dissension; and from within alone can Mormonism be effectually helped to eradicate its errors. The evils will in this way be overcome by the people themselves, while in reality the work will be accomplished by forces without.
That this system would prove effectual may be safely argued from the fact that, wherever the Gentiles now live in any number, there polygamy is discountenanced and is on the decline. Judge C. C. Goodwin, editor of the Salt Lake Tribune, in an article in Harper’s Weekly, October, 1881, said: “Not half of the daughters of Mormons who have grown up amid a large population of Gentiles will ever enter into polygamy.”
Besides, it may be argued from a parallel case, which actually did take place in our own land. The Oneida Community, in the midst of one of the most prosperous and intelligent communities in the State of New York, openly defied popular sentiment and covertly transgressed the law by the maintenance of a social system as abhorrent as that of polygamy; for they practised promiscuous marriage. They were a community having all things in common, and the women were as much common property as any other property. Its members, however, were not mobbed; they were not terrorized in the name of law; they were not driven into exile by persecution; but free contact with the healthful currents of the life about them finally resulted in the disintegration of that portion of their social fabric which was maintained in opposition to law and the sentiment of their neighbors. Now, with that practical example in mind, who would dare say that the scheme we advocate would not be effectual in breaking up polygamy?
Thus we trust that we have shown that this plan would effectually cure the evils of the Mormon social system, and bring the Mormons out of the personal, mental, and moral bondage, which now blinds their eyes and benumbs their sensibilities.