That is a stereotyped caricature of the marriage relation, and has poisoned the whole land. You might as well think that you can have an arm in a state of mortification and yet the whole body not be sickened, as to have those territories polygamized and yet the body of the nation not feel the putrefaction. Hear it, good men and women of America, that so long ago as 1862 a law was passed by Congress forbidding polygamy in the territories and in all the places where they had jurisdiction. Twenty-two years have passed along and five administrations, armed with all the power of government, and having an army at their disposal, and yet the first brick has not been knocked from that fortress of libertinism.
Every new President in his inaugural has tickled that monster with the straw of condemnation, and every Congress has stultified itself in proposing some plan that would not work. Polygamy stands in Utah and in other of the territories to-day more entrenched, and more brazen, and more puissant, and more braggart, and more infernal, than at any time in its history. James Buchanan, a much-abused man of his day, did more for the extirpation of this villainy than all the subsequent administrations have dared to do. Mr. Buchanan sent out an army, and although it was halted in its work, still he accomplished more than the subsequent administrations, which have done nothing but talk, talk, talk.
I want the people of America to know that for twenty-two years we have had a positive law prohibiting polygamy in the territories. People are crying out for some new law, as though we had not an old law already with which that infamy could be swept into the perdition from which it smoked up. Polygamy in Utah has warred against the marriage relation throughout the land. It is impossible to have such an awful sewer of iniquity sending up its miasma, which is wafted by the winds north, south, east, and west, without the whole land being affected by it.
Another influence that has warred against the marriage relation in this country has been a
PUSTULOUS LITERATURE,
with its millions of sheets every week choked with stories of domestic wrongs, and infidelities, and massacres, and outrages, until it is a wonder to me that there are any decencies or any common-sense left on the subject of marriage. One-half of the news-stands of Brooklyn and New York and all our cities reeking with the filth.
"Now," say some, "we admit all these evils, and the only way to clear them out or correct them is by easy divorce." Well, before we yield to that cry, let us find out
HOW EASY IT IS NOW.
I have looked over the laws of all the States, and I find that while in some States it is easier than in others, in every State it is easy. The State of Illinois through its legislature recites a long list of proper causes for divorce, and then closes up by giving to the courts the right to make a decree of divorce in any case where they deem it expedient. After that you are not surprised at the announcement that in one county of the State of Illinois, in one year, there were 833 divorces. If you want to know how easy it is you have only to look over the records of the States. In Massachusetts 600 divorces in one year; in Maine 478 in one year; in Connecticut 401 divorces in one year; in the city of San Francisco 333 divorces in 1880; in New England in one year 2113 divorces, and in twenty years in New England 20,000. Is that not easy enough?