# Utah and the Mormons/Chapter 15

CHAPTER XV.
* Prevalence of Polygamy.
* Its Effects on Population.
* Arguments in its Favor.
* Its Effects on Morals.
* Frightful Licentiousness.
* Its Influence on the first Wife.
* Divisions and Hatred in Families.
As a matter of civil polity, it would seem, at this age of the world, as though the founders of communities and states might regard polygamy as a settled question. It existed among the Jews, with other questionable practices, by divine permission, on account of the hardness of their hearts. The fruits of polygamy among them were such as might readily be supposed by any one knowing any thing of the relation of cause and effect. Each individual case presents a picture of family dissensions, divisions, and misery. Sarah, after giving Hagar to Abraham (not by divine command, as Smith would have his dupes believe), turns her ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/255 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/256 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/257 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/258 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/259 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/260 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/261 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/262 ​is properly manufactured. The chaste union of two minds in the conjugal relationship becomes thus a thing entirely unknown.
The high-priest dignitaries of the Church are exceedingly skillful in procuring young girls for wives. They inculcate the idea that elderly members, who have been tried and found faithful, are surer instruments of salvation than the young, who may apostatize; and as marriage to one who remains steadfast to the end is essential to escape from the fate of being mere angels, a great many young women are fooled into this bubbling and seething caldron of prostitution. Elder Wilford Woodruff, one of the twelve apostles, has a regular system of changing his harem. He takes in one or more young girls, and so manages, after he tires of them, that they are glad to ask for a divorce, after which he beats the bush for recruits. He took a fresh one, about fourteen years old, in March, 1853, and will probably get rid of her in the course of the ensuing summer. These maneuvers are practiced more or less by the whole gang; the girls discarded by one become sealed to others, and so travel the entire rounds; and when they accomplish the whole circuit, and are ready to start anew, they have a profoundly "realizing sense" of female modesty, to say nothing of some of its adjuncts.
These things are producing results in the very vitals of the Mormon community as frightful as the barking monsters in the bowels of Milton's portress to the infernal regions:
Young men, in a majority of cases, find it impossible to obtain even one wife, and run into excesses rivaling some of the choicest purlieus of Eastern cities. When the door of licensed indulgences are so widely thrown open to the elders, it is scarcely to be supposed that the young will look on with indifference; nor can it be surprising that the affair of Absalom and his father's concubines should be considered and acted upon by the youthful Saint as a fair precedent.
Various apostates have disclosed the fact that among the Temple mysteries of Mormonism is a degree into which the most favored ones are initiated, called the "Order of the Cloistered Saints," of which the following account is given:
"When an apostle, high-priest, elder, or scribe, conceives an affection for a female, and has ascertained her views on the subject, he communicates confidentially to the prophet his love affair, and requests him to inquire of the Lord whether or not it would be right and proper for him to take unto himself this woman for his spiritual wife. It is no obstacle whatever to this spiritual marriage if one or both of the parties should happen to have a husband or wife already united to them according to the laws of the land.
"The prophet puts this singular question to the Lord, and if he receives an answer in the affirmative, which is always the case when the parties are in favor with the president, the parties assemble in the lodge-room, accompanied by a duly authorized administrator, and place themselves kneeling before the al​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/265 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/266 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/267 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/268 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/269 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/270 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/271 ​agance of her nonsense, to make herself a mother in Israel. Her daughter, in the mean time, has grown up handsome in face, and accomplished in the peculiar graces which belong to female Mormondom. The mother and daughter deal frequently in crimination and recrimination with each other, calling things by their right names in choice Billingsgate; and the parent is in a fair way of draining to the bottom that cup of bitterness which she has prepared for her own lips.