Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1870-06-16
CRUELTY OF MONOGAMY.
How Mormon Elders Heart
Gushes with Pity for Old Maids.

Elder Orson Pratt, of Salt Lake City,
in letter to the New York Herald in
defense of polygamy, says Asit is, the
monogamic laws of every State have
taken away the natural rights of women.
These cruel laws speak in crushing tones
of thunder to million heart-broken, de.
spairing females, saying; You shall
have no husbands to cheer and comfort
you through life rugged journey. You
shall be punished with fines and impris-
onment if you dare to be united in we'd
lock with man already having a wife.
You must live out the lonely, wretched
life of. old maids. However much you
may desire the happiness of the conjugal
state; however much you may deplore
your sad condition and the injustice of
your country's laws; you have no hope,
for the divine institution Of Bible poly
gamy is cast out from the counsels of the
nation. Noprovisions made in our free
Government for these sorrowful outcasts
from the family circle. Under the cruel
and unconstitutional laws of our other
wise happy country, there is no hope
of marriage for hundreds of thousands of
the fairer sex, unless they forsake their
country and hunt for husbands in some
foreign land where males happen to be
in excess, or else seek some distant cor
ner of the earth where females rights
are respected and Bible polygamy not
ignored. What honest, upright, virtuous
femeles, who understand the Bible insti-
tutions of marriage, would not infinitely
prefer plural marriage with one good
man, and become the mothers of happy
children, than to live the wretched lives
of old maids, or to welter in the filth of
prostitution. Supposing there was. an
equality of marriageable males and fe-
males in our nation, is it not well
attested fact that hundreds of thousands
of males will not marry, many of whom
prefer to crafty their lusts in prostitu-
ton? Ought our laws, therefore, to be
so unjustly framed as to punish the sur
plus females arising from this wicked
cause with perpetual celibacy2 Still
further are there not hundreds of thou
sands of males who offer themselves in
marriage so debauched and diseased by
their former degrading habits that they
become obnoxious and loathsome to the
fairer sex? Must the innocent, there
fore, be condemned by our laws as ire
claimable old maids because they will
not marry these loathsome monsters? j?
Why not make provisions for such to be
honorably married to men of respecta-
bility? For the sake of civilization, for
the sake of the ladies of our country
repeal the monogamic laws palmed
upon us by our forefathers, who
derived them from the barbaric
nations of Greece and Rome. Such relics
of barbarism never ought to disgrace
the soil of our free and enlightened re-
public. We have stretched out our arms
and rescued the groaning slave from the
whip and lash Of his cruel task-master;
we have restored him to liberty and to
all the inalienable rights of man. Shall
we not also remember that there are
others still in bondage? That the fair
daughters of American citizens are
crushed down by hundreds of thousands
into the degrading condition of old
maids deprived of rights dearer to them
than life itself? Would it not be more
noble, more manlike, more godlike, and
more in accordance with the progressive
enlightenment of the age for the great
men ofour nation and our learned divines
to sympathise with the oppressed ladies
of our country-to break the yoke off
their necks and invite them into the
family circle, and take them by the
hand and bid them welcome to the
dignifed and holy position of wives
and joyful mothers? Let them do this
and the blessings of millions of happy
wives and children will be poured out,
like the dews of heaven, upon their heads
and upon their generations after them.