But, what else could be expected in a country, where a husband signifies only the fractional part of a man, and a wife--any number of women you please? Beyond controversy, their "peculiar institution" of polygamy _is_ a "relic of barbarism"--yea, verily, a "twin-relic" to slavery--as the Republican party in 1856-60 had the manliness and courage to pronounce it. "Peculiar" institutions, of whatever character, have no business in a republic; they mean inequality, and inevitably tend to violence and disorder. No doubt, had Abraham Lincoln lived, when we had finished our first "twin" right thoroughly, he would have found a way to look well after the other. We owe this to our mothers and sisters, to our wives and daughters, "The graces and the loves, that make The music of the march of life--" to all of womankind, the broad continent across and the wide world over; and Congress should take care, that we lend not the sanction of our flag to this hideous crime, an hour longer than we must. Our age, so far, has largely honored itself, in honoring and respecting womankind, and it is too late now to let Christian America barbarize any portion of herself, with the exploded savagery of pagandom. We _must_ have freedom of speech and of the press there, security of person and property--absolute and perfect--the same as in New York or Massachusetts, or our flag is a lie. We must maintain and execute our national laws against polygamy, the same as everywhere else, no matter who opposes, or our government is a sham. And if Mormon juries won't do this, refusing to indict or convict, and nothing else will do, so that we have to fall back on the bayonet, why then I see nothing in Utah so sacred, that we should not give Brighamdom the bayonet, the same as we did Jeffdom. I believe in the Pacific Railroad, and hope much from its civilizing and refining influences; I have great faith in the locomotive and the telegraph; but I also believe, with Judge ---- in "the moral power of bayonets, when nothing else will suffice--especially when used on the right side." We have just had to use them against one "twin-relic," when nothing else would do, in spite of our Railroads there; now let them charge down upon the other, if Utah will not obey the laws, and that right speedily. Were Mormonism merely a religion, as a republic we should be the last to touch it. But polygamy, its baleful flower and fruit, and the source of all Utah's woes, is an unmitigated barbarism; an outrage and crime, not only against woman, but humanity; an organized insult to the Christianity and civilization of the age; and we Americans, of this generation, owe it to ourselves and to history, to end it--to stamp it out if need be--_sans_ ceremony and instanter. Let us not dally with it, as we did with Southern slavery. Else may God, in his just wrath, break us again with a rod of iron, or haply dash us in pieces as a potter's vessel.