I apprehend that much of the prejudice existing against the marriage system of the Latter-day Saints arises from confounding it with the polygamy of the East--with the harems of Turkey, or the bigamy occasionally practiced in Christian communities; yet we hope to show, so far as may be shown in a few brief sentences, that there is not and cannot be, from the very nature of society in Utah, anything that resembles the Eastern harem, nor do the evils exist which grow out of the ordinary case of bigamy. In the first place, women in Utah are as free to marry whom they please as they are in any part of the world. Mr. Phil. Robinson says:-- "It is a mistake to suppose there are no educated women in Utah: . . . the young ladies appear as free and independent as in other parts of the United States. . . . if the women of Utah are slaves, their bonds are loving ones and dearly prized. They are today in the free and unrestricted exercise of more political and social rights than are the women of any other part of the United States."--"Saints and Sinners." To this add the testimony of Mr. Barclay, in the article from the _Nineteenth Century_, before quoted:-- "The young ladies appear as free and independent as in other parts of the United States; and, if I might hazard an opinion, the young men of Mormondom will find considerable difficulty in persuading them to be content with the share of a husband." The women of Mormondom are as free to bestow or withhold their hands in marriage as they are in England, and {184} there has not been a day since 1862--the year in which the first law of Congress was passed against polygamy--but what it has been within the power of the wife or wives of a man to send him to the penitentiary, the United States Courts being only too glad to entertain her suit, and break up the polygamous family associations. Yet, in all these years, there have not been half-a-dozen such cases. This entire freedom of women among the "Mormons" robs their plural marriage system of every feature of resemblance to the polygamy of the East; and what is here set down proves that whatever of plural marriage exists in Utah, does so by the mutual consent of all the parties concerned. In common bigamy the first marriage is studiously concealed by the party contemplating the second marriage. A man represents himself to a lady as a bachelor, and under false pretences and fraud obtains possession of her person. Soon she discovers that she has been betrayed, deceived, degraded,--the sense of shame and sorrow following producing indescribable misery. Nor has it been less productive of evil to the first wife. Her happiness, too, has been wrecked by the perfidy of the wretch she called husband. She has been neglected, abandoned, made an outcast. Where she looked for loyalty, she found treason; where she implicitly trusted, she has been deceived, and her misery and shame is as great as the other victim's.