_Elder B_. There is no cause for it. We are all redeemed by one Lord--should that make us jealous of each other? We are all the children of one heavenly Father--should that make us jealous? You have several children--should that make your first-born jealous of the others? Just as little cause exists for the association of jealousy with polygamy. Indeed it is calculated to dispel jealousy. For instance--In this country, three young women all love the same young man. Being rivals, it is quite natural to suppose that the young women, through their jealousy, hate each other in exact proportion as they love the young man, because they know that the law will not allow him to be married to them all, and consequently when one has obtained him the others have irrecoverably lost him. If polygamy were allowed, this jealousy would not exist, because a woman would know she could be married to any man she loved, if she could win his affection, which part of the business might be safely entrusted to her. _Mr. W_. But what advantages would accrue through a man's having more wives than one. _Elder B_. I have just told you one very great advantage--a woman could, without fear of rivalry, become the wife of the man on whom she had set the purest and warmest affections of her soul. She would not be compelled, as many are now, to throw herself away on some brute in human form, who would scarcely pass the honeymoon before he treated her worse than his cattle. Such wretches do not deserve a wife at all. But what are women to do? You can't unsex them. Women are women, after all, and they know they have a right to husbands and protectors. If they cannot get as good as they wish, they will get as good as they can. Therefore leave their choice free as to whom they shall have. A woman gives herself wholly and entirely, body and affections, to a man. She {65} ought surely to be allowed to bestow such a gift on whom she pleases. She ought certainly to choose whatever man she pleases to hold unlimited and sole control over her person and property. If this were more extensively the case, we should hear less of wife beating and wife murdering, accounts of which figure so conspicuously in our newspapers. Now polygamy would grant the advantage named, whereas monogamy is one of the greatest bars to the happiness of the female sex. _Mr. W_. But would you have all men marry several wives each? _Elder B_. That would not necessarily follow. It would be more likely that good men would each have several wives, and that bad men would find it difficult to get any wife to ill-use and beat. This would bring to men a reward and a punishment, in which the women would be proud to administer, and which would do more for their protection than all the legislative enactments in the world. _Mr. W_. Well, I must think upon this subject. I certainly do not feel to object so much to it as I did before I named it to you. _Mary_. [_Mr. W.'s daughter_.] Dinner's ready, please, father.