Now, polygamy can be smashed flat if the States choose to show their power to do so. But no man who takes a part in that demolition must suppose that in so doing he will be accepted by the community as rescuing them from degradation. If left alone, polygamy will die out. Mormons deny this, but I feel sure that they know they are wrong when they deny it, for nothing but a perpetual miracle of loaves and fishes will make polygamy and families of forty possible when population and food-supply come to talk the position over seriously between them. The expense of plurality will before long prohibit plurality. "The fashionable milliner" is the most formidable adversary that the system has yet encountered. A twenty-dollar bonnet is a staggering argument against it. When women were contented with sunshades, and made them for themselves, the husband of many wives could afford to be lavish, and to indulge his household in a diversity of headgear. But that old serpent, the fashionable milliner, has got over the garden wall, and Lilith [1] and Eve are no longer content with primitive garments of home manufacture. No. Polygamy will before long be impossible, except to the rich; and in an agricultural community, restricted in area, and further restricted by the scarcity of water, there can never be many rich men. As it is, the cost of plurality was on several occasions referred to by Mormons whom I met during my tour, and I know one man who has for three years postponed his second marriage, as he does not consider that his means justify it; while I fancy it will not be disputed by any one who has inquired into polygamy that, as a general rule, prudential considerations control the system. Polygamy, then, I sincerely believe, carries its own antidote with it, and if left alone will rapidly cure itself. In the mean time the community that practises it does not consider itself "degraded," and those who take part in smashing it up must not think it does. The Mormons are a peasant people, with many of the faults of peasant life, but with many of the best human virtues as well. They are conspicuously industrious, honest, and sober. There is, of course, nothing whatever in common between Oriental polygamy and Mormon plurality. The main object, and the main result of the two systems are so widely diverse, that it is hardly necessary even to refer to the hundred other points of difference which make comparison between the two utterly absurd. Yet the comparison is often made in order to prove the Mormons "degraded," and it is a great pity that such superficial and stupid arguments should be far more effective ones are at hand. Polygamy, though difficult to handle, is very vulnerable. The hedgehog, after all, will have to unroll some time or another. But to assault polygamy because the Mormons are "Turks" or "debauched Mahometans," or the other things which silly people call them, is monstrous.