This aspect of the polygamy problem deserves, then, I think, considerable attention. An Act has been passed to compel some 20,000 women to leave their husbands, and the world looks upon these women as slaves about to be freed from tyrants. Yet they have said and done all that could possibly be expected of them, and even more than could have been expected, to assure the world that they have neither need nor desire for emancipation, as they honour their husbands, and prefer polygamy, with all its conditions, to the monogamy which brings with it infidelity at home and prostitution abroad. Again and again they have protested, in petitions to individuals and petitions to Congress, that "their bonds are loving ones and dearly prized." But the enthusiasm of reformers takes no heed of their protests. They are constantly declaring in public speeches and by public votes, in books and in newspapers--above all, in their daily conduct--that they consider themselves free and happy women, but the zeal of philanthropy will not be gainsaid, and so the women of Utah are, all else failing, to be saved from themselves. The "foul blot" of a servitude which the serfs aver does not exist is to be wiped out by declaring 20,000 wives mistresses, their households illegal, and their future children bastards! "By Jove, sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak!" CHAPTER VIII. COULD THE MORMONS FIGHT? An unfulfilled prophecy--Had Brigham Young been still alive?--The hierarchy of Mormonism--The fighting Apostle and his colleagues--Plurality a revelation--Rajpoot infanticide: how it was stamped out--Would the Mormons submit to the same process?--Their fighting capabilities--Boer and Mormon: an analogy between the Drakensberg and the Wasatch ranges--The Puritan fanaticism of the Saints--Awaiting the fulness of time and of prophecy. "I SAY, as the Lord lives, we are bound to become a sovereign State in the Union or an independent nation by ourselves. I am still, and still will be Governor of this Territory, to the constant chagrin of my enemies, and twenty-six years shall not pass away before the Elders of this Church will be as much thought of as kings on their thrones." These were the words of Brigham Young on the last day of August, 1856. And the Bill was passed in 1882. Had Brigham Young been alive then, that prophecy would assuredly have been fulfilled, for the coincidence of recent legislation with the date he fixed, would have sufficed to convince him that the opportunity for a display of the temporal power of his Church which he had foretold, had arrived. Once before with similar exactness Brigham Young fixed a momentous date. He was standing in 1847 upon the site of the Temple, when suddenly, as if under a momentary impulse, he turned to those who were with him and said, "And now, if they will only let us alone for ten years, we will not ask them for any odds."