Many suppose it is practised because it allows full sway to the passions of the sensualists, who are the only persons who practise it; but that is a great mistake. Some sensualists there doubtless are, who are polygamists, in Utah; but at the least nine tenths cannot be branded by any such infamous name. It is practised not because it is loved by the people and desired by them, but because they are urged--yea, commanded by the infallible priesthood to practise it. They regard it as the command of God; and that is the only reason why it is practised by ninety-nine out of every hundred of the polygamists of Utah. _It is because they are_ MORAL BONDMEN. Even Brigham Young openly avowed that when Joseph Smith gave him the order for the first time it was a great trial to his soul; and it is said that the locks of an apostle turned white in a single night when he was commanded to take another wife. The idea of taking a second wife to a man who is happily married is extremely distasteful. Polygamy, therefore, has enslaved the Mormon men, blunting all the finer feelings of their soul. But if the men are enslaved by polygamy, the women are martyrized. A writer on Mormonism has said: "Whoever has read debasement in the women of Utah has done them injustice. Some there be who are devoid of refined sentiment and the nobler instincts of the sex, but no women in history ever deserved more respect and sympathy than the true women among the Mormons." They are taught to believe that polygamy is a divine institution; they are taught that it is their duty to make a self-sacrifice--to bear the cross in order to receive the crown. They are forbidden to covet the entire love of their husband's heart, because God designed to purify them from all selfishness and, besides, had commanded that if any oppose this revelation on "Celestial Marriage" they shall be destroyed; and while the Mormons do not use any visible coercion to draw persons into this complex marriage, yet that revelation, with its accompanying threat, stands like a frightful ogre, hanging over them like a doom, and sounds the death-knell to their happiness. The Mormon men have claimed that the women get accustomed to plural marriage and are happy in it; but that is a libel upon the nature of woman. Surely no woman ever desired to share her husband with another, and no husband could ever please two wives. No; the wives of polygamists in Utah are living martyrs. What days of silent grief and misery they must endure! The story of such women can never be told. Many a young wife has exclaimed: "I am fainting by the way; but for my children's sake I must bear up. What will be the end of all this suffering?" Many more have found early graves, the strain of mental anguish, added to physical labor, proving too much for their powers of endurance. In thinking or reading of such heart-rending sorrows, one is impelled to cry: "How long, O Lord, how long!"