Greater Britain. Charles Wentworth Dilke
As the prophet takes his seat again, and puts on his broad-brimmed hat, a hum of applause runs round the bowery, and teams and barrows are freely promised.
Sometimes the canal, the bridge, the city may prove a failure, but this is not concealed; the prophet‘s human tongue may blunder even when he is communicating holy things.
“After all,” Brigham said to me the day before I left, “the highest inspiration is good sense – the knowing what to do, and how to do it.”
In all this it is hard for us, with our English hatred of casuistry and hair-splitting, to see sincerity; still, given his foundation, Brigham is sincere. Like other political religionists, he must feel himself morally bound to stick at nothing when the interests of the church are at stake. To prefer man‘s life or property to the service of God must be a crime in such a church. The Mormons deny the truth of the murder-stories alleged against the Danites, but they avoid doing so in sweeping or even general terms – though, if need were, of course they would be bound to lie as well as to kill in the name of God and His holy prophet.
The secret polity which I have sketched gives, evidently, enormous power to some one man within the church; but the Mormon constitution does not very clearly point out who that man shall be. With a view to the possible future failure of leaders of great personal qualifications, the First Presidency consists of three members with equal rank; but to his place in the Trinity, Brigham unites the office of Trustee in Trust, which gives him the control of the funds and tithing, or church taxation.
All are not agreed as to what should be Brigham‘s place in Utah. Stenhouse said one day: “I am one of those who think that our President should do everything. He has made this church and this country, and should have his way in all things; saying so gets me into trouble with some.” The writer of a report of Brigham‘s tour which appeared in the Salt Lake Telegraph the day we reached the city, used the words: “God never spoke through man more clearly than through President Young.”
One day, when Stenhouse was speaking of the morality of the Mormon people, he said: “Our penalty for adultery is death.” Remembering the Danites, we were down on him at once: “Do you inflict it?” “No; but – well, not practically; but really it is so. A man who commits adultery withers away and perishes. A man sent away from his wives upon a mission that may last for years, if he lives not purely —if, when he returns, he cannot meet the eye of Brigham, better for him to be at once in hell. He withers.”
Brigham himself has spoken in strong words of his own power over the Mormon people: “Let the talking folk at Washington say, if they please, that I am no longer Governor of Utah. I am, and will be Governor, until God Almighty says, ‘Brigham, you need not be Governor any more.’”
Brigham‘s head is that of a man who nowhere could be second.
CHAPTER XV.
MORMONDOM
WE had been presented at court, and favorably received; asked to call again; admitted to State secrets of the presidency. From this moment our position in the city was secured. Mormon seats in the theater were placed at our disposal; the director of immigration, the presiding bishop, Colonel Hunter – a grim, weather-beaten Indian fighter – and his coadjutors, carried us off to see the reception of the bull-train at the Elephant Corral; we were offered a team to take us to the Lake, which we refused only because we had already accepted the loan of one from a Gentile merchant; presents of peaches, and invitations to lunch, dinner, and supper, came pouring in upon us from all sides. In a single morning we were visited by four of the apostles and nine other leading members of the church. Ecclesiastical dignitaries sat upon our single chair and wash-hand-stand; and one bed groaned under the weight of George A. Smith, “church historian,” while the other bore Æsop‘s load – the peaches he had brought. These growers of fruit from standard trees think but small things of our English wall-fruit, “baked on one side and frozen on the other,” as they say. There is a mellowness about the Mormon peaches that would drive our gardeners to despair.
One of our callers was Captain Hooper, the Utah delegate to Congress. He is an adept at the Western plan of getting out of a fix by telling you a story. When we laughingly alluded to his lack of wives, and the absurdity of a monogamist representing Utah, he said that the people at Washington all believed that Utah had sent them a polygamist. There is a rule that no one with the entry shall take more than one lady to the White House receptions. A member of Congress was urged by three ladies to take them with him. He, as men do, said, “The thing is impossible” – and did it. Presenting himself with the bevy at the door, the usher stopped him: “Can‘t pass; only one friend admitted with each member.” “Suppose, sir, that I‘m the delegate from Utah Territory?” said the Congressman. “Oh, pass in, sir – pass in,” was the instant answer of the usher. The story reminds me of poor Browne‘s “family” ticket to his lecture at Salt Lake City: “Admit the bearer and one wife.” Hooper is said to be under pressure at this moment on the question of polygamy, for he is a favorite with the prophet, who cannot, however, with consistency promote him to office in the church on account of a saying of his own: “A man with one wife is of less account before God than a man with no wives at all.”
Our best opportunity of judging of the Mormon ladies was at the theater, which we attended regularly, sitting now in Elder Stenhouse‘s “family” seats, now with General Wells. Here we saw all the wives of the leading churchmen of the city; in their houses, we saw only those they chose to show us: in no case but that of the Clawson family did we meet in society all the wives. We noticed at once that the leading ladies were all alike – full of taste, full of sense, but full, at the same time, of a kind of unconscious melancholy. Everywhere, as you looked round the house, you met the sad eye which I had seen but once before – among the Shakers at New Lebanon. The women here, knowing no other state, seem to think themselves as happy as the day is long: their eye alone is there to show the Gentile that they are, if the expression may be allowed, unhappy without knowing it. That these Mormon women love their religion and reverence its priests is but a consequence of its being “their religion” – the system in the midst of which they have been brought up. Which of us is there who does not set up some idol in his heart round which he weaves all that he has of poetry and devotion in his character? Art, hero-worship, patriotism are forms of this great tendency. That the Mormon girls, who are educated as highly as those of any country in the world – who, like all American girls, are allowed to wander where they please – who are certain of protection in any of the fifty Gentile houses in the city, and absolutely safe in Camp Douglas at the distance of two miles from the city-wall – all consent deliberately to enter on polygamy – shows clearly enough that they can, as a rule, have no dislike to it beyond such a feeling as public opinion will speedily overcome.
Discussion of the institution of plural marriage in Salt Lake City is fruitless; all that can be done is to observe. In assaulting the Mormon citadel, you strike against the air. “Polygamy degrades the women,” you begin. “Morally or socially?” says the Mormon. “Socially.” “Granted,” is the reply, “and that is a most desirable consummation. By socially lowering, it morally raises the woman. It makes her a servant, but it makes her pure and good.”
It is always well to remember that if we have one argument against polygamy which from our Gentile point of view is unanswerable, it is not necessary that we should rack our brains for others. All our modern experience is favorable to ranking woman as man‘s equal; polygamy assumes that she shall be his servant – loving, faithful, cheerful, willing, but still a servant.
The opposite poles upon the women question are Utah polygamy and Kansas female suffrage.
CHAPTER XVI.
WESTERN EDITORS
THE attack upon Mormondom has been systematized, and is conducted with military skill, by trench and parallel. The New England papers having called for “facts” whereon to base their homilies, General Connor, of Fenian fame, set up the Union Vedette in Salt Lake City, and publishes on Saturdays a sheet expressly intended for Eastern reading. The mantle of the Sangamo Journal has fallen on the Vedette, and John C. Bennett is effaced by Connor. From this source it is that come the whole of the paragraphs against Brigham and all Mormondom which fill