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Show THE DEAD PROPHET. 609 they will sustain laws and social customs which make them legitimate. Two hundred Mormons have committed murder. Once break the solid alignment that now exists, divide them into sects fighting each other, and the Gentile courts would have these men on the scaffold in two years. Of those not in polygamy, two- thirds have near relatives in it. They can not easily cut loose and stigmatize these. In property matters they are inextricably entangled. By the " Order of Enoch," the " consecration of property," and the " perfect oneness in Christ," their homesteads have been deeded back and forward, tied over and under and criss- crossed, so there is no getting out till all are willing to go and settle things on a basis of pure equity. The apos-tates must have a clear majority of three to one before they can do any thing, for the elders hold the strings. Through every part of the social organism runs a complex set of stringers, which will bind it together till all the old Mormons die. The process of disintegration may be rapid enough to end it in ten years, but I doubt it. And at least half of them still believe the faith; the women being twice as fanatical as the men. It may inter-est some people to know that the mens conscia redi, of which some religionists boast, is but a trifle to the women's conscia recti ; and both are always the strongest in the lower religious types. Or, in plain English, the bigger fool a man is the more positive is he that he knows the design of God; and, other things being equal, the woman is more positive than the man. Nothing used to vex us more when I lived in Utah, than the amiable folly of certain Eastern people who imagined that this, or that, or the other trifling agency would put an end to theocratic tyranny. But above all others were we annoyed and hindered by the nonsense of those who fancied the Mormon women would effect a revolution by their votes! Who does not know that if the women were opposed to polygamy, it could not exist anyhow? The growing society follows pretty closely the analogy of the human body. Introduce a foreign substance, and an effort . is made to expel it; if unsuccessful, the organism at once begins to accommo-date itself thereto, and does it or dies. Similarly, whatever custom or social anomaly you introduce into a society, that society immediately begins to adapt itself thereto, and in a surprisingly short space of time all the petty observances and habits of thought are adjusted to the cus-tom. Take the most pronounced monogamist to Utah and let him live on intimate terms with the Mormons for awhile, and all the nov-elty vanishes ; he hears people talk of first, second, and third wives 39 |