Polygamy is a state in which a man has at the same time more than one wife. It has existed from time immemorial, especially among the nations of the East. The custom was tolerated by the laws of Moses, and, in fact, no positive injunction against it is found in the whole of the Old Testament. It is questionable whether more than one was recognized as the bona fide wife, the others simply being wives by right of concubinage. But if polygamy was in its strictest sense the legal custom, it soon grew unpopular, for no trace of it is met in the records of the New Testament, where all the passages referring to marriage imply monogamy as alone lawful.
The custom has been almost universal in the East, being sanctioned by all the religions existing there. The religion of Mohammed allows four wives, but the permission is rarely exercised except by the rich.
In Christian countries polygamy was never tolerated, the tenets of the Church forbidding it, though Charlemagne had two wives, and Sigbert and Chilperich also had a plurality. John of Leyden, an Anabaptist leader, was the husband of seventeen wives, and he held that it was his moral right to marry as many as he chose.
In England the punishment of polygamy was originally in the hands of the ecclesiastics. It was considered a capital crime by Edward I., but it did not come entirely under the control of the temporal power until a statute of James I. made it a felony, punishable by death. George III. made it punishable by imprisonment or transportation for seven years.
It is the offspring of licentiousness, and its advocates merely wish to give legal color to licentious habits. Every student of history will find that as soon as a nation became morally depraved, polygamy was practiced, and that monogamy was the rule in all countries truly civilized.
Polygamy has, of late years, been most shamefully revived and outrageously practiced in face of law by the Mormons. They claim it as a religious duty, and defend the system by claiming that unmarried women can in the future life reach only the position of angels who occupy in the Mormon theocratic system a very subordinate rank, being simply ministering servants to those more worthy, thus proclaiming that it is a virtual necessity of the male to practice the vilest immorality in order to advance the female to the highest place in heaven.
Mormonism is a religion founded by Joseph Smith, who was born in Sharon, E. V., Dec. 23rd, 1805, and killed at Carthage, Ill., June 27th, 1844.
It is a most singular fact that a sect like the Mormons could have been established in a country peopled with such law-abiding people as of the United States, and maintain a system of marriage, antagonistic to the law and religion of the land. Neither could they have done so if they had not possessed two great virtues, temperance and industry. It is to be hoped that the legal process now instituted for its abolition will effectually remove the blot from the national escutcheon.
The “Oneida Communists” are essentially polygamic, although they have no marriage system. They do not marry, and ignore all marriage codes. Cohabitation is under no restrictions between the sexes. Marriage is also not observed among the “Shakers.”
The custom has been almost universal in the East, being sanctioned by all the religions existing there. The religion of Mohammed allows four wives, but the permission is rarely exercised except by the rich.
In Christian countries polygamy was never tolerated, the tenets of the Church forbidding it, though Charlemagne had two wives, and Sigbert and Chilperich also had a plurality. John of Leyden, an Anabaptist leader, was the husband of seventeen wives, and he held that it was his moral right to marry as many as he chose.
In England the punishment of polygamy was originally in the hands of the ecclesiastics. It was considered a capital crime by Edward I., but it did not come entirely under the control of the temporal power until a statute of James I. made it a felony, punishable by death. George III. made it punishable by imprisonment or transportation for seven years.
It is the offspring of licentiousness, and its advocates merely wish to give legal color to licentious habits. Every student of history will find that as soon as a nation became morally depraved, polygamy was practiced, and that monogamy was the rule in all countries truly civilized.
Polygamy has, of late years, been most shamefully revived and outrageously practiced in face of law by the Mormons. They claim it as a religious duty, and defend the system by claiming that unmarried women can in the future life reach only the position of angels who occupy in the Mormon theocratic system a very subordinate rank, being simply ministering servants to those more worthy, thus proclaiming that it is a virtual necessity of the male to practice the vilest immorality in order to advance the female to the highest place in heaven.
Mormonism is a religion founded by Joseph Smith, who was born in Sharon, E. V., Dec. 23rd, 1805, and killed at Carthage, Ill., June 27th, 1844.
It is a most singular fact that a sect like the Mormons could have been established in a country peopled with such law-abiding people as of the United States, and maintain a system of marriage, antagonistic to the law and religion of the land. Neither could they have done so if they had not possessed two great virtues, temperance and industry. It is to be hoped that the legal process now instituted for its abolition will effectually remove the blot from the national escutcheon.
The “Oneida Communists” are essentially polygamic, although they have no marriage system. They do not marry, and ignore all marriage codes. Cohabitation is under no restrictions between the sexes. Marriage is also not observed among the “Shakers.”
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