tion to the numbers who believe in it, then it follows that the plurality system is four times more popular among the inhabitants of the earth than the one-wife system.
Those nations who practice the plurality doctrine consider it as virtuous and as right for one man to have many wives as to have one only. Therefore they have enacted laws not only giving this right to their citizens, but also protecting them in it, and punishing all those who infringe upon the chastity of the marriage covenant by committing adultery with any one of the wives of his neighbor. Those nations do not consider it possible for a man to commit adultery with any one of those women to whom he has been legally married according to their laws. The posterity raised up unto the husband through each of his wives are all considered to be legitimate, and provisions are made in their laws for those children the same as if they were the children of one wife. Adulteries, fornications, and all unvirtuous conduct between the sexes are severely punished by them. Indeed, plurality among them is considered not only virtuous and right, but a great check or preventive against adulteries and unlawful connections, which are among the greatest evils with which nations are cursed, producing a vast amount of suffering and misery, devastation and death; undermining the very foundations of happiness, and destroying the frame-work of society and the peace of the domestic circle.
Some of the nations of Europe who believe in the one-wife system have actually forbidden a plurality of wives by their laws, and the consequences are that the whole country among them is overrun with the most abominable practices; adulteries and unlawful connections prevail through all their villages, towns, cities, and country places to a most fearful extent. And among some of these nations these sinks of wickedness, wretchedness, and misery are licensed by law, while their piety would be wonderfully shocked to authorize by law the plurality system, as adopted by many neighboring nations.
The Constitution and laws of the United States, being founded upon the principles of freedom, do not interfere with marriage relations, but leave the nation free to believe in and practice the doctrine of a plurality of wives, or to confine themselves to the one-wife system, just as they choose. This is as it should be: it leaves the conscience of man untrammeled, and, so long as he injures no person, and does not infringe upon the rights of others, he is free by the Constitution to marry one wife, or many, or none at all, and becomes accountable to God for the righteousness or unrighteousness of his domestic relations.
The Constitution leaves the several States and Territories to enact such laws as they see proper in regard to marriages, provided that they do not infringe upon the rights of conscience and the liberties guaranteed in that sacred document. Therefore, if any State or Territory feels disposed to enact laws guaranteeing to each of its citizens the right to marry many wives, such laws would be perfectly constitutional; hence the several States and Territories practice the one-wife system out of choice, and not because they are under any obligations so to do by the national Constitution. Indeed, we doubt
