in their domestic constitutions. l.e-s polished and
more luxurious nations have either not perceived the bad effects of polygamy, or, if they did perceive tie m, they who in such countries possessed the power of re- forming the laws have been unwilling to resign their own gratifications. Polygamy is retained at this day in all Mohammedan countries, and throughout the whole Eastern world (see a recent article on this sub- ject in the Westminster Review, Oct 1867, an. i); and even in countries like Algiers, where the French con- trolling influence is manifest, the Jews practice polyg- amy to a large extent.'* Hut among Western, or. bet- ter. Christian nations, it is universally prohibited. In Sweden it is punished with death. In England, be- sides the nullity of the second marriage, it subjects
transportation or imprisonment and branding for the first offence, and to capital punish-
ond. About the middle of the 16th century. I hinus, general of the < "rder of
Capuchins, and afterward- a Protestant, published Di- alogues in favor of polygamy, to which Theodoi iB i
wrote a reply. Iii 1682 a work entitled P Triumphatrix appeared under the name of Theophilus
1870, when they were made citizens, they have been obliged to conform to the order of French law.
POLYGAMY
367
POLYGLOT BIBLES
Aletheus. The true name of the author was Lys- erus, a native of Saxony. In 1780 Martin Madan published Thdyphthora, or a Treatise on Female Ruin, in which he defended polygamy on the part of the male. The only exception in the West to monog- amous practice occurs among the Mormons (q. v.). This strange sect teaches that the use and foundation of matrimony is to raise up a peculiar, holy people for the kingdom of God the Son, that at the millennium they may be raised to reign with him ; and the glory of the man will be in proportion to the size of his household of children, wives, and servants. Quoting the Scripture that " the man is not without the wom- an, nor the woman without the man," they affirm that it is the duty of every man to marry at least once, and that a woman cannot enter into the heavenly king- dom without a husband to introduce her as belonging to himself. The addition of wives after the first to a man's family is called a "sealing to him," a process which constitutes a relation with all the rights and sanctions of matrimony. This introduction and con- tinuance of the baneful and immoral practice of polyg- amy is likely, sooner or later, to prove destructive to the whole system of Mormonism.
The argument against polygamy from a strictly eth- ical and social standpoint is thus presented by Paley : " The equality in the number of males and females born into the world intimates the intention of God that one woman should be assigned to one man ; for if to one man be allowed an exclusive right to five or more women, four or more men must be deprived of the ex- clusive possession of any; which could never be the order intended. It seems also a significant indication of the divine will that he at first created only one woman to one man. Had God intended polygamy for the species, it is probable he would have begun with it; especially as by giving to Adam more wives than one the multiplication of the human race would have proceeded with a quicker progress. Polygamy not only violates the constitution of nature, and the appa- rent design of the Deity, but produces to the parties themselves, and to the public, the following bad ef- fects: contests and jealousies among the wives of the same husband; distracted affections, or the loss of all affection in the husband himself; a voluptuousness in the rich which dissolves the vigor of their intellectual as well as active faculties, producing that indolence and imbecility, both of mind and body, which have long characterized the nations of the East; the abasement of one half of the human species, who, in countries where polygamy obtains, are degraded into instruments of physical pleasure to the other half; neglect of chil- dren; and the manifold and sometimes unnatural mis- chiefs which arise from a scarcity of women. To com- pensate for these evils, polygamy does not offer a single advantage. In the article of population, which it has been thought to promote, the community gain nothing (nothing, I mean, compared with a state in which mar- riage is nearly universal) ; for the question is not whether one man will have more children by five or more wives than by one, but whether these five wives would not bear the same or a greater number of chil- dren to five separate husbands. And as to the care of children when produced, and the sending of them into the world in situations in which they may be likely to form and bring up families of their own, upon which the increase and succession of the human species in a great degree depend, this is less provided for and less practicable where twenty or thirty children are to be supported by the attention and fortunes of one father than if they were divided into five or six families, to each of which were assigned the industry and inherit- ance of two parents." Tims far Dr. Paley. We shall close this article with the words of an excellent writer on the same side of the subject: "When we reflect," he says, "that the primitive institution of marriage limited it to one man and one woman ; that this insti-