Why We Practice Plural Marriage

"My purpose in publishing another pamphlet on the subject of plural marriage is to throw more light upon it, and to show forth the foolishness and inconsistency of those who hold it up as a 'foul stain that pollutes the very soil where it exists.' Those who are striving to convert our children from the faith and principles so plainly set forth in their own Bible, and which were practiced by the old patriarchs, inspired prophets and mouth-pieces of God, whom Christians quote from as His sacred oracles, and yet wish to take away the civil and religious rights of a people whose belief and practice are confirmed by that very book. Those who disfranchise, without trial, every man and woman who has ever been connected with this plural order, (though the women may have been widows for twenty years or more, and have been pardoned by government for their supposed transgressions) and wish to take away our Territorial charter, confiscate our homes and property, compelling wives to testify against their husbands on pain of greater punishment if they refuse, in order that hungry adventurers, who practice all manner of licentiousness but are screened from the laws which they themselves or their own kind administer, may possess themselves of our hard earned homes in these mountain fastnesses. In short, those who make our religious faith a pretext for stirring up the public mind against us to accomplish their own selfish ends."