, moreover, this course was a justification to
polygamists in deserting their wives, on the ground that the Church had
never sanctioned the relation.

This Church leader, himself a new polygamist, answered miserably: "The
Church will not let itself be put in such a light before the country.
That would be to admit that it has been responsible all the time."

I asked: "Has the Church not been responsible?"

He replied--equivocating--: "Well, not the Church. The Church has never
taken a vote on it."

"That," I said, "answers why you have never got redress and never will
get it because you are all liars, from top to bottom. You know you would
never have entered the polygamous relation--nor could you have induced
your wife to enter it--except with full knowledge that the Church did
authorize it. The Church is one man, and you know it. The whole theory
of your theology collapses if you deny that."

He shook his head blankly. "I don't know what is to become of us. I
don't see any way out."

I could only advise him that he should join with other new polygamists
in demanding that the Church authorities make all possible reparation to
the women and children who were being crushed under the penalties of the
Church's crime. But I knew that such advice was vain. He could not make
such a demand, any more than any other slave could demand his freedom.
And if the non-polygamists demanded it, the Prophets would deny that
polygamy was being practiced. The children could not be legitimized--for
the Church cannot obtain legitimizing statutes without avowing its
responsibility for the need of them; and the Gentiles can not pass such
statutes without encouraging the continuance of polygamy by removing the
social penalty against it.

So the burden of all this guilt, this shame, this deception, falls upon
the unfortunate plural wife and her innocent offspring. She is bound by
the most sacred obligations never to reveal the name of the officiating
priest--even if she knew it--nor to disclose the circumstances of the
ceremony. She has justified her degradation by the assumption that God
has commanded it; that her husband has received a revelation authorizing
him to take her into his household; that her children will be legitimate
in the sight of God, and that eventually the civilized world will come
to a joyous acceptance of the practice of polygamy. When the trials of
her life afflict her and she finds no relentment in the world's disdai