on and New York denied its
existence, with the most solemn asseverations. It was on Sunday, August
29th, 1852, that it was openly avowed at Salt Lake City,--Brigham Young
on that day producing the copy of a revelation, pretended to have
been received by Smith on the 12th of July, 1843, which annulled
the monogamic injunctions of the Book of Mormon, and stating, that,
"although the doctrine of polygamy has not been preached by the elders,
the people have believed in it for years." Upon the same occasion,
another doctrine was urged,--that human beings upon earth propagate
merely bodies, the souls which inhabit them being begotten by spirits in
heaven.

The number of the wives of many of the principal Mormons has been
greatly exaggerated. Attached to Young's establishment in Salt Lake
City, there are only sixteen. His first wife occupies the Mansion-House
exclusively, while the others are quartered in the Lion-House. Besides
these, he has probably fifty or sixty more, scattered all over the
Territory, and in the principal cities of the United States and of Great
Britain. His living children do not exceed thirty in number. Kimball's
wives, resident in Salt Lake City, are quite as numerous as Young's, and
his children even more so. Both of them aim to reproduce the domestic
life of the Biblical patriarchs; and within the squares which they
occupy their descendants dwell also, with their wives and progeny, all
of them acknowledging the control of the head of the family. The harems
of very few of the Church dignitaries approach these in magnitude. The
extent of the practice of polygamy cannot be determined by a residence
in Salt Lake City alone, for it is there that those Church officers
congregate whose wealth enables them to maintain large families. As
the traveller journeys northward or southward, he finds the instances
diminish in almost exact proportion to his remoteness from the central
ecclesiastical influence. There is even a sect of Mormons, called
Gladdenites, after their founder, one Gladden Bishop, who deny the
right of Young to supreme authority over the Church, and discountenance
polygamy. No computation of their number can be made, for few of them
dare avow their heresy, on account of the persecution which is the
invariable result. The leaders of this sect maintain that a majority of
the married men in Utah have but one wife each, and their assertion has
never been controverted.

One of the most monstrous resu