Show THE AST1MORH0N AGITATION AGITA-TION I We have received a circular letter from Thomas Hoyne John Want worth Herrick Johnson J Hall Dow George S Willitts and E F Cragin a committee appointed at a recent antipolygamy mass meeting held in Chicago We know some of these gentlemen personally and the rest of them by reputation to be soberminded citizens who rarely become unduly excited on any subject sub-ject and we are a little surprised to discover in their letter evidences not only of singular excitement in themselves but of a desire also to throw us into a state of perturbation perturba-tion and by means of the Evening News to excite aud agitate this goodly and peaceful commonwealth of Michigan And about what Simply because certain persons in the territory of Utah and thereabouts instead of enjoying connubial plurality plu-rality in succession like the average American prefer to have all their wives at once They ask us in substance sub-stance to get right up and howl about this Utah custom to stir up our esteemed contemporaries about it to call meetings about it in halls and schoolhouses and to precipitate a foot of petitions letters and personal per-sonal solicitations on the subjec upon our delegation in Congress We must respectfully but firmly and calmly decline this task Our declination is based upon a multitude of reasons A few of them are sufficient We are not excited ex-cited upon the subject and in spite of the most arduous and conscientious conscien-tious efforts in that direction we cannot become excited Nor do we think the gentlemen of the committee commit-tee nor the average congressman just now howling about the Mormons Mor-mons are really as excited as they would have the public believe The public at large are not excited and do not intend to get excited That is plain They may attend meetingsas they would go to Oscar Wildes lectures if they were free and they may vote for indignant resolutions framed in advance by the projectors of the meetings and they may sign petitionswho refuses to sign a petition but they are perfectly calm and almost indifferent The man of common sense does not lay awake nights thinking about the personal vices of his fellow citizens citi-zens if those personal vices do not affect his own happiness or his own peace He may be satisfied with one wife himself or he may content himself without any and many wise men helve approved the latter as the safer c jurse but he will not concern himself seriously about the connubial condition of his neighbor so long as the latter Keeps tile peace is honest does not publicly misuse his one or more connubial companions com-panions and so long as the wife or wives chiefly concerned are satisfied with the situation The man of common sense takes this view of the Mormon question not only for that he desires to mind his own business and not interfere with that of his neighbor but because be-cause he knows perfectly well that it is the supremest folly to attempt by legislation to prevent his neighbor neigh-bor from having two or more wives if his neighbor can afford it and the wives are willing It cant be done Jf it co1d be done the man of common tense even if he did get excited on the subject would note begin in Utah but at home where I he is perfectly well aware bigamy polygamy and polyandry in some 1 form or other is practiced all about him every day He knows that in this Cnristian city there are hundreds hun-dreds nay thousands of men who live in open polygamy hundreds of I women who are guilty of polyandry polyan-dry and that he and the society of which he and they are parts cannot can-not discover or apply a remedy i He therefore in time becomes I I content to govern his own domestic affairs and to leave others to govern gov-ern theirs Heif he be of that sortlives in as much peace as possible pos-sible with Ins own one wife and cares not how many his neighbor If s has so be that his neighbor i do not Q ask the community to support any I a of them Since he knows that he cannot regulate the connubial affairs af-fairs of his own townsmen he will net attempt to regulate those of people a thousand miles away owhich affect him still less as his failure would be all the more complete com-plete We have no doubt that if many of the honorable congressmen who grow hysterical public over the polygamy of Utah were to look ino their mirrors as they declaim their reflected faces would stare them out of countenanceDetroit Evening flews |