SUA SI BONA NORINT.

A Special Correspondent's lot—Hypothecated wits—The Daughters of Zion—Their modest demeanour—Under the banner of Woman's Rights—The discoverer discovered—Turning the tables—"By Jove, sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak!"

IT has been my good fortune to see many countries, and my ill-luck to have had to maintain, during all my travels, an appearance of intelligence. Though I have been over much of Europe, over all of India and its adjoining countries, Afghanistan, Beloochistan, Burmah, and Ceylon, in the north and west and south of Africa, and in various out-of-the-way islands in miscellaneous oceans, I have never visited one of them purely "for pleasure." I have always been "representing" other people. My eyes and ears have been hypothecated, so to speak—my intelligence been in pledge. When I was sent out to watch wars, there was a tacit agreement that I should be shot at, so that I might let other people know what it felt like. When run away with by a camel in a desert that had no "other end" to it, I accepted my position simply as material for a letter for which my employers had duly paid. They tried to drown me in a mill-stream; that was a good half-column. Two Afridis sat down by me when I had sprained my knee by my horse falling, and waited for me to faint that they might cut my throat. But they overdid it, for they looked so like vultures that I couldn't faint. But it made several very harrowing paragraphs. I have been sent to sea to get into cyclones in the Bay of Biscay, and hurricanes in the Mozambique Channel, that I might describe lucidly the sea-going properties of the vessels under test. I have been sent to a King to ask him for information that it was known beforehand he would not give, and commissioned to follow Irish agitators all over Ireland, in the hope that I might be able to say more about them than they knew themselves. It has been my duty to walk about inquisitively after Zulus, and to run away judiciously with Zulus after me. Sometimes I have taken long shots at Afghans, and sometimes they have taken short ones at me. In short, I have been deputed at one time and another to do many things which I should never have done "for pleasure," and many which, for pleasure, I should like to do again. But wherever I have been sent I have had to go about, seeing as much as I could and asking about all I couldn't see, and have become, professionally, accustomed to collecting evidence, sifting it on the spot, and forming my own conclusions. In a way, therefore, a Special Correspondent becomes of necessity an expert at getting at facts. He finds that everything he is commissioned to investigate has at least two sides to it, and that many things have two right sides. There are plenty of people always willing to mislead him, and he has to pick and choose. He arrives unprejudiced, and speaks according to the knowledge he acquires. Sometimes he is brought up to the hill with a definite commission to curse, but like Balaam, the son of Barak, he begins blessing; or he is sent out to bless, and falls to cursing. Until he arrives on the spot it is impossible for him to say which he will do. But, whatever he does, the Special Correspondent writes with the responsibility of a large public. It is impossible to write flippantly with all the world for critics.

Now, the demeanour of women in Utah, as compared with say Brighton or Washington, is modesty itself, and the children are just such healthy, pretty, vigorous children as one sees in the country, or by the seaside in England—and, in my opinion, nowhere else. Utah-born girls, the offspring of plural wives, have figures that would make Paris envious, and they carry themselves with almost Oriental dignity. But remember, Salt Lake City is a city of rustics. They do not affect "gentility," and are careful to explain at every opportunity that the stranger must not be shocked at their homely ways and speech. There is an easiness of manner therefore which is unconventional, but it is only a blockhead who could mistake this natural gaiety of the country for anything other than it is. There is nothing, then, so far as I have seen, in the manners of Salt Lake City to make me suspect the existence of that "licentiousness" of which so much has been written; but there is a great deal on the contrary to convince me of a perfectly exceptional reserve and self-respect. I know, too, from medical assurance, that Utah has also the practical argument of healthy nurseries to oppose to the theories of those who attack its domestic relations on physiological grounds.

But the "Woman's Rights" aspect of polygamy is one that has never been theorized at all. It deserves, however, special consideration by those who think that they are "elevating" Mormon women by trying to suppress polygamy. It possesses also a general interest for all. For the plural wives of Salt Lake City are not by any means "waiting for salvation" at the hands of the men and women of the East. Unconscious of having fetters on, they evince no enthusiasm for their noisy deliverers.

On the contrary, they consider their interference as a slur upon their own intelligence, and an encroachment upon those very rights about which monogamist females are making so much clamour. They look upon themselves as the leaders in the movement for the emancipation of their sex, and how, then, can they be expected to accept emancipation at the hands of those whom they are trying to elevate? Thinking themselves in the van of freedom, are they to be grateful for the guidance of stragglers in the rear? They laugh at such sympathy, just as the brave man might laugh at encouragement from a coward, or wealthy landowners at a pauper's exposition of the responsibilities of property. Can the deaf, they ask, tell musicians anything of the beauty of sounds, or need the artist care for the blind man's theory of colour?

Indeed, it has been in contemplation to evangelize the Eastern States, on this very subject of Woman's Rights! To send out from Utah exponents of the proper place of woman in society, and to teach the women of monogamy their duties to themselves and to each other! "Woman's true status"—I am quoting from their organ—"is that of true status companion to man, but so protected by law that she can act in an independent sphere if he abuse his position, and render union unendurable." They not only, therefore, claim all that women elsewhere claim, but they consider marriage the universal birthright of every female. First of all, they say, be married, and then in case of accidents have all other "rights" as well. But to start with, every woman must have a husband. She is hardly worth calling a woman if she is single. Other privileges ought to be hers lest marriage should prove disastrous. But in the first instance she should claim her right to be a wife. And everybody else should insist on that claim being recognized. The rest is very important to fall back upon, but union with man is her first step towards her proper sphere.

Now, could any position be imagined more ludicrous for the would-be saviours of Utah womanhood than this, that the slaves whom they talk of rescuing from their degradation should be striving to bring others up to their own standard? When Stanley was in Central Africa, he was often amused and sometimes not a little disgusted to find that instead of his discovering the Central Africans, the Central Africans insisted on "discovering" him. Though he went into villages in order to take notes of the savages, and to look at their belongings, the savages used to turn the tables on him by discussing him, and taking his clothes off to examine the curious colour, as they thought it, of his skin. So that what with shaking off his explorers, and hunting up the various articles they had abstracted for their unscientific scrutiny, his time used to be thoroughly wasted, and he used to come away crestfallen, and with the humiliating consciousness that it was the savages and not he that had gained information and been "improved" by his visit. They had "discovered" Stanley, not Stanley them. Something very like this will be the fate of those who come to Utah thinking that they will be received as shining lights from a better world. They will not find the women of Utah waiting with outstretched arms to grasp the hand that saves them. There will be no stampede of down-trodden females. On the contrary, the clarion of woman's rights will be sounded, and the intruding "champions" of that cause will find themselves attacked with their own weapons, and hoisted with their own petards. 'With the sceptre of woman's rights the daughters of Zion will go down as apostles to evangelize the nation. 'Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?' The Daughter of Zion!"

Mormon wives, then, are emphatically "woman's-rights women," a title which is everywhere recognized as indicating independence of character and an elevated sense of the claims of the sex, and as inferring exceptional freedom in action. And I venture to hold the opinion that it is only women who are conscious of freedom that can institute such movements as this in Utah, and only those who are enthusiastic in the cause, that can carry them on with the courage and industry so conspicuous in this community.

A Governor once went there specially instructed to release the women of Utah from their bondage, but he found none willing to be released! The franchise was then clamoured for in order to let the women of Utah "fight their oppressors at the polls," and the Mormon "tyrants" took the hint to give their wives votes, and the first use these misguided victims of plurality made of their new possession was to protest, 20,000 victims together, against the calumnies heaped upon the men of Utah "whom they honoured and loved." To-day it is an act of Congress that is to set free these worse-than-Indian-suttee-devotees, and whether they like it or not they are to be compelled to leave their husbands or take the alternative of sending their husbands to jail.

It reminds me of the story, "Sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak." A man sitting in a restaurant saw his neighbour eating his steak without mustard, and pushed the pot across to him. The stranger bowed his acknowledgment of the courtesy and went on eating, but without any mustard. But the other man's sense of propriety was outraged. "Beefsteak without mustard—monstrous," said he to himself; and again he pushed the condiment towards the stranger. "Thank you, sir," said the stranger, but without taking any, continued his meal as he preferred it, without mustard. But his well-wisher could not stand it any longer. He waited for a minute to see if the man would eat his beef in the orthodox manner, and then, his sense of the fitness of things overpowering him, he seized the mustard-pot and dabbing down a great splash of mustard on to the stranger's plate, burst out with, "By Jove, sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak!"

In the same way the monogamist reformers, having twice failed to persuade the wives of Utah to abandon their husbands by giving them facilities for doing so, are now going to take their husbands from them by the force of the law. "Sua si bona norint" is the excuse of the reformers to themselves for their philanthropy, and, like the old Inquisitors who burnt their victims to save them from heresy, they are going to make women wretched in order to make them happy. Says the Woman's Exponent: "If the women of Utah are slaves, their bonds are loving ones and dearly prized. They are to-day in the free and unrestricted exercise of more political and social rights than are the women of any other part of these United States. But they do not choose as a body to court the follies and vices which adorn the civilization of other cities, nor to barter principles of tried worth for the tinsel of sentimentality or the gratification of passion."

It is of no use for "Mormon-eaters" to say that this is written "under direction," and that the women who write in this way are prompted by authority. Nor would they say it if they knew personally the women who write thus.

Moreover, Mormon-eaters are perpetually denouncing the "scandalous freedom" and "independence" extended to Mormon women and girls. And the two charges of excessive freedom and abject slavery seem to me totally incompatible.

I myself as a traveller can vouch for this: that one of my first impressions of Salt Lake City was this, that there was a thoroughly unconventional absence of restraint; just such freedom as one is familiar with in country neighbourhoods, where "every one knows every one else," and where the formalities of town etiquette are by general consent laid aside. And this also I can sincerely say: that I never ceased to be struck by the modest decorum of the women I meet out of doors. After all, self-respect is the true basis of woman's rights.

This aspect of the polygamy problem deserves, then, I think, considerable attention. An Act has been passed to compel some 20,000 women to leave their husbands, and the world looks upon these women as slaves about to be freed from tyrants. Yet they have said and done all that could possibly be expected of them, and even more than could have been expected, to assure the world that they have neither need nor desire for emancipation, as they honour their husbands, and prefer polygamy, with all its conditions, to the monogamy which brings with it infidelity at home and prostitution abroad. Again and again they have protested, in petitions to individuals and petitions to Congress, that "their bonds are loving ones and dearly prized." But the enthusiasm of reformers takes no heed of their protests. They are constantly declaring in public speeches and by public votes, in books and in newspapers—above all, in their daily conduct—that they consider themselves free and happy women, but the zeal of philanthropy will not be gainsaid, and so the women of Utah are, all else failing, to be saved from themselves. The "foul blot" of a servitude which the serfs aver does not exist is to be wiped out by declaring 20,000 wives mistresses, their households illegal, and their future children bastards!

"By Jove, sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak!"