Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/514

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490
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Mormon Church until the United States marshals chased them into the mountains. Robert T. Burton, who murdered four of the "Morisites" after their surrender, was rewarded with the offices of collector, sheriff, and bishop, and two extra wives given him. Bill Hickman, who confesses to twenty murders, was a member of the Legislature, and had during his career ten wives. Samuel Smith, Bishop of Boxelder, rejoices, presumably, in the ownership of six wives, of whom two are his brother's daughters. It is not conclusive that these men represented the average moral tone, as they were appointed by Brigham before being elected by the voters; nevertheless, I do not remember having heard the appointment spoken of with disapprobation by the people. I visited both Haight and Lee at their homes in Southern Utah, and, while the latter was under some popular condemnation, the former was a leading citizen of Toquerville. Polygamy, like slavery, is necessarily the practice of a minority—a select aristocracy; but in both cases it is to be noted that the great majority who could not enjoy its benefits, if any, were its most ardent defenders. Could this social and political condition have continued three generations, then would the future scientist have found in Utah an entirely new variety of our species—Saxons without a constitutional government, Britons with no consciousness of a personal sovereignty, Americans lacking even the wish for a republic; wives willing to share a husband's heart, maidens looking for an "exaltation" in polygamy, and children with blood relationship so mixed that no "heraldry Harvey" could ever have succeeded in tracing the circulation. From a scientific standpoint, it is almost a pity the Gentile could not have left Utah untouched for a century—it would have been such an interesting experiment. With the Gentile invasion and establishment of United States authority, the experiment practically comes to an end; but, let it be dealt with as wisely and mercifully as it may, the break-up must be attended with fearful suffering.

SKETCH OF PROF. J. S. NEWBERRY, M. D., LL. D.

JOHN STRONG NEWBERRY, whose portrait we give in the present number of the Monthly, was born December 22, 1822, at Windsor, Connecticut. He is sprung from old Puritan stock, his ancestors having formed part of a colony which, in 1635, emigrated from Dorchester in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and made the first settlement in Connecticut, at Windsor. Many members of the Newberry family earned high distinction by their services in the field and in the council during the colonial period, in the War of Independence, and in the later history of Connecticut.