THE UTAH PROBLEM,—In the United States House of Representatives, on the 27th ult., in the discussion of the Utah bill, Mr. Brown of Georgia made an extraordi-nary speech in support of his amendment making adultery the sole cause of divorce in the district of Columbia, the Territories of the United States, and wherever the United States has sole jurisdiction. He contrasted what he termed the polygamy of New England and the polygamy of Utah, stating that while he had no pur-pose to attack New England he made the comparison between it and Utah because New England had kept statistics of its crimes while other States had not. The picture he drew was drawn "more in sor-row than in anger." There had been over 27,000 divorces granted in New England within the last twenty years, destroying 27,000 families and turning loose 54,000 per-sons to marry again, all illegally, except those who were divorced for adultery or fornication in the other party. Assuming that one-third of them had been divorced for adultery, it would leave 36,000 persons divorced, and married again who were prac-ticing polygamy in New England, while the Utah Commission, acting under the Edmunds bill, after having searched Utah with the test oath, could find but 12,000 men and women who would not swear that they had never in their lives been guilty of polygamy. Prostitution was practiced in New England to an alarming extent, and fœticide to an extent that, if continued, would in less than a century depopulate New England of its Puritan stock. In Massachusetts, within the last 20 years, population had increased 44 per cent, and marriages 62 per cent., while divorces in-creased 147 per cent. If the ministers and the churches did their whole duty, public sentiment would soon sweep from our statute books the wicked and immoral di-vorce laws.
Mr. Brown was ready to sanction all Constitutional legislation which could be devised for the suppression of polygamy in Utah, and of illegal divorce, prostitution and fœticide in New England and else-where, but he was not willing to violate the oath he had taken to support the Constitu-tion to gratify the New England intermed-dling, or to suppress any sect or denomina-tion, however unpopular it might be.
Mr. Hoar said he had heard enough of Mr. Brown's speech to comprehend its character, but not its motive. It did not seem possible that that Senator had taken so much pains as his speech indicated for the mere purpose of making a malicious and malignant attack on the people of New England. Mr. Hoar could only infer that Mormonism was more in accord with that Senator's convictions than opposed to them. Each county and each section of each county may have vices, but whatever there was in New England that was a reproach to her, Mr. Hoar said, was carefully writ-ten down by New England historians. There were sections of country in which that course was not pursued. If he (Mr. Hoar) cared to follow the style of argu-ment followed by the Senator from Geor-gia (Mr. Brown) he could say some things without even reference to statistics which would be sufficiently disagreeable. With a desire to credit the portion of country from which that Senator came with as much propriety as he could, Mr. Hoar thought that the presence of large numbers of mullattoes remained to be accounted for in some way. But he would not enter upon this sort of argument. Addressing himself directly to the bill, Mr. Hoar took it up by sections, and explained the legal bearings of the several provisions. Those provisions were such, he said, as either al-ready existed in the State which the Sena-tor from Georgia represented, or would at once be placed among the statutes of that State if polygamy existed within its bor-ders. They were entirely constitutional, and were necessary to carry out the pur-poses of the bill.
