Too Many Wives.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 21, 22 May 1912, Page 5

Too Many Wives.

A writer in a French paper is very indignant because a man who married six wives without waiting for the death of any of them has been sent to prison for six years—a year for each wife. On the contrary, we are told, he ought to have received the highest decoration in the land. At any rate, the argument runs, if it is an excess of zeal to marry six wives almost at the same time, every man ought to be allowed to take at least two. In other words, bigamy ought to be legalised at once. Trigamy may come later on. Legislators, sociologists, moralists, and other old women are always complaining about the decadence of marriage, and here we have a good citizen offering his heart, his hand, and his name to several women, with the result that he is packed off to prison, perhaps even to penal servitude. Meanwhile, we have quite a number of young women who are condemned to endure the burden of celibacy all their lives; while, on the other hand, there are very many boys, young and old, who refuse to take a wife because one wife is either too much or too little. If we said to them: “You have the right to take two,” perhaps they might make up their minds. After all, it is entirely my own concern if my appetite is sufficient to enable me to consume two portions at a restaurant. If the first of my wives knows in advance that there will be a second one, and if the second one is aware of the existence of the first, how on earth can bigamy be reprobated as immoral? Such Mormonism would have the happiest effects from the point of view of repopulation and the publie welfare. No more matrimonial games of hide-and-seek, no more vaudeville complications. —This is all very fine, but would a multiplication of our own wives tend to check our admiration for those of other people?