COUNSEL: Attorney for petitioner: W. Shaw.

JUDGE: Lord Penzance

DATES: 1866 March 20
 

Mormon Marriage – Polygamy

Marriage as understood in Christendom is the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.

A marriage contracted in a country where polygamy is lawful, between a man and a woman who profess a faith which allows polygamy, is not a marriage as understood in Christendom; and although it is a valid marriage by the lex loci, and at the time when it was contracted both the man and the woman were single and competent to contract marriage, the English Matrimonial Court will not recognise it as a valid marriage in a suit instituted by one of the parties against the other for the purpose of enforcing matrimonial duties, or obtaining relief for a breach of matrimonial obligations.

THIS was a petition by a husband for a dissolution of marriage on the ground of adultery. There was no appearance by the respondent or the co-respondent. The cause was heard by the Judge Ordinary on the 20th of January, 1866.

The following facts were proved. The petitioner was an Englishman by birth, and in 1847, when he was about sixteen years of age, he joined a congregation of Mormons in London, and was soon afterwards ordained a priest of that faith. He made the acquaintance of the respondent, then Miss Hawkins, and her family, all of whom were Mormons, and they became engaged to each other. In 1850, Miss Hawkins and her mother went to the Salt Lake City, in the territory of Utah, in the United States; and in 1853 the petitioner, who had in the meantime been employed on a French mission, joined them at that place. The marriage took place at Salt Lake City in April, 1853, and it was celebrated by Brigham Young, the president of the Mormon church, and the governor of the territory, according to the rites and ceremonies of the Mormons. They cohabited as man and wife at Salt Lake City until 1856, and had children. In 1856, the petitioner went on a mission to the Sandwich Islands, leaving the respondent in Utah. On his arrival at the Sandwich Islands, he renounced the Mormon faith and preached against it. A sentence of excommunication was pronounced against him in Utah in December, 1856, and his wife was declared free to marry again. In 1857 a correspondence passed between the petitioner and his wife, [*131] who continued to live in Utah. In his letters he urged her to leave the Mormon territory, and abandon the Mormon faith, and to join him. In her letters she expressed the greatest affection for him, but refused to change her faith, or to follow him out of the Mormon territory. He did not return to Utah, and one of the witnesses was of opinion that he could not have done so after he had left the Mormon church without danger to his life. In 1857 he resumed his domicile in England, where he has ever since resided, and for several years he has been the minister of a dissenting chapel at Derby. In 1859 or 1860, the respondent contracted a marriage according to the Mormon form at Salt Lake City with the co-respondent, and she has since cohabited with him as his wife, and has had children by him.

At the time when the marriage between the petitioner and the respondent was celebrated, polygamy was a part of the Mormon doctrine, and was the common custom in Utah. The petitioner and the respondent were both single, and the petitioner had never taken a second wife. A counsellor of the Supreme Court of the United States proved that a marriage by Brigham Young in Utah, if valid in Utah, would be recognised as valid by the Supreme Court of the United States, provided that the parties were both unmarried at the time when it was contracted, and that they were both capable of contracting marriage. The Supreme Court, however, had no appellate jurisdiction over the courts of other States in matrimonial matters; and the matrimonial court of each State had exclusive jurisdiction within its own limits. Utah was a territory not within any State. There was a matrimonial court, having primary jurisdiction, in that territory, and the judge was nominated by the President of the United States, with the consent of the Senate. The judge was bound to recognise the laws which the people of Utah made for themselves, as long as they did not conflict with the laws of the United States. No evidence was given as to the law of that court respecting Mormon marriages.

Dr. Spinks, for the petitioner. The Court cannot perhaps recognise a polygamous marriage, but this is not a polygamous marriage, for both the parties were single at the time when it was contracted. [*132]

The fact that polygamy is permitted by the law of the country where the marriage was contracted does not render it invalid, or there can be no such thing as a valid marriage in polygamous countries. A marriage between two persons competent to contract marriage, and valid by the law of the place where it was contracted, is valid in every country in the world.

[THE JUDGE ORDINARY. It is necessary to define what is meant by “marriage.” In Christendom it means the union of two people who promise to go through life alone with one another. It does not mean the same thing in Utah, as the man is at liberty to marry as many women as he pleases.]

That is not the question. It does not follow that because the consequences of a marriage in Utah and in England are different, the marriage in Utah is not to be recognised as valid in England. The validity of the marriage must be determined by the law of the place where it was contracted; the consequences of the marriage depend upon the law of the country where the parties reside, whether temporarily or permanently, after the marriage.

[THE JUDGE ORDINARY. It would be extraordinary if a marriage in its essence polygamous should be treated as a good marriage in this country. Different incidents of minor importance attach to the contract of marriage in different countries in Christendom, but in all countries in Christendom the parties to that contract agree to cohabit with each other alone. It is inconsistent with marriage as understood in Christendom, that the husband should have more than one wife.]

Cur. adv. vult.

THE JUDGE ORDINARY. The petitioner in this case claims a dissolution of his marriage on the ground of the adultery of his wife. The alleged marriage was contracted at Utah, in the territories of the United States of America, and the petitioner and the respondent both professed the faith of the Mormons at the time. The petitioner has since quitted Utah, and abandoned the faith, but the respondent has not. After the petitioner had left Utah, the respondent was divorced from him, apparently in accordance with the law obtaining among the Mormons, and has since taken another husband. This is the adultery complained of. [*133]

Before the petitioner could obtain the relief he seeks, some matters would have to be made clear and others explained. The marriage, as it is called, would have to be established as binding by the lex loci, the divorce would have to be determined void, and the petitioner’s conduct in wilfully separating himself from his wife would have to be accounted for. But I expressed at the hearing a strong doubt whether the union of man and woman as practised and adopted among the Mormons was really a marriage in the sense understood in this, the Matrimonial Court of England, and whether persons so united could be considered “husband” and “wife” in the sense in which these words must be interpreted in the Divorce Act. Further reflection has confirmed this doubt, and has satisfied me that this Court cannot properly exercise any jurisdiction over such unions.

Marriage has been well said to be something more than a contract, either religious or civil – to be an Institution. It creates mutual rights and obligations, as all contracts do, but beyond that it confers a status. The position or status of “husband” and “wife” is a recognised one throughout Christendom: the laws of all Christian nations throw about that status a variety of legal incidents during the lives of the parties, and induce definite lights upon their offspring. What, then, is the nature of this institution as understood in Christendom? Its incidents vary in different countries, but what are its essential elements and invariable features? If it be of common acceptance and existence, it must needs (however varied in different countries in its minor incidents) have some pervading identity and universal basis. I conceive that marriage, as understood in Christendom, may for this purpose be defined as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.

There are no doubt countries peopled by a large section of the human race in which men and women do not live or cohabit together upon these terms – countries in which this Institution and status are not known. In such parts the men take to themselves several women, whom they jealously guard from the rest of the world, and whose number is limited only by considerations of material means. But the status of these women in no way resembles that of the Christian “wife.” In some parts they are [*134] slaves, in others perhaps not; in none do they stand, as in Christendom, upon the same level with the man under whose protection they live. There are, no doubt, in these countries laws adapted to this state of things – laws which regulate the duties and define the obligations of men and women standing to each other in these relations. It may be, and probably is, the case that the women there pass by some word or name which corresponds to our word “wife.” But there is no magic in a name; and, if the relation there existing between men and women is not the relation which in Christendom we recognise and intend by the words “husband” or “wife,” but another and altogether different relation, the use of a common term to express these two separate relations will not make them one and the same, though it may tend to confuse them to a superficial observer. The language of Lord Brougham, in Warrender v. Warrender (1), is very appropriate to these considerations:– “If, indeed, there go two things under one and the same name in different countries – if that which is called marriage is of a different nature in each – there may be some room for holding that we are to consider the thing to which the parties have bound themselves according to its legal acceptance in the country where the obligation was contracted. But marriage is one and the same thing substantially all the Christian world over. Our whole law of marriage assumes this; and it is important to observe that we regard it as a wholly different thing, a different status from Turkish or other marriages among infidel nations, because we clearly should never recognise the plurality of wives, and consequent validity of second marriages, standing the first, which second marriages the laws of those countries authorize and validate. This cannot be put on any rational ground, except our holding the infidel marriage to be something different from the Christian, and our also holding the Christian marriage to be the same everywhere. Therefore, all that the Courts of one country have to determine is whether or not the thing called marriage – that known relation of persons, that relation which those Courts are acquainted with, and know how to deal with – has been validly contracted in the other country where the parties professed to bind themselves. If the question is answered in the

(1) 2 Cl. & F. 531. [*135]

affirmative, a marriage has been had; the relation has been constituted; and those Courts will deal with the rights of the parties under it according to the principles of the municipal law which they administer.” “Indeed, if we are to regard the nature of the contract in this respect as defined by the lex loci, it is difficult to see why we may not import from Turkey into England a marriage of such a nature as that it is capable of being followed by, and subsisting with, another, polygamy being there the essence of the contract.”

Now, it is obvious that the matrimonial law of this country is adapted to the Christian marriage, and it is wholly inapplicable to polygamy. The matrimonial law is correspondent to the rights and obligations which the contract of marriage has, by the common understanding of the parties, created. Thus conjugal treatment may be enforced by a decree for restitution of conjugal rights. Adultery by either party gives a right to the other of judicial separation; that of the wife gives a right to a divorce; and that of the husband, if coupled with bigamy, is followed by the same penalty. Personal violence, open concubinage, or debauchery in face of the wife, her degradation in her home from social equality with the husband, and her displacement as the head of his household, are with us matrimonial offences, for they violate the vows of wedlock. A wife thus injured may claim a judicial separation and a permanent support from the husband under the name of alimony at the rate of about one-third of his income. If these and the like provisions and remedies were applied to polygamous unions, the Court would be creating conjugal duties, not enforcing them, and furnishing remedies when there was no offence. For it would be quite unjust and almost absurd to visit a man who, among a polygamous community, had married two women, with divorce from the first woman, on the ground that, in our view of marriage, his conduct amounted to adultery coupled with bigamy. Nor would it be much more just or wise to attempt to enforce upon him that he should treat those with whom he had contracted marriages, in the polygamous sense of that term, with the consideration and according to the status which Christian marriage confers.

If, then, the provisions adapted to our matrimonial system are [*136] not applicable to such a union as the present, is there any other to which the Court can resort? We have in England no law framed on the scale of polygamy, or adjusted to its requirements. And it may be well doubted whether it would become the tribunals of this country to enforce the duties (even if we knew them) which belong to a system so utterly at variance with the Christian conception of marriage, and so revolting to the ideas we entertain of the social position to be accorded to the weaker sex.

This is hardly denied in argument, but it is suggested that; the matrimonial law of this country may be properly applied to the first of a series of polygamous unions; that this Court will be justified in treating such first union as a Christian marriage, and all subsequent unions, if any, as void; the first woman taken to wife as a “wife” in the sense intended by the Divorce Act, and all the rest as concubines. The inconsistencies that would flow from an attempt of this sort are startling enough. Under the provisions of the Divorce Acts the duty of cohabitation is enforced on either party at the request of the other, in a suit for restitution of conjugal rights. But this duty is never enforced on one party if the other has committed adultery. A Mormon husband, therefore, who had married a second wife would be incapable of this remedy, and this Court could in no way assist him towards procuring the society of his wife if she chose to withdraw from him. And yet, by the very terms of his marriage compact, this second marriage was a thing allowed to him, and no cause of complaint in her who had acquiesced in that compact. And as the power of enforcing the duties of marriage would thus be lost, so would the remedies for breach of marriage vows be unjust and unfit. For a prominent provision of the Divorce Act is that a woman whose husband commits adultery may obtain a judicial separation from him. And so utterly at variance with Christian marriage is the notion of permitting the man to marry a second woman that the Divorce Act goes further, and declares that if the husband is guilty of bigamy as well as adultery, it shall be a ground of divorce to the wife. A Mormon, therefore, who had according to the laws of his sect, and in entire accordance with the contract and understanding made with the first woman, gone through the same ceremony with a second, might find himself in the predicament, under the application [*137] of English law, of having no wife at all; for the first woman might obtain divorce on the ground of his bigamy and adultery, and the second might claim a decree declaring the second ceremony void, as he had a wife living at the time of its celebration: and all this without any act done with which he would be expected to reproach himself, or of which either woman would have the slightest right to complain. These difficulties may be pursued further in the reflection that if a Mormon had married fifty women in succession, this Court might be obliged to pick out the fortieth as his only wife, and reject the rest. For it might well be that after the thirty-ninth marriage the first wife should die, and the fortieth union would then be the only valid one, the thirty-eight intervening ceremonies creating no matrimonial bond during the first wife’s life.

Is the Court, then, justified in thus departing from the compact made by the parties themselves? Offences necessarily presuppose duties. There are no conjugal duties, but those which are expressed or implied in the contract of marriage. And if the compact of a polygamous union does not carry with it those duties which it is the office of the marriage law in this country to assert and enforce, such unions are not within the reach of that law. So much for the reason of the thing.

There is, I fear, little to be found in our books in the way of direct authority. But there is the case of Ardaseer Cursetjee v. Perozeboye (1), in which the Privy Council distinctly held that Parsee marriages were not within the force of a charter extending the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts to Her Majesty’s subjects in India, “so far as the circumstances and occasions of the said people shall require.” And the following passage sufficiently indicates the grounds upon which the Court proceeded:– “We do not pretend to know what may be the duties and obligations attending upon the matrimonial union between Parsees, nor what remedies may exist for the violation of them; but we conceive that there must be some laws or some customs having the effect of laws which apply to the married state of persons of this description. It may be that such laws and customs do not afford what we should deem, as between Christians, an adequate relief; but it

(1) 10 Moo. P. C. 375, 419. [*138]

must be recollected that the parties themselves could have contracted for the discharge of no other duties and obligations than such as from time out of mind were incident to their own caste, nor could they reasonably have expected more extensive remedies, if aggrieved, than were customarily afforded by their own usages.”

In conformity with those views the Court must reject the prayer of this petition, but I may take the occasion of here observing that this decision is confined to that object. This Court does not profess to decide upon the rights of succession or legitimacy which it might be proper to accord to the issue of the polygamous unions, nor upon the rights or obligations in relation to third persons which people living under the sanction of such unions may have created for themselves. All that is intended to be here decided is that as between each other they are not entitled to the remedies, the adjudication, or the relief of the matrimonial law of England.

Petition dismissed.