tried to tell you, of men, who when menaced by famine, and
in the midst of pestilence, with every energy taxed by the
urgency of the hour, were building roads and bridges, laying
out villages, and planting cornfields, for the stranger
who might come after them, their kinsman only by a common
humanity, and peradventure a common suffering,--of men, who
have renewed their prosperity in the homes they have founded
in the desert,--and who, in their new built city, walled
round by mountains like a fortress, are extending pious
hospitalities to the destitute emigrants from our frontier
lines,--of men who, far removed from the restraints of law,
obeyed it from choice, or found in the recesses of their
religion, something not inconsistent with human laws, but
far more controlling; and who are now soliciting from the
government of the United States, not indemnity,--for the
appeal would be hopeless, and they know it--not protection,
for they now have no need of it,--but that identity of
political institutions and that community of laws with the
rest of us, which was confessedly their birthright when they
were driven beyond our borders.

"I said I would give you the opinion I formed of the Mormons:
you may deduce it for yourselves from these facts. But I will
add that I have not yet heard the single charge against them
as a community, against their habitual purity of life,
their integrity of dealing, their toleration of religious
differences in opinion, their regard for the laws, or their
devotion to the constitutional government under which we live,
that I do not from my own observation, or the testimony of
others, know to be unfounded."