an of sagacity and integrity, and his opportunities for
the formation of a wise opinion upon this subject were such as very
few have possessed:

"I have gone over the work I assigned myself when I accepted
your Committee's invitation, as fully as I could do without
trespassing too largely upon your courteous patience. But I
should do wrong to conclude my lecture without declaring in
succinct and definite terms, the opinions I have formed and
entertain of the Mormon people. The libels, of which they
have been made the subject, make this a simple act of justice.
Perhaps, too, my opinion, even with those who know me as you
do, will better answer its end following after the narrative I
have given.

"I have spoken to you of a people; whose industry had made
them rich, and gathered around them all the comforts, and not
a few of the luxuries of refined life; expelled by lawless
force into the wilderness; seeking an untried home far away
from the scenes which their previous life had endeared to
them; moving onward, destitute, hunger-sickened, and sinking
with disease; bearing along with them their wives and
children, the aged, and the poor, and the decrepid; renewing
daily on their march, the offices of devotion, the ties of
family, and friendship, and charity; sharing necessities, and
braving dangers together, cheerful in the midst of want and
trial, and persevering until they triumphed. I have told, or
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 wou