"I am at the defiance of the rulers of the greatest nations on the earth, with the United States all put together, to produce a more loyal people than the Latter Day Saints. Have they, as a people, broken any law? No, they have not. Have the United States? Yes. They have trampled the Constitution under their feet with impunity, and ridden recklessly over all law, to persecute and drive this people. Admit, for argument's sake, that the Mormon elders have more wives than one, yet our enemies never have proved it. If I had forty wives in the United States, they did not know it, and could not substantiate it; neither did I ask any lawyer, judge, or magistrate for them. I live above law, and so do this people. Do the laws of the United States require us to crouch and bow down to the miserable wretches who violate them? No!
"I defy the world to prove that we have infringed upon that
law. You may circumscribe the whole earth, and pass through every Christian nation, so called, and what do you find? If you tell them a 'Mormon' has two wives, they are shocked, and call it dreadful blasphemy. If you whisper such a thing in the ears of a gentile, who takes a fresh woman every night, he is thunderstruck with the enormity of the crime. . . . .
"Now, let me tell you the great, killing story. 'Governor Young has sixteen wives and fourteen babies.' Now, they did not see that sight, but the circumstance was as follows: I took some of my neighbors into the large carriage, and rode down to Father Chase's to eat watermelons. When driving out of the gate, in the evening, Brother Babbitt walks up, and I invited him into the carriage, and he rode up into the city with me, and I suppose he told the United States officers. That, I believe, is the way the story of the sixteen wives and fourteen children first came into circulation.
"But this does not begin to be the extent of my possessions, for I am enlarging on the right hand and on the left; and shall soon be able, Abraham-like, to muster the strength of my house, and take my rights, asking no favors of judges or secretaries."
At another time he used the following language:—
"When the officers returned from this Territory to the States, did we send them away? We did not. I will tell you what I did, and what I will do again. I did chastise the poor, mean ruffian,—the poor, miserable creature who came here by the name of Brochus,—when he arose before this people, to preach to them, and tell them of meanness which he supposed they were guilty of, and traduce their characters.
"It is true, as it is said in the report of these officers, if I had crooked my little finger he would have been used up. But I did not bend it. If I had, the sisters alone felt indignant enough to have chopped him in pieces. I did not do it, however, but suffered him to fill up the measure of his shame and iniquity, until his cup is running over.
"I have no fears whatever of Franklin Pierce excusing me from office, and saying that another man shall be the Governor of this Territory. At the beginning of our settlements, when we sent Almon W. Babbitt to Washington with our constitution for a State government, and to ask leave to adopt it, he requested that
I should not sign my name to it as Governor; 'for,' said he, 'if you do, it will thwart all our plans.' I said, 'My name will go as it is in that document, and stay there, from this time henceforth and forever. Now,' I continued, 'if you do not believe it, you may go to Washington, and give those papers to Dr. Bernheisel, and operate against him, and against our getting a State government, and you cannot hinder it.'