George A. Smith

“ From my childhood, history has been a favorite theme. I have loved to read historical works; and for the little time I have been enabled to devote to reading in my younger days I acquired some general knowledge of what is termed "profane history," but only a limited knowledge of what is termed "ecclesiastical history." It did not please me to read the quarrels of the Popes and the cruelties that were inflicted by the dominant powers upon the weak. Those matters never pleased me so much as to read the movements of nations for the purpose of establishing dominion and extending empire ”

“ Circumstances might change so as to throw Napoleon from his rather uncertain seat, and might place some other individual there; but no Government can exist there only by the consent of the people, or such a portion of them as is sufficient to awe the rest and preserve peace, union, and harmony.
Tyrants have attempted to resist this principle, and hence almost every man that has got into power has immediately gone to work to lay plans to conciliate the great and mighty sovereign people, and to perpetuate that authority in their families. ”

“ Shall they be left to trample upon the rights of free men? Who will not consider which is to be preferred—FREEDOM or SLAVERY? Shall this people be left to the mercy of men who come here with armies to enforce principles that are as degrading to us as degradation can be? ”

“ A man has scarcely dared to eat as much as would satisfy his appetite. We had scarcely done this, I say, until they sent their armies by thousands to dragoon this people into subjection, with the avowed aim and object, as published in every paper that comes from the States, to deprive us of our religious rights, and to establish and inflict rights or practices which we abhor, and which we have moved a thousand miles to avoid. ”

“ This system of claiming authority from some distant claim has been practised, and is at the present time: and there is now an individual who claims to be king of France, who assumes that title—an individual who does not live in France: he is expelled, but yet he claims to be the sovereign of France. At the same time the people have, by their unanimous voice, placed Louis Napoleon upon the throne, and they carry out his decrees, while a fugitive claims to be king of France, but without the consent of the people, and has not power enough to pull an old setting hen off her nest. ”

“ The Constitution of the United States was only a little enlargement of the freedom guaranteed under the British Constitution, our revolutionary fathers not thinking any other position or principle as safe or as good ”

“ The President represents the hereditary Sovereign, the members of the Senate representing the States, and the House of Representatives the people of the United States, instead of having the members of the House of Commons who represent the property of the realm. ”

“ Now, I do not suppose that there was a man scarcely in the whole assembly who anxiously desired in his heart to move a thousand miles into. the middle of a desert with his family, to live in this barren, desolate, cold country. I do not suppose there was an individual but would have preferred to inhabit the vacant prairies of Illinois, Iowa, or Missouri, than to have been under the necessity of wandering into a desert, surrounded by mountains, in the midst of sage plains, where nothing could be raised except by artificial irrigation. ”

“ We had begun to make ourselves comfortable, and we had the prospect of peace, as there was nobody upon the face of the earth that would have inhabited this sterile country—a thousand miles from civilized society, where there were no inhabitants but a few naked, savage Indians, whom we cared for and befriended. ”

“ Hence we see the importance of our Elders understanding the national force of laws of kingdoms, the laws of empires, the rules of nations, the relationship of institutions one to another, and the relationship of subjects to their rulers. ”

“ Rulers have assumed to control the people by the power of the bayonet, and many who have attempted to do so have fallen in the attempt, and many have fallen into political disgrace and been destroyed because they attempted to crush down the feelings of a free people. ”

“ They would employ a few troops or a mob, under the pretence of legal authority, and hold men still while the assassin could do his work. This has been the course pursued by our enemies all the time up to the present hour. ”