George Q. Cannon

“ Is there a false principle extant? It is our bounden duty to seek its eradication. Is there tyranny in the world, tyranny of the body, tyranny of the mind, physical or mental tyranny? It devolves upon us as Latter-day Saints to overthrow it. Are there social problems to be solved? Who shall solve them? Who can do so? Remove the Latter-day Saints from the field, and who can solve these problems which are pressing themselves upon the attention of all thinking people? The whole earth is full of violence, wrong, oppression, misgovernment, and a thousand other evils which I cannot now enumerate. ”

“ Why, in every generation a large percentage of our sisters has been consigned either to that nameless condition of which it is a shame to speak, or have died without ever knowing the joys of maternity. When I think of it, when I read the history of the boasted civilization of the Greeks and the Romans, and think of the boasted civilization of our day, inherited from these nations, and witness its effects, I wonder how man, standing up in the face of heaven, dare look at woman and talk about being her protector. ”

“ That is the freedom I believe in; that is the freedom I mean to teach to my children and to all men so far as my voice and influence extend; that is the freedom I mean to contend for and, as I have said hundreds of times to leading men of this nation, I will, if necessary, take my sons and make them swear that they will stand by and maintain this liberty as long as they live and contend for it and teach their children after them to contend for it also. I believe in the fullest liberty upon these points. We have been accused of exclusiveness. ”

“ The influence that attends us is being more widely felt; our power for good is increasing, our strength, our union and the other qualities that we possess, and which we have manifested through our career, are being more recognized every day. It has always been a favorite idea of mine, that no single human being who chooses to exert an influence for good among his fellow men, ever spoke or ever acted in vain—without making his influence, his example, his words, have an effect upon those with whom he has been brought in contact. ”

“ But we have grown, our minds have been enlarged, we have become emancipated from many old follies, and freedom of thought has taken place in our midst; but the great labor that devolves upon us is to educate ourselves, and then we can soon educate the rest of mankind, for as I have said, our example is felt; the influence of it goes forth and bears its fruit among other people. But it is a most difficult thing to get these Latter-day Saints to understand the principles that are as plain as the noonday sun —that they should receive readily, and why? ”

“ In the first place we have got to correct and remove them from our own midst. It is a slow labor to train a people, brought as we are from every nation, educated in every creed, speaking almost every language and heirs of every tradition. There is, false or true, wedded to us old customs and the evils of ages, which have been transmitted from generation to generation until they have formed a strong part of our very being. ”

“ The Parsee and fire-worshipper and men of kindred belief may yet come to this land of liberty; and I tell you if the spirit of the Constitution be maintained, as the Latter-day Saints will yet maintain it, they will have a perfect right to worship their God according to the dictates of their own consciences without any to molest or make afraid. The only time that these men can be interfered with will be when their religious acts interfere with the rights and liberties of their fellowmen. Hear it, ye Latter-day Saints! When John Chinaman comes in your midst, teach your children to respect him. ”

“ I have never felt as I do to-day, and as I have recently, of the great importance of our training and educating our children to the greatest and best advantage, that nothing shall be left undone on our part to prepare them for the great work which they have to perform. This is a labor that we can accomplish. It does not depend so much upon the knowledge of books; a great many people imagine that only books are necessary for education; but the man is best educated, in my opinion, who has thought the most, and that correctly. ”

“ The latter law is far superior to the other. I would say, as a father, if I had a family of that kind, by all means let my daughters marry, let every woman have a husband that wants one. Then if every man marries a wife, they will only have a wife apiece; but if there should be any of the boys that do not want wives, the girls would not necessarily go without husbands.
I consider our false tradition upon this subject one of the greatest evils at the present time that exists upon the earth. ”

“ I rejoice exceedingly, my brethren and sisters, this day in your midst, and I am thankful for the delightful circumstances by which you are surrounded. I am thankful that the prospects before you are so promising, so full of hope and so delightful to contemplate. It is true we have had sickness, we have had many deaths, this has been a cause of regret. But death is unavoidable, and with it all we are in much better circumstances and more favorably situated than the generality of the children of men. The Latter-day Saints are rapidly becoming a great and important people. ”

“ Can you not see that these are acts of folly, that we are not required, because of the liberality we should cherish and cultivate, to throw down every barrier and allow vice to stalk through our cities and enter into our family circles to pollute the purity that should prevail there. Can you not see, Latter-day Saints, however young, however uninformed you may be, can you not see that to allow this liberty would be wrong? Therefore we ought to discriminate. Nowhere in good society has a man the entree without proper introduction. ”

“ Because God is the Father of the Latter-day Saints as well as of every human being; God is the father of all, is the father of the Chinaman, the Hindoo, the African, the European, the American; is the Father of all the races of men and of every creed and nationality. When he establishes his kingdom it will protect all in their equal rights; I as a Latter-day Saint, will not have power to trample on my fellow-man who may not be orthodox in my opinion, because I am a Latter-day Saint ”

“ I say to the humble struggler, to the man or woman who may be content with poverty, whose life may be uneventful in his own estimation, who may be hidden from the popular sight and may not figure on the world's stage, I say to every such person, as a Latter-day Saint, You have a great and important mission to perform, and if you perform the duties devolving upon you properly, your influence will be felt ”

“ And now then, the plan that I have to propose to our family is this, that every man shall marry until all the women are married, until every woman that wants a husband shall have one, so that the men who will not marry shall not have a class of unmarried women, to prey upon, to commit violence with, or to prostitute. "Now," says he, "if you let all these men and women marry, there will be some women who will not want to marry, but that proportion will be very small; and by this means you will arrest this dreadful evil that is growing in our midst." ”

“ If this be true concerning an individual, how much more truth is there in it when applied to an assemblage of individuals, and to a community, to hundreds of communities, to a great people stretching through these mountains and filling these vallies? We have not lived in vain. ”

“ There is an influence, there is a power, there is a spirit connected with the assembling together of a large body of people, such as we witness to-day, that must affect those who are sensitive to impressions, and especially when one has been absent among strangers, to feel that he is home among his friends, among a people who are his brethren and sisters, whose faith is his faith, and who are laboring and struggling to accomplish the same objects that he himself has in his heart. ”

“ And when a whole people can be found, such as are in these mountains, who are capable of making the sacrifices which they have made, there is something, as I have said, in their example and in their lives that influences men, that impresses them, and that causes them, whatever their feelings may be respecting the belief of these people, to feel a profound and heartfelt respect for them; for no man or woman properly constituted ever failed to respect devotion to principle, moral courage and the qualities that are exhibited in the lives of the Saints ”

“ So far as religious liberty is concerned we have fought that battle thus far with tolerable success; but we have yet to contend still more for greater liberty, not for ourselves alone, but for every human being; that dwells upon this land, from the east to the west and from the north to the south. The principle must be maintained, the principle, that actuated the founders of our government, when they laid the foundation stone thereof, that in matters of religious concernment no man has a right to step between his fellow-man and his God. ”

“ Here are men and women in equal numbers and equal proportions, one sex not outnumbering the other—a man for a woman and a woman for a man, no surplus of women, no surplus of men. If they were to marry, each would have a partner, each man would have a wife and each woman would have a husband; each would be perfect, for the man is not perfect without the woman, nor the woman without the man. We turn in and make a law, such as prevailed at one time in Rome that every man shall marry a wife. ”

“ It devolves upon us, Latter-day Saints, to help to accomplish this work. It devolves upon us, and will devolve upon us more particularly in the near future, to maintain upon this continent and through this broad land pure republican institutions, constitutional liberty in its broadest sense. For the day is not far distant when the power such as is growing up in the mountains will be needed. Conflict of parties, an increase of party feeling, an increased disposition to take possession of power by any means, no matter what it might be, are becoming general in the United States. ”

“ When any other man of any other creed, race or color takes his abode among you, teach your children to respect his form of worship. And if they go to the church of the Catholics or that of the Presbyterians or of any other sect, teach them to behave themselves and treat everybody with civility and kindness, and that it is none of their business how these sects worship, teach that they violate good order and good law when they in any way make light of religious exercises. ”

“ Cleave to virtue, to purity, to everything that is good, that will elevate you and make you a better people. Above all let me say to you, let us get rid of old traditions as fast as we can, and learn from the Lord, and be taught by his holy spirit. ”

“ I have had people visit me at my house where every attention and courtesy would be shown them, and they would leave and perhaps through reading newspaper articles consisting of abominable lies, would go away and betray those who had received and treated them kindly and hospitably and so often has this been the case that I have almost sworn I will never do it again. It is not because we have unkind feelings. ”

“ There is something in the very fact of a people believing in God in these days of atheism and utter infidelity that brings men to serious contemplation. They say very frequently that it is fanaticism, but there is something about fanaticism that is healthly [healthy] , refreshing, invigorating in its example, for no man ever accomplished anything on this earth, without exposing himself by his actions, his earnestness and enthusiasm and zeal, to the charge of fanaticism. I am willing we should be called fanatics. ”

“ I ought to say Latter-day Saints—if they had Supreme control from our northern boundary in Idaho, to the southern boundary, Arizona, and from our eastern boundary, Colorado, to our western boundary, Nevada; if we had supreme control and undisputed possession of this land, without the right of dominion over us being questioned, we would have no authority under the constitution under which we live to say to any human being within these confines how he should worship, what he should or should not do in order to please the Creator. ”

“ This is so self-evident that no man, unless completely wedded to the idea that this nation will exist in perpetuity, can fail to see for himself that there is a crisis approaching in the affairs of our nation. Already the feeling prevails that in order to accomplish certain things fraud is justifiable. Money is used to an extent in the accomplishing of certain results in government affairs, and in politics that you, as a people who live in these mountains, have scarcely any conception of. ”

“ I therefore say, we have not lived in vain; we have not preached in vain; we have not suffered in vain; we have not protested in vain. The fruits of these labors of ours which apparently have been so long in coming, will be reaped in the great harvest yet to be reaped upon the earth. ”

“ Here comes along a man after witnessing the evils that have grown up among his brothers and sisters, and says, "I have a plan to suggest which I believe will cure the evils that exist among us. I see that a dreadful vice called prostitution has crept into our midst, and arising from it are dreadful diseases, diseases that I cannot describe, so appalling are they that the very thought of them makes the heart recoil with horror; they have appeared in our family circle and they are destroying our young men and women. ”

“ There is something connected with the example of such a people that elevates men and women from the slime, from the mire, and from the abject, ruin into which, in too many instances, they are plunged, to contemplate humanity in its better aspects, humanity in its noble appearances, with its Godlike attributes, with its powers for good, its capability of accomplishing great results. ”