George Q. Cannon

“ God knows if that were to be a crime sufficient to evoke destruction, there would be other communities visited with wrath besides ours, even if we were all that we are painted. But the fact is, there is no other Territory or State in the United States—and I say this knowingly and understandingly—where virtue is respected, revered and protected as it is in Utah. There is no other community in the United States in which more young men grow up to manhood pure, in proportion to the population than in the Territory of Utah. ”

“ It is not to punish immorality. If immorality were the object to be reached, that law would have been made broad enough for every case, whether they be practices, what they term under religious guise, or practices in violation of religion. What then is the object of the measure? It is to strike down a prominent feature of our religion; that is its object, and there is no other object to be achieved. It is the fact that we make marriage a part of our religion that excites animosity, and they are determined to destroy us. ”

“ We cannot fight law; we must submit to law, the law being more powerful than we are; but we can do as John Bunyan said: "I cannot obey, but I can suffer." We cannot renounce our religion; we cannot throw it aside; we cannot trample upon the commandments of God; but we can endure the penalty of obeying God's law, even if it be imprisonment. ”

“ The sacrifices we had to make fell pretty equally upon all, and there was no temptation offered one class because of its greater wealth, to compromise with principle, or to question the policy of standing up unflinchingly for principle, or to feel different from the bulk of the community.
The increase of wealth, therefore, and the consequent increase of fashions are more to be dreaded than hostile legislation. Let a wife follow all the fashions of the day, and then let her children do the same, and a man must have a deep pocket to sustain such a family. ”

“ The basest and most malignant and most cruel, the most unfounded and causeless misrepresentations and falsehoods have been circulated, and men and women who knew nothing about us, preachers who had no idea of our real belief, and editors who had no conception of the true condition of affairs in this Territory, have all lent themselves, sometimes understandingly, and other times ignorantly to do everything in their power to destroy an innocent people. And what has been the crime? We have been accused of immorality. ”

“ Hence we are in an excellent position to fight the battles of freedom; and it is the most glorious warfare that men or women were ever engaged in. I expect we shall continue to contend for liberty, not with physical weapons but with steadfast moral courage, despite the Edmunds' law, despite the Poland law, despite the law of '62, or any other law that may be made in violation of the Constitution, and of the Bill of Rights. We shall have to contend unceasingly for those principles, without wavering or yielding one iota in our determination. ”

“ And yet, through agencies which boast of their enlightenment, this whirlwind of passion to which I have alluded—this spasm of feeling that has convulsed the nation, has swept over the land, and everything has been done that was possible to make it destructive in its effects upon the objects of its wrath. I have thought, and have sometimes expressed myself, that if lies could destroy a people, we should have been buried out of sight long ago. ”

“ I claim this not for Latter-day Saints alone, but I claim it for every man and woman in this Republic; for I say that the men and women in this great nation have the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, as long as they do not, in so doing, interfere with the rights of their fellow-citizens; and I claim that they have the right to do this, despite the Supreme Court decisions, despite the action of Congress, despite the expressions of pulpit and press ”

“ As I have repeatedly said, we believe in marriage, we have opened the door in that direction, and we say to the sexes marry; but we close the door in the other direction, and say, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not seduce, defile, prostitute or lead astray innocent beings; if you do, and we had the power, we would punish you. It seems like a paradox that those who do that which is according to their religion should be punished, while those who trample upon their religion should go free. ”

“ Fault is found with us in this Territory because it is said the hierarchy dictates legislation; but you know this is not true. I wish we could dictate it more than it is done. We have our views like other citizens, but who has ever known them to be forced upon any? And, yet, this is the head and front of our offending, namely, that in Utah there is a theocracy dictating legislation. Now, who is it that has demanded of Congress this Edmunds' law against Utah? It has been the pulpit of our nation, the orthodox pulpit. It is at their behests this legislation has been enacted. ”

“ It is generally supposed that we are living in an enlightened age. Popular preachers claim that this is the crowning generation for light, and knowledge, and truth; that we are living in fact, in the full blaze of Gospel light and glory. Politicians also claim that this republican government of the United States is the fruit of the ripened experience of all the ages; the product of the accumulated wisdom of the centuries; that human aspirations finds the fullest development under our form of government. ”

“ I have been told many and many a time, "we should not object to it; but you are sanctioning by the forms of religion that which we cannot endure, and which is hateful to our civilization." It is the marriage ceremony, that is the offensive part of it; it is, in other words, the marrying that excites dislike and hatred. ”

“ But we are an organized community; we can live here as we did in the early days without help from any other source except God. We can raise our food; we can make our clothing. If it be necessary we can pinch ourselves, dispense with luxuries, and can live on those things which are barely essential to life. We do not necessarily have to depend upon other people for support. If grasshoppers come and sweep our fields, as they have done, there is no cry from Utah to the general government for help. We have borne these afflictions unassisted by our fellow-citizens ”

“ Let us be wise and prudent in all our talk, and cautious in everything we do, feeling to submit to wrong rather than to do wrong, trusting the Lord to overrule the intentions of our enemies for our good and the final triumph of truth over error, and good over evil. There need, be no rashness, no defiance or manifestation of feeling. Let us show the world that God has given unto us principles which lift us up above these clouds that now envelope us ”

“ Mobocracy to-day assumes the forms of legality, and, therefore, in meeting this power you have to wrestle with it under the form of law. In the early days when the mob came upon us we could take our guns and meet it, but when a mob comes backed up by law, clothed in the garb of the law, claiming shelter under the Constitution, it is very different; and that is our position to-day. We have fought mobs from the beginning; there have been times when we have held our own, determined to stand our ground; at other times we have been driven ”

“ It always was a crime against nature and always will be. He who takes the life of a fellow being commits a crime, even if it should be in a land where there is no law; it is in and of itself a crime—malum in se. It needs no statutory law to make it so. Marriage occupies a very different position from this. Before the law of 1862 was passed by Congress a man might have married in this Territory two or more wives, there being no law—human nor divine—that we had any knowledge of, prohibiting it. There was no law of the United States against it ”

“ All that we can be accused of is, we have embodied in our religion practices that belonged to the Patriarchs, which we believe, and so declare, God has revealed to us, for the purposes of salvation and of producing greater purity and of checking the flood of vice that is sweeping through the land and sapping the foundation of this nation and all the nations of Christendom. ”

“ Popular journals are afraid of injuring their circulation by speaking the truth concerning us. The publishers are affected by the same influences as the politicians—the pulpit and this popular clamor cause men to be afraid. If we could be known as we really are—not in Salt Lake alone, for this city is not a fair sample of Utah; if it were possible for the people generally, who reiterate these popular cries against us, to travel through our settlements north and south, and see our people, there would be a very different public feeling in regard to us. ”

“ God has given us this right, and He has given unto us our agency. If we violate His will He will punish us; He has threatened us with punishment if we do so, and we are responsible to Him, and not to the Congress of the United States, not to the President of the United States, nor to any human being; we are responsible alone to our God, and there is no power upon the earth that can justly deprive me or deprive you of this right. They may, by force of power, by illegal measures and unconstitutional laws do this; men may be imprisoned or slain ”

“ In the end, however, we shall be abundantly successful, for a people possessing the qualities that the people of Utah do, can and will live—a people who are united, a people who are honest, a people who are frugal, a people who are temperate, a people who are orderly in their lives and who are virtuous, truly virtuous, can withstand a tremendous amount of pressure. ”

“ I feel exceedingly hopeful and joyful and am satisfied that we are in the right path, that we are on the winning side, because we have right, we have justice and we have truth on our side. The only fear I have is that we shall fail to make use of the opportunities God has given unto us of maintaining our integrity and being true and faithful, for God has said, "I have decreed in my heart that I will prove you in all things, whether you will abide in my covenant, even unto death, that you may be found worthy ”

“ And the day will come in this land when every man will have this right, regardless of his profession. Are we to be dictated to by popular preachers? Such men say to the Congress of the United States, "You must enact certain laws; we demand it of you; our congregations demand it; you must put down 'Mormonism.' We do not want that religion. ”

“ I say, it is interesting in these days to go back and read the documents issued by the mob in 1832-3 in Jackson County, Missouri. There was no plural marriage then to cause offense. The cry against us then was, that we believed that God was a God of revelation as He was in ancient days; that He was the same God in this, the 19th century, that He was in the first century of the Christian era, when Jesus and the Apostles ministered among men. This was considered sufficient cause for mobs to organize themselves and drive our people from their homes and lands, and to kill some of them. ”

“ I accept this, in the providence of God, as a means to school this people. It will make statesmen and legislators of us; it already shows the necessity of education; it will have the effect also to broaden our views, to enlarge our intellects, and to stir up our young men and our young women to prepare themselves for usefulness. ”

“ If a person last winter had come into Utah Territory and traveled through our settlements, visiting the houses of the people and examining the condition of affairs here, he would have found it difficult to understand the cause of all the excitement that was raging throughout the United States concerning this people. ”

“ We have to be a superior people; we have to educate our children, and make them the peers, and I may say, the superiors of all others, for we have the principles which will make us a superior people. And in order to become such a people, I do not know any better training that we could have than that which we are now receiving, unpleasant though it may be. ”

“ If a man then had more than one wife he would need a large income to sustain them. Some women might be shrewd enough to understand this, and if not wanting their husbands to have another wife, might take pains to consume all the income.
Well, our enemies never have had and never will have wisdom enough to adopt any plan that will hurt this work. Why, instead of injuring this people in what they have already done against us, they are only advertising us. ”

“ That which has been done has been done in the face of high heaven, in the light of day, believing, as we did, that it would be the means of preserving this community in purity, that if every means were used to provide for marriage there would be no margin of unmarried women left for lust to prey upon. ”

“ And we may as well prepare ourselves, if we are not already prepared, for everything of this kind. The time must come when the principles of truth and righteousness will prevail over the land; and it is our destiny to maintain them and make them universal. The prophecies that were made by the Prophet Joseph Smith concerning this nation and us will be fulfilled. He said that the time would come when the Latter-day Saints would be the only people that would maintain constitutional principles upon this land. ”