The most serious injustice Mr. Wilson does the Mormon people, however, the thing in which he most departs from the facts established, not only by history but by the decisions of the United States courts in Utah, is in that he makes the awful crime of the massacre of emigrants at Mountain Meadows, in 1857, the crime of the Mormon Church. Over and over again in fact he makes that charge, and represents his chief character, "Joel Rae," as seeking to take upon himself the sins of the "Church" for committing that crime; and in one place represents him as saying: "For fifteen years I have lain in hell for the work this Church did at Mountain Meadows." To bear false witness against one's neighbor even in matters that may be trivial, is a contemptible crime; but when in bearing false witness the charge is that of murder, wholesale murder, and that under circumstances the most revolting and horrible, the crime then of bearing false witness rises above the merely contemptible, and to be seen in its true enormity, must be regarded as bearing a due proportion to the crime charged. That is, next to being guilty of the crime itself must be the crime of falsely charging it to the innocent. I care nothing for the fact that the predecessors of Mr. Wilson, in works of fiction on the West have made similar charges. He will not be justified in following their evil example. A man of his standing in the world of letters, starting out to "try to tell what had really been," to write fiction that must speak "no less than truth"--he was under obligations both to himself and the people to whom his message should go, to investigate all the facts, and speak truly in harmony with them in every case. It is not necessary here to enter into any argument or even produce the evidence that the Mormon Church was in no wise responsible, in no wise connected with the awful butchery at Mountain Meadows. The evidence of these things appear upon the very surface of our history in Utah, and also in decisions of United States judges who would only have been too happy to have implicated the Mormon Church officials in that awful crime if it had been possible. In fact they tried to so fix the responsibility, and failed. But it is enough here to tell Mr. Wilson, that he has Committed an act of injustice for which I would not like to stand responsible at the judgement bar of God; I am confident that he will be driven to the necessity of choosing between these alternatives: either that he has consciously spoken contrary to truth in the matter; or else he has given merely surface consideration to one side of the subject only which he represents himself as having considered profoundly; in either event Mr. Wilson has assumed a most serious responsibility. IV. A BRIEF DEFENSE OF THE MORMON PEOPLE. FOREWORD.