By request, and the duty I owe to my fellow-man, I consent to answer your letter, and your request as to Joseph Smith, Jr., and the Safety Society Bank of the Latter Day Saints, as they call themselves at the present, or Mormons. The followers of Smith believe him to be a prophet, and he had a revelation that the church must move to the Ohio, which they did, selling their possessions and helping each other as a band of brothers, and they settled in this place. The Smith family were then all poor and the most of the church. I visited them in 1833, they were then building a temple to the Most High God, who, Smith said, would appear and make his will known to his servants, and endow them with power in their last days that they might go and preach his gospel to all nations, kindred tongues, and people. For this purpose they wrought almost night and day, and scoured the branches in the east for money to enable them to build. The people consecrated freely, as they supposed for that purpose, for they supposed they were to be one in the church of Christ, for so Smith had told them by his revelations, and that they must consecrate all for the poor in Zion. Thus many did until they finished the temple, and in the meantime the building committee built each of them a house, Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith, Jr. By this time the leaders of the church, Smith, Rigdon, Carter and Cahoon, I may say, all the heads of the church, got lifted up in pride, and they imagined that God was about to make them rich, and that they were to suck the milk of the Gentiles, as they call those that do not belong to the church, or do not go hand in hand with them. From this you can see they have a great desire for riches, and to obtain them without earning them. About this time they said that God had told them, Sidney and Joseph, that they had suffered enough and that they should be rich; and they informed me, that God told them to buy goods and so they did, to some thirty thousand dollars, on a credit of six months, at Cleveland and Buffalo. In the spring of 1836 this firm was, I believe, Smith, Rigdon & Co. It included the heads of the church. In the fall, they formed other companies of their brethren, and sent to New York as agents for them, Hiram Smith and O. Cowdery, and they purchased some sixty or seventy thousand dollars worth, all for the church, and the most of them not worth a penny, and no financiers. At this time the first debt became due and not any thing to pay it with, for they had sold to their poor brethren, who were strutting about the streets in the finest broadcloth, and imagining themselves rich, but could pay nothing: and poverty is the mother of invention. They then fixed upon a plan to pay the debt.