History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Volume 6Smith, Joseph, Jr.
History
History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Volume 6
Smith, Joseph, Jr.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Smith, Joseph, Jr., 1805-1844
If the General Government has no power to reinstate expelled
citizens to their rights, there is a monstrous hypocrite fed
and fostered from the hard earnings of the people! A real "bull
beggar" upheld by sycophants. And although you may wink to the
priests to stigmatize, wheedle the drunkards to swear, and raise
the hue-and-cry of--"Impostor! false prophet! G--d--n old Joe
Smith!" yet remember, if the Latter-day Saints are not restored
to all their rights and paid for all their losses, according to
the known rules of justice and judgment, reciprocation and common
honesty among men, that God will come out of His hiding place, and
vex this nation with a sore vexation: yea, the consuming wrath
of an offended God shall smoke through the nation with as much
distress and woe as independence has blazed through with pleasure
and delight. Where is the strength of Government? Where is the
patriotism of a Washington, a Warren, and Adams? And where is a
spark from the watch-fire of '76, by which one candle might be lit
that would glimmer upon the confines of Democracy? Well may it be
said that one man is not a state, nor one state the nation.
In the days of General Jackson, when France refused the first
instalment for spoliations, there was power, force, and honor
enough to resent injustice and insult, and the money came: and
shall Missouri, filled with negro-drivers and white men stealers,
go "unwhipped of justice" for tenfold greater sins than France? No!
verily, no! While {159} I have powers of body and mind--while water
runs and grass grows--while virtue is lovely and vice hateful; and
while a stone points out a sacred spot where a fragment of American
liberty once was, I or my posterity will plead the cause of injured
innocence, until Missouri makes atonement for all her sins, or
sinks disgraced, degraded, and damned to hell, "where the worm
dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."
Why, sir, the powers not delegated to the United States and the
States belong to the people, and Congress sent to do the people's
business have all power; and shall fifteen thousand citizens groan
in exile? O vain men! will ye not, if ye do not restore them to
their rights and $2,000,000 worth of property, relinquish to
them, (the Latter-day Saints,) as a body, their portion of power
that belongs to them according to the Constitution? Power has its
convenience as well as inconvenience. "The world was not made for
Caesar alone, but for Cassius too."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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