It has been observed with some reason, that had a Rabelais or a Swift told the story of the Mormons under the veil of allegory, the sane portion of mankind would probably have entered a protest against the extravagance of the satirist. The name of the mock hero, his own and his family's ignorance and want of character, the low cunning of his accomplices, the open and shameless vices in which they indulged, and the extraordinary success of the sect they founded, would all have been thought too obviously conceived with a view to ludicrous effects. Yet the Mormon movement has assumed the condition of an important popular feature, and after much suffering and many reverses, its authors have achieved a condition of eminent industrial prosperity. In twenty years the company, consisting of the impostor and his father and brother, has increased to nearly half a million; they occupy one of the richest portions of this continent, have a regularly organized government, and are represented in the Congress of the United States by a delegate having all the powers usually conferred on the members for territories. With missions in every part of the country, in every capital of Europe, in Mecca, in Jerusalem, and among the islands of the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, all of whom are charged with the duty of making converts and gathering them to the Promised Land of Deseret, they must very soon have a population sufficiently large to claim admission as an equal member to the Union, and perhaps to hold the balance of power in its affairs. To illustrate the energy and success with which their missions are prosecuted, we may cite the statement contained in a work just published in London, _The Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, a Contemporary History_, that more than fourteen thousand persons have left Great Britain since 1840 for the "Holy City." The emigrants passing through Liverpool in 1849, amounted to 2,500, generally of the better class of mechanics and farmers, and it was estimated that at least 30,000 converts remained behind. In June, 1850, there were in England and Scotland, 27,863, of whom London contributed 2,529; Liverpool, 1,018; Manchester, 2,787; Glasgow, 1,846; Sheffield, 1,920; Edinburgh, 1,331; Birmingham, 1,909; and Wales, 4,342. And the Mormon census was again taken last January, giving the entire number in the British Isles at 30,747. In fourteen years, more than 50,000 had been baptized in England, of whom nearly 17,000 had "emigrated to Zion." Although the Mormon emigration is commonly of the better class, there are also poor Mormons; and that these as well as their more prosperous brethren may be "gathered to the holy city," there is now amassed in Liverpool a very large fund, under the control of officers appointed by the "Apostles," destined exclusively for the equipment and transportation of converts to their place of Refuge.