But it is as a defender of the faith and character of the Saints that Elder Taylor in _The Mormon_ is most conspicuous. He leaped into the public arena, threw down his gage of battle and dared the traducers of the Saints of God to take it up. The very name Mormon--which they had derided and made the synonym for all that was absurd in religion, impure in social life, or disloyal to government, he took up and made the title of his paper--wrote it in bold letters and surrounded it with the symbols of liberty, intelligence and truth, and defied its slanderers to pluck from it the emblems in which he enshrined it. "We are Mormon," he writes in the first number, "inside and outside; at home or abroad, in public and private--everywhere. We are so, however, from principle. We are such, not because we believe it to be the most popular, lucrative, or honorable (as the world has it); but because we believe it to be true, and more reasonable and scriptural, moral and philosophic; because we conscientiously believe it is more calculated to promote the happiness and well-being of humanity, in time and throughout all eternity, than any other system which we have met with." A short time afterward we have him saying: "We have said before and say now, that we defy all the editors and writers in the United States to prove that Mormonism is less moral, scriptural, philosophical; or that there is less patriotism in Utah than in any other part of the United States. We call for proof; bring on your reasons, gentlemen, if you have any; we shrink not from the investigation, and dare you to the encounter. If you don't do it, and you publish any more of your stuff, we shall brand you as poor, mean, cowardly liars; as men publishing falsehoods knowing them to be so, and shrinking from the light of truth and investigation." The _New York Mirror_, in calling attention to his presence in the city and the spread of Mormonism, said: "While our public moralists and reformers are making war upon the hotels and taverns and private property of our citizens, a hideous system--an immoral excrescence--is allowed to spring up and overtop the Constitution itself. Why are there no public meetings convened in the tabernacle to denounce Mormonism? The evil has become a notorious fact--its existence cannot be any longer ignored--and it is not therefore prudent that the eyes of the public should be closed to its effects."