"With all the reverence and respect due to the rulers of a mighty nation, from the tops of these distant mountains I call upon you to pause in your career, for I also am a teacher, and have a right to be heard. I speak in behalf of one hundred and fifty thousand citizens of Utah. I speak in behalf of forty millions of free American citizens in the United States. I conjure you out of respect for the memory of the dead, as the rightful guardians of the liberties of a vast nation, that stands proudly prominent among the nations of the earth, and in behalf of unborn millions, to pause. I conjure you, in behalf of our honor and integrity, in behalf of republican principles, and the cause of freedom throughout the world. I plead with you in behalf of our common humanity, and the rights of man, to reflect. Would you, to gratify a morbid sentimentality desecrate and tear down one of the most magnificent temples of human liberty, ever erected? Would you wantonly deliver up the sacred principles of liberty, equity and justice, bequeathed by your fathers, to the grim Moloch of party who is crushing, grinding and trampling under foot our God-given rights, and whose sanguinary jaws are extended to gorge and devour the quivering remnants of our feeble, expiring liberty? Have we not had more than enough trouble already with Virginia, North Carolina, Louisana and Utah? Can we ever be satisfied? 'Let us have peace.'" The opening of the "Black Book," as he called his inquiry into the conduct of federal officials in Utah, revealed a lamentable state of affairs. Men who had come to the Territory for the ostensible purpose of administering the law were found to be among the chief transgressors thereof, and the aiders and abettors of criminals. But I allow Elder Taylor to make his own indictment against them, only adding that he demonstrated the truth of every item charged in it, by publishing the time when, the places where, and the names of the criminals they liberated. Elder Taylor writes: "While our territorial courts, officers and municipal authorities, have been always foremost in punishing crime, whether committed by Mormons or Gentiles, some of the United States officials have shielded and protected criminals, and for this purpose every subterfuge known to the law has been brought into requisition. Thus, by writs of error, injunctions, _habeas corpus_, pardons, and officious and indecent interference, they have exhibited themselves as the abettors and protectors of crime. They have liberated _felons_ and murderers, encouraged drunkenness and riot, protected and shielded brothel-houses, winked at and sustained gambling, and so clogged the wheels of justice, in both civil and criminal cases, that they have brought the judiciary into such contempt that it has become a stink in the nostrils of honest men." These charges and the facts he published to prove them he prefaced with the following: