Lands were at once surveyed and placed under careful cultivation, and Salt Lake City was made habitable. Settlements were established in every direction, the soil was subdued and irrigated for cultivation. The people built the city and began the temple and established mills, workshops, and numerous industries under the personal directions of the ever-watchful bishops. Missionary corps were newly organized for foreign lands, and an Immigration Fund established which soon resulted in a swarming influx to Utah from all parts of Europe. The Mormons have increased in the last thirty years between five and six hundred per cent. The Mormon population of Utah from about 11,000 in 1850 had increased in 1880 to a little over 120,000 out of a total of nearly 144,000. In place of a wilderness we find a vast cultivated domain threaded by highways and railroads. The wild lands of 1846 in 1880 yielded a product in cereals of nearly two million bushels, and in precious metals a value of nearly nine million and a half of dollars. In the year 1882 the total value of the assessed property of the Territory was $25,579,000. The public schools of the Territory, from the number of thirteen only in 1850, had increased in 1880 to three hundred and ninety, maintained at a cost of more than $200,000. All these marvellous results have been chiefly due to the enterprise and thrift of a people expelled as outlaws from Illinois, and under the ban of the law during most of their sojourn in Utah. * * * * * This, in brief, is the history of the Mormons. And who will say that it is not wonderful and strangely unique? History, indeed, affords few examples of the growth, from such humble foundations, of a fabric based on a religious idea, so important and enduring as that which originated in the supposed revelations made over thirty-five years ago to Joseph Smith, an obscure resident in a country town of Wayne County, N. Y. Born in 1830 of fanaticism and superstition; cast out from the place of its birth immediately after; driven in contumely from its refuge in Kirtland, O.; buffeted in Missouri, and driven to Illinois; baptized in the blood of the Nauvoo riots, and compelled to fly into the wilderness, and there developing into what it is to-day; with whatever contempt we may regard its origin, with whatever loathing we may look upon its accursed doctrines, it seems to me we are compelled to confess that there is something in the Mormon organization which demands for its adherents, in spite of its abhorrent features, a degree of respect and consideration. They should be given as much respect, at least, as we would give the honest Brahmin, Buddhist, or Mohammedan. Yea, more; for many even of their latest converts have been taken from our Southern and Western States.