I have been annoyed by comments this hastily written discourse has elicited. Well meaning friends have even invited me to tone down its remarks in favor of the Mormons, for the purpose of securing them a readier acceptance.--I can only make them more express. The Truth must take care of itself. I not only meant to deny that the Mormons in any wise fall below our own standard of morals, but I would be distinctly understood to ascribe to those of their number with whom I associated in the West, a general correctness of deportment, and purity of character above the average of ordinary communities. The furthest I can go toward qualifying my testimony, will be to name the causes, to which, as a believer in Nature's compensations, I have myself credited this undue morality. It was partly attributable perhaps to their forced abstemiousness; the diet of the most fortunate Mormons having been for long continued periods very spare, and composed almost wholly of vegetable food, with few condiments, and no intoxicating liquors. Some influence should be referred also to their custom of early and equal marriages, these not being regulated by the prudential considerations which embarrass opulent communities; something more to the supervision which was incidental to their nomadic life, and the habits it encouraged of disciplined, but grateful industry. The chief cause, however, was probably found in this fact. The Mormons as I saw them, though a majority, were but a portion of the Church as it flourished in Illinois. When the persecution triumphed there, and no alternative remained for the steadfast in the faith but the flight out of Egypt into the Wilderness, as it was termed, all their fair weather friends forsook them. Priests and elders, scribes and preachers deserted by whole councils at a time; each talented knave, of whose craft they had been victims, finding his own pretext for abandoning them, without surrendering the money-bag of which he was the holder. One of these, for instance, bore with him so considerable a congregation that he was able to found quite a thriving community in Northern Wisconsin, which I believe he afterwards transplanted entire to an island in one of the Lakes. Other speculator-heresiarchs folded for themselves credulous sheep all through the Western Country. One Rigdon not long since had a Cure of them in our own State. Quite recently, an abandoned clergyman, who shortly before the Exod was excommunicated for his improper conduct, has presented a memorial to Congress, in which he charges the Mormons with very much more than he himself appears to have been guilty of. This abusive person, a former intimate of the Major General James Arlington Bennet, lately on trial at New York, in company with a One Eyed Mr. Thompson of that city, is also the only surviving brother of the Prophet Smith, founder of the Sect, and as such, still claims to be its sole true President, and genuine Arch High Priest.