"Heretofore, while detraction and ridicule have been poured forth in almost every form that malice could invent, while we have been misrepresented by speech and press, and exhibited in every shade but our true light, the ladies of Utah have remained comparatively silent. Had not our aims been of the most noble and exalted character, and had we not known that we occupied a standpoint far above our traducers, we might have returned volley for volley; but we have all the time realized that to contradict such egregious absurdities, would be a great stoop of condescension--far beneath the dignity of those who profess to be saints of the living God; and we very unassumingly applied to ourselves a saying of an ancient apostle, in writing to the Corinthians, 'Ye suffer fools, gladly, seeing that yourselves are wise.' "But there is a point at which silence is no longer a virtue. In my humble opinion, we have arrived at that point. Shall we--ought we--to be silent, when every right of citizenship, every vestige of civil and religious liberty, is at stake? When our husbands and sons, our fathers and brothers, are threatened with being either restrained in their obedience to the commands of God, or incarcerated, year after year, in the dreary confines of a prison, will it be thought presumptuous? Ladies, this subject as deeply interests us as them. In the kingdom of God, woman has no interests separate from those of man--all are mutual. "Our enemies pretend that, in Utah, woman is held in a state of vassalage--that she does not act from choice, but by coercion--that we would even prefer life elsewhere, were it possible for us to make our escape. What nonsense! We all know that if we wished we could leave at any time--either to go singly, or to rise _en masse_, and there is no power here that could, or would wish to, prevent us. "I will now ask this assemblage of intelligent ladies, do you know of any place on the face of the earth, where woman has more liberty, and where she enjoys such high and glorious privileges as she does here, as a latter-day saint? No! The very idea of woman here in a state of slavery is a burlesque on good common sense. The history of this people, with a very little reflection, would instruct outsiders on this point. It would show, at once, that the part which woman has acted in it, could never have been performed against her will. Amid the many distressing scenes through which we have passed, the privations and hardships consequent upon our expulsion from State to State, and our location in an isolated, barren wilderness, the women in this Church have performed and suffered what could never have been borne and accomplished by slaves.