the wide extent
of their information, owing to the activity of their publishers in
diffusing all that they could invent, beg, borrow, or steal. Nor were
they less noted for their perfect freedom from all restraints in
thought, or speech, or deed; except, to be sure, the beneficent and
wise influence of the majority, exerted, in case of need, through an
institution known as "tarring and feathering," the exact nature of
which is now disputed.

There is a complete consensus of testimony that the founder of
Mormonism, one Joseph Smith, was a low-minded, ignorant scamp, and
that he stole the "Scriptures" which he propounded; not being clever
enough to forge even such contemptible stuff as they contain.
Nevertheless he must have been a man of some force of character, for a
considerable number of disciples soon gathered about him. In spite of
repeated outbursts of popular hatred and violence--during one of which
persecutions Smith was brutally murdered--the Mormon body steadily
increased, and became a flourishing community. But the Mormon
practices being objectionable to the majority, they were, more than
once, without any pretence of law, but by force of riot, arson, and
murder, driven away from the land they had occupied. Harried by these
persecutions, the Mormon body eventually committed itself to the
tender mercies of a desert as barren as that of Sinai; and after
terrible sufferings and privations, reached the Oasis of Utah. Here it
grew and flourished, sending out missionaries to, and receiving
converts from, all parts of Europe, sometimes to the number of 10,000
in a year; until, in 1880, the rich and flourishing community numbered
110,000 souls in Utah alone, while there were probably 30,000 or
40,000 scattered abroad elsewhere. In the whole history of religions
there is no more remarkable example of the power of faith; and, in
this case, the founder of that faith was indubitably a most despicable
creature. It is interesting to observe that the course taken by the
great Republic and its citizens runs exactly parallel with that taken
by the Roman Empire and its citizens towards the early Christians,
except that the Romans had a certain legal excuse for their acts of
violence, inasmuch as the Christian "sodalitia" were not licensed, and
consequently were, _ipso facto_, illegal assemblages. Until, in the
latter part of the nineteenth century, the United States legislature
decreed the illegality of polygamy, the Mormons w