198 NEW STATE OF UTAH. 



guard of seven or eight men. These were overpowered 

 the same afternoon by an armed mob, who killed Joe 

 Smith and his brother, and then made their escape. 

 After this, the Mormons remained a short time longer in 

 the Holy City ; but the wound was too deep seated to 

 admit of permanent quiet on either part, and they were 

 at last driven out by force, and compelled to abandon or 

 sacrifice their property. Such as escaped this last 

 persecution, after traversing the boundless prairies, the 

 deserts of the Far West, and the Rocky Mountains, 

 appear at last to have found a resting-place near the 

 Great Salt Lake in Oregon. They are increasing 

 faster since this last catastrophe than ever ; and are daily 

 receiving large accessions of new members from Europe, 

 especially from Great Britain. They form the nucleus 

 of the new State of Utah, this year erected into a 

 territory of the United States, and likely, in the next 

 session of Congress, to be elevated to the dignity of an 

 independent State. So rapidly has persecution helped 

 on this offspring of ignorance, and tended to give a 

 permanent establishment, and a bright future, to a 

 system, not simply of pure invention, but of blasphemous 

 impiety, and folly the most insane. 



The Booh of Mormon^ which is the written guide of 

 this new sect, consists of a series of professedly historical 

 books — a desultory and feeble imitation of the Jewish 

 chronicles and prophetical books — in which, for the 

 poetry and warnings of the ancient prophets, are 

 substituted a succession of unconnected rhapsodies and 

 repetitions, such as might form the perorations of ranting 

 addresses by a field preacher, to a very ignorant 

 audience. 



The book, in the edition I possess, consists in all of 

 634 pages, of which the first 580 contain the history of 

 a fictitious personage called Lehi and that of his 

 descendants for the space of a thousand years. 



