If my friends will have patience with me I will say a few words. To the Latter-day Saints I say, I do pray you to prove the words of Brother Cannon true with regard to being obedient to your President in all things, and doing as he tells you. I pray you to hearken to this counsel; if you do, contention and sin will cease, and we shall not see men going to the canon or riding out for pleasure on the Sabbath day, instead of coming here to meeting; we shall hear no more of their taking advantage of each other, stirring up strife, going to law, bearing false witness, or pilfering a little the one from the other. I pray you to take this counsel, and cease your wickedness, Latter-day Saints, and do as your President tells you. I feel to say this; and if you will be patient with me I will say a little more.
There are strangers here, and to them I will say we have traveled the earth over, and where we could not go we have sent by Elders and by proclamation. We have asked the inhabitants of the earth to become acquainted with our doctrine. Would they read it? No. Would they go to hear an Elder preach? No, as a general thing they would not. If we had been let alone while with the Christians we would have been there now proclaiming the Gospel. But I wish to say to strangers that we were not persecuted because we believed in having many wives, for that principle was not known to our persecutors until we came to these mountains, although the revelation was received by Joseph Smith and written a year before his death. Since this doctrine has been proclaimed we have lived in peace.
The inquiry among many, and especially among our political friends, is, "What are you going to do? Are you going to observe the law against plurality of wives, or are you going to obey the revelation?" We have obeyed the revelation thus far, and still live; that I can say, and perhaps that is enough. What do we say about the lawmakers? Go to, ye legislators, and make a law that every man in this government shall have one wife. You have just as good a right to do that as to say that we shall not have two. Let every man have his wife, raise his family, live virtuously and keep his vows, and our difficulty is at an end. We say to Congressmen and Presidents, have your wife; and we also say to every political and financial man the world over, marry the women and take care of them and save us the trouble. If you do not, we will gather them up, just as sure as the world. Many destroy life; we save it; and as we have said, years and years ago, we say now to all, the day that you will be virtuous and cease your unlawful connections with the sex and every man have his wife, and all the inhabitants of this government observe this rule, we shall have then but one wife apiece; but we shall save all we can save. The men are the lords of the earth, and they are more inclined to reject the Gospel than the women. The women are a great deal more inclined to believe the truth than the men; they comprehend it more quickly, and they are submissive and easy to teach, and if we cannot save the men, let us save the women for God's sake, and do not find fault with us.
Again, a gentleman said to me, the other day, "What are you going to do with the anti-polygamy law?" I replied, "Nothing at all, we mind our own business, and I hope everybody else will. We have not meddled with it, and do not expect to; but we expect to live."