ment. The climate is not wholesome. Sonora offers all kinds of advantages, and the Mormons, after they have done all the harm they can, will take refuge there. °
University of St. Louis, Jan. 19, 1858.
Reverend and Dear Father.6
I propose to give you in this letter a short sketch of the fanatic sect of Mormons, against whom the Government of the United States has just sent troops, in order to subject them to the laws, or force them to leave the country. The facts which I will relate on the origin and history of this singular people are chiefly drawn from a recent work by John Hyde, who had been an elder or minister of the Mormon sect.
The founder of the Mormons was one Joseph Smith, born of an obscure family, December 23, 1805, at Sharon, Windsor county, Vermont. The whole life of this man, from youth up, was marked by fanaticism, fraud and vice. More than fifty persons of good reputation and in every way worthy of respect, who knew him at Palmyra, New York, where he had settled with his family, have testified under oath that Joseph Smith was regarded as a man of no moral character and given to vicious habits. In 1820 Smith em braced Methodism. In April of that year he pretended to have had a revelation from heaven, while praying in the
a The general outcry against the Mormons at this time had its influence upon Father De Sinet, as is evidenced by his change of view in the six years between the dates of this and the preceding letter. Perhaps his ready acceptance of the report that the Mormons contemplated an exodus to Mexico was a case of "the wish is father to the thought." That would, indeed, have been an effective solution of the Mormon question in the United States.
s To the editor of the PrIcis Historiques, Brussels.