Your memorialists would beg here to give what they believe a just explanation of the causes of the predjudice & persecutions against the related above and which will follow. That there might have been some unworthy members among them cannot be denied, but they own that as a community they were as moral as upright and as observant of the laws of the land as any body of poeple in the world, Why then this predjudice & persecution? An answer they think will be found in the fact, That they were a body of people distinct from their fellow Citizens in religious opinions, in their habits in their associations. They were numerous enough to make their numbers power of theirs numerical and moral force a matter of anxiety and dread to the political and religious parties by which they were surrounded, which arose not from what the Mormons had done but from the fear of what they might do. In Addition the Mormons either had purchased of the settler, of or of the Government or held by Pr[e]emption the best lands in all that region of the and the terms of speculation the Cupidity of many was aroused to possess More [p. 10]