The population of Texas does not amount to seventy thousand souls, among whom there are twenty-five different forms of religion.  Two-thirds of the inhabitants are scoundrels, who have there sought a refuge against the offended laws of their country.  They are not only a curse and a check to civilization, but they reflect dishonour upon the remaining third portion of the Texans, who have come from distant climes for the honest purposes of trade and agriculture.  This mongrel and mixed congregation of beings, though firmly united in one point (war with Mexico, and that in the expectation of a rich plunder), are continually at variance on other points.  Three thousand Texans would fight against Mexico, but not two hundred against the Mormons; and that for many reasons:  government alone, and not an individual, would be a gainer by a victory; in Texas, not a soul cares for anything but himself.  Besides, the Mormons are Yankees, and can handle a rifle, setting aside their good drilling and excellent discipline.  In number, they would also have the advantage; while I am now writing, they can muster five thousand well-drilled soldiers, and, in the event of an invasion of Texas, they could easily march ten thousand men from the Sabine to the Rio Grande, from the Red River to the Gulf of Mexico.  Opposition they will not meet.  A year after the capture, the whole of Texas becomes Mormon, while Joe—­king, emperor, Pharaoh, judge or regenerator—­rules over a host of two hundred and fifty thousand devoted subjects.

Let our reader observe that these are not the wild Utopias of a heated imagination.  No; we speak as we do believe, and our intercourse with the Mormons during our travels has been sufficiently close to give us a clear insight into their designs for the future.

Joe’s policy is, above all, to conciliate the Indians, and that once done, there will not be in America a power capable of successfully opposing him.  In order to assist this he joins them in his new faith.  In admitting the Indians to be the “right, though guilty,” descendants of the sacred tribes, he flatters them with an acknowledgment of their antiquity, the only point on which a white can captivate and even blind the shrewd though untutored man of the wilds.

In explanation of the plans and proceedings of Joe Smith and the Mormons, it may not be amiss to make some remarks upon the locality which he has designed as the seat of his empire and dominion, and where he has already established his followers, as the destined instruments of his ambition.

According to the Mormon prophets, the whole region of country between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies was, at a period of about thirteen hundred years ago, densely peopled by nations descended from a Jewish family, who emigrated from Jerusalem in the time of the prophet Jeremiah, some six or seven hundred years before Christ; immense cities were founded, and sumptuous edifices reared, and the whole land overspread with the results of a high and extensive civilization.