[Brigham Young]
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. ...
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.
[Journal of Discourses, Liverpool, England, 1853-86. 14:119-122 quoted in The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, Ed. Richard S. Van Wagoner, Smith-Pettit Foundation, Salt Lake City (2009), http://bit.ly/BY-discourses]
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