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As far as constitutional liberty is concerned, I will say, the God of heaven has raised up our nation, as foretold by his prophets generations ago. He inspired Columbus, and moved upon him to cross the ocean in search of this continent. The world is acquainted with the history of his course; his pleadings with the courts of Europe, and his final triumph in finding sympathy in the King and Queen of Spain, who furnished the necessary means to make the exploration. It is also well known how our forefathers found a home and an asylum in this land from the hand of persecution, and how they planted here the tree of liberty and jealously guarded it from the attempt of the mother country to uproot and destroy it. The hand of God was in this; and it is through the intervention of his providence that we enjoy today the freest and most independent government the world ever saw. And what was the object of this? It was to prepare the way for the building up of the kingdom of God in this the last dispensation of the fulness of times; and as long as the principles of constitutional liberty shall be maintained upon this land, blessings will attend the nation.
Source: G. Homer Durham, ed. The Discourses of Wilford Woodruff, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1946. 188 - 189.