The Brigham Young Center

Great Salt Lake City, U. T.
April 12, 1859.

Mr. William Howard

Sir:--
Bishop Brinton has just handed to me your letter to him bearing date 11th Inst., with a request for my Counsel in the matter, and I have deemed it most proper to address my views directly to yourself.

So far as I know, you have just as good a right to manufacture and vend ardent spirits as any other person engaged in that business in this Territory. But there are several men and boys who use liquor intemperately and behave unwisely under its influence, and I presume from the information I gather from your Bishop, that the petition you mention was simply to have an influence exerted with yourself, and with those who are supplied with liquor by you, to have its disposal, whether by wholesale or retail, managed with the greatest possible prudence for the prevention of abuses arising from its misues. Be so good as to use all possible care and prudence to prevent liquor from going to persons who will not use it with discretion. Your Bishop is not inclined to having any thing to say or do in the matter.
Govr. Cumming is the only person that can prohibit your making liquor, a fact in our laws that I thought was quite generally understood.

Notwithstanding one statement in your letter, you must be aware that hundreds have been cut off from this Church by Bishops and Conferences, and have never on that account, been in the least disturbed in any moral, civil, or religious right, hence I am at a little loss to fully understand your design in making such statement, except it be to fan the flame of prejudice and wrath against Bishops. Some acts, disgraceful to civilized society, have been committed in this Territory, but they have been the sudden lawless outbreaks of a foolish and reckless few, very few, and it is worse than idle, to endeavor, as many have and are doing, to palm them off as indicative of the sanction of the people.

Will you be so kind as to favor me with a copy of the petition in question and oblige,

Respectfully Yours, &c.

Brigham Young