| 405 source whatever, we still shall have gained one point, 'to make it apparent to all the world, that what was wanting in this case, was neither a criminal nor a prosecutor.' Another point we shall have gained, to be the discoverers of a desiderum [desideratum] in the constitution of the United States. If neither of an independent state, neither its legislature nor the great federal compact, has power to guard the lives and property of American citizens, then we shall have made a second discovery, that the framers of our constitution did not understand the business of legislation.
Were the venerable fathers of our independence permitted to revisit the earth, how would they frown with indignation at the disgrace of their country. 'In vain they toiled, they bled in vain,' if one of the states of the great E Pluribus Unum, has a right to plunder, burn, murder, and exterminate from its borders, its peaceable citizens for conscience sake. Should we fail of redress in the present congress, we shall importune at every subsequent one, till we gain the object of our most ardent desires. From our origin to the present time, we have been a law abiding people. Our book of laws that we received by immediate revelation through our beloved seer, enjoins us in the most explicit manner, not to transgress the laws of the land. These things we have always done. With all these facts before the world, we believe that government has the power, amply and adequately to redress us. We expect it. We have the most inalienable right to expect it. While the crimson current that administers to our being, shall flow, we will contend for our injured rights.-We intend to test the efficacy of the government to the core. We believe that peradventure, there may yet be virtue, and that our cause may yet be heard. We can never forget the injuries done us in Missouri. They are ever present to our minds. We feel it impossible to efface them from our memories. We can never forget the blood of our brethren, so wantonly lavished to satisfy the infernal thirsts of men, as heinous to the righteous, as the fiends of hell. Were we to forget them, heaven itself would upbraid us. The immortal shades of our martyred brethren would spurn us from their presence. Their cries with those seen under the altar of God, as viewed by the ancient prophet, would ascend to the throne of Jehovah against us. We swear by the precious memory of the illustrious dead-the fathers of our independence, that we will remember them. We will do all in our power to mete out justice to those who without the least cause have murdered our friends. And if we fail may heaven and earth bear us witness that, what is wanting in this case, is not strength in the law, arising from 'the peculiar nature of American institutions;' but a faithful and virtuous administrator. Now therefore, knowing as I do, your devoted attachment to the cause of freedom and the free institutions of your country, and believing as I have every reason to, that the voice of the oppressed will not be unheeded by you, especially when it is declared to you that many from your happy state, are at this time suffering the highest degree of injustice from mobocracy in Missouri; I, in the name of every faithful saint, especially those who received their birth and education in Maine, appeal to your wisdom, to that high legal attainment which characterizes you as a sovereign state-to your natural sense of the rights of man, and to the of patriotism that burns within your bosoms, to do all within the grasp of your power, to redress us. We declare to you and to all the world, that we are an innocent people; and that for the gospel's sake, for the sake of the principles of glorious and eternal truth; we have been mobbed, whiped [whipped], imprisoned, tormented and slain. Should any man reply that if we are persecuted for the truths sake, we ought to receive it patiently, and not seek that which is our own, we respond, that if no other consideration whatever, should prompt us, the disgraced institutions of our bleeding country demand that we make every effort to magnify her laws. We seek for justice that recurrences of deeds so frightful may not distract the nation hereafter. We make this appeal to the people of the state of Main to let them know that an injury has been done the church of Christ in the nineteenth century. An injury which if unrepaired by government, will establish the most dangerous precedence, as others of a more direful nature will have license to follow. All past experience admonishes us that in a republican government, when vice and corruption gain the ascendency [ascendancy] over virtue, the most terrible revolutions are sure to follow.
I will now relate a dream which I had, near the time that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was driven from Jackson county, in Missouri.
In my dream, I was at the capital of the United States. All was solemn as the tomb. The voice of the eloquent orator was hushed to silence. The senator, the sage, the honorable, the rich and poor together, all were clad in mourning. Indeed, nature herself, and all things seemed to participate in the general gloom.-All was silent but the voice of one man. His, was low and solemn as the lonely sepulchre [sepulcher]. In the archives of state, there was a twilight, by which, with some difficulty, one could peruse
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