| 489 in which I now stand to the parties is plain and straightforward. By an official interposition, I might embarrass my course, and urge a measure for the purpose of effecting a compromise, and it should fail, and in the end, should I find it my duty to act contrary to the advice I had given, it might be said that I either advised wrong, or that I was partial to one side or the other, in giving advice that I would not, as an officer, follow. A more clear and indisputable right does not exist, that the Mormon people, who were expelled from their homes in Jackson County, to return and live on their lands, and if they cannot be persuaded as a matter of policy to give up that right, or to qualify it, my course, as the chief Executive officer of the State, is a plain one. The Constitution of the United States declares, "That the citizens of each State be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." Then we cannot interdict any people who have a political franchise in the United States from emigrating to this State, nor from choosing what part of the State they will settle in, provided they do not trespass on the property or rights of others. Our State Constitution declares that the people's "right to bear arms, in defense of themselves, and of State, cannot be questioned." Then it is their constitutional right to arm themselves. Indeed, our militia law makes it the duty of every man, not exempted by law, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, to arm himself with a musket, rifle, or some firelock, with a certain quantity of ammunition, etc. And again, our constitution says, "that all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences." I am fully persuaded that the eccentricity of the religious opinions and practices of the Mormons, is at the bottom of the outrages committed against them.
"They have the right constitutionally guaranteed to them, and it is indefeasible, to believe and worship Jo Smith as a man, an angel, or even as the only true and living God, and to call their habitation Zion, the Holy Land, or even heaven itself. Indeed there is nothing so absurd or ridiculous, that they have not a right to adopt their religion, so
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