The bill further provided that the committee should meet at Richmond, Ray county, on the first Monday in May, and thereafter at such times and places as they should appoint; that they should choose a chairman, clerk, sergeant-at-arms and assistants; issue subpoenas and other processes; {247} administer oaths; keep a record; furnish rooms; pay witnesses one dollar and fifty cents per day out of the treasury; receive their pay as members of the legislature; clerk four dollars per day, and one dollar and fifty cents for each arrest. In short, all parties concerned were to be paid the highest price--and this committee were to be clothed with all the powers of the highest courts of record. This bill did not concern the "Mormons," as the exterminating order of Governor Boggs, and the action of General Clark thereon, would compel all the Saints to be out of the state before the court would sit, so that they would have no testimony but from mobbers and worse, apostates; and this was evidently their object in postponing the time so long. [Sidenote: Proposition to Help the Poor.] About this time President Brigham Young proposed to Bishop Partridge to help the poor out of the state. The Bishop replied, "The poor may take care of themselves, and I will take care of myself." President Brigham Young replied, "If you will not help them out, I will." _Thursday, January 24_.--I wrote as follows from Liberty jail: _The Prophet's Petition to the Missouri Legislature_. _To the Honorable Legislature of Missouri_: Your memorialists, having a few days since solicited your attention to the same subject, [2] would now respectfully submit to your honorable body a few additional facts in support of their prayer. They are now imprisoned under a charge of treason against the state of Missouri, and their lives, and fortunes, and characters, are suspended upon the result of the trial on the criminal charges preferred against them. Therefore your honorable body will excuse them for manifesting the deep concern they feel in relation to their trial for a crime so enormous as that of treason.