This to a people whose leaders had been betrayed into the hands of their enemies; who themselves had been disarmed, though acting only in defense of their homes and families; who had been compelled at the muzzle of the musket to sign away their property to defray the expenses of the militia mobs that had brought their calamities upon them; who were then under an order of expulsion from the state and making hurried preparations for their enforced departure--this to men who had sacrificed or had been robbed of the most sacred rights of American citizenship! And he who thus addressed the brethren impudently told them in the very speech from which I quote, that he approved of all that had been done to them! But the foregoing quotation is not made in order to point out the mockery of the speech; or the mixture of hypocrisy and blasphemy in it; or the utter contemptibility of him who delivered it. I quote the passage merely to point out the fact that it was hatred of their alleged "superstition" and "fanaticism," in other words the religion of the Saints that was the cause of their persecution. The crimes against which the Saints are warned for the future--under penalty of having their present troubles revisited upon them--is gathering together in large bodies, and organizing themselves with Bishops, Presidents, etc. In other words it was the religion of the people and the organization which was both the depository of its doctrines, and the instrumentality by which they were promulgated--the Church--which was the object of the Missourians' animosity, the thing they were determined to destroy. Later, when the Prophet Joseph and other leading brethren were under examination before Judge Austin A. King at Richmond, Ray county, special inquiry was made as to the belief of the witnesses in the declaration of the Prophet Daniel: "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever." [42] The judge on being answered that the Saints believed the prophecy, turned to the clerk and told him to write the answer down as it was "_a strong point for treason_!" [43] I call it another evidence that it was the religious beliefs of the Saints that constituted their offense. True the Prophet and several other brethren were technically held for trial on {LI} the charge of "treason, murder, arson, burglary, robbery, larceny and perjury," but no one in Missouri ever seriously believed the charges since they were wholly untrue or grew out of those acts of self defense, and defense of their families against the aggressions of mob violence--a course which all men have a right to take in the protection of their own lives and the preservation of their homes from the hand of the despoiler.