Citizens have been arrested, tried and punished for breaches of those mock laws, from time to time, in such manner, that they have been compelled to the humiliating necessity of seeking an asylum elsewhere, in order to escape the tyranny and oppression of this modern Caligula. He has caused the writ of _habeas corpus_ to be issued by the municipal court of the city of Nauvoo, in a case not provided for in the charter of this city, and indeed contrary to the letter of that instrument; and, himself a prisoner, arrested under grave charges made by a neighboring state, brought before said court, tried, and acquitted; thereby securing his own rescue from the custody of the law. Citizens from the adjoining counties have been denied the right to regain property stolen and taken to Nauvoo, even after they have discovered both the thief and the property; and themselves, under the most frivolous pretenses, arrested, fined, and other property rifled from them, to satisfy the mock judgments and costs of his cormorant officers. {6} Persons upon whom stolen property has been found in the city of Nauvoo, have been brought before this religio-political chief; and he, in the capacity of mayor of the city, has refused to convict, where the cases have been most clear and palpable. We have had men of the most vicious and abominable habits imposed upon us to fill our most important county offices, by his dictum, in order, as we verily believe, that he may the more certainly control our destinies, and render himself, through the instrumentality of these base creatures of his ill-directed power, as absolutely a despot over the citizens of this county as he now is over the serfs of his own servile clan. And, to crown all, he claims to merge all religion, all law, and both moral and political justice, in the knavish pretension that he receives fresh from heaven divine instructions in all matters pertaining to these things; thereby making his own depraved will the rule by which he would have all men governed. He has caused large bodies of his ragamuffin soldiery to arm themselves, and turn out in pursuit of officers legally authorized to arrest himself; he being charged with high crimes and misdemeanors committed in the state of Missouri, and these officers arrested by the vilest hypocrisy, and placed in duress, that he might enable himself to march triumphantly into Nauvoo, and bid defiance to the laws of the land. In view of the above grievances, this meeting feel that it is their bounden duty to resist, by every laudable means, all such unwarrantable attacks upon their liberties. Therefore--