"If indeed the above is a correct exposition of our rights and privileges as American citizens," he writes, "how is it that such infamies can transpire as have lately been exhibited in our courts? I may be here met with the statement that we are only a territory; but we are American citizens, and have never abjured our citizenship nor relinquished our Constitutional guarantees. * * If the above be true, and the axiom of the declarers of Independence be correct, that governments 'derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,' what becomes of our federal officers? For not one of our citizens invited them here, or had any vote in their coming, nor was their consent asked. If all just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, then the powers exercised by them [the Territorial officials appointed by the President] must be unjust. " * * The facts are the people, one hundred thousand American citizens, living in the Territory of Utah, with the full rights of free men, and the protecting guarantees of a written constitution, find in the persons of federal officers 'another government' not of the people, and in violation of Constitutional guarantees and authority; claiming to come from the United States, '_imperium in imperio_,' whose policy and practices are in grave particulars at variance with its own; and I ask by what authority it presumes to set itself up against the legitimately constituted authority of the people of the territory or state; by what authority it ignores its laws; by what authority it over-rides and tears down the safeguards of society, fosters in our midst drunkenness, gambling and whoredoms, those infamous adjuncts and institutions of professed civilization; by what authority it repudiates its officers; by what authority it interferes with the religion of the people, with their social, religious, political and moral rights?" He then proceeds at some length to show that some of the most eminent statesmen of America held to the view that the people of the territories possessed the right to manage their own municipal, social and domestic affairs in that way which to them seemed best, limited only in the exercise of these powers by the Constitution of the United States. These letters, however, were most valuable in allaying the excitement of the people, who by the infamous proceedings of the courts were fast approaching that condition of mind when men throw off all restraint, and regardless of consequences avenge their own wrongs. He called the attention of the people to the fact that this was probably the object of the crusade, that a pretext might be found for further oppression and robbery.