"Why Governor Ford should lend his assistance in a vexatious prosecution of this kind we are at a loss to determine. He possesses a discretionary power in such cases, and has a right to use his judgment, as the chief magistrate of this state; and knowing, as he does, that the whole proceedings connected with this affair are illegal, we think that in justice he ought to have leaned to the side of the oppressed and innocent, particularly when the persecuted and prosecuted were citizens of his own state who had a right to his sympathies and to be shielded by his paternal care, as the father of this state. Does not his excellency know, and do not all the citizens of the state know, that the Mormons have been robbed, pillaged and plundered in Missouri without any redress? That the Mormons _en masse_ were exterminated from that state without any legal pretext whatever? How, then, could they have any legal claim upon Joseph Smith or any Mormon? Have the Mormons ever obtained any redress for injuries received in Missouri? No. Is there any prospect of their receiving any remuneration for their loss, or redress for their grievances? No. When a demand was make upon the governor of Missouri, by Governor Carlin of this state for the persons who kidnapped several Mormons, were they given up by that state? No. Why then should our executive feel so tenacious in fulfilling all the nice punctillios of law, when the very state that is making these demands has robbed, murdered and exterminated by wholesale, without law, and is merely making use of it at present as a cat's paw to destroy the innocent and murder those that they have already persecuted nearly to the death. "It is impossible that the State of Missouri should do justice with her coffers groaning with the spoils of the oppressed, and her hands yet reeking with the blood of the innocent. Shall she yet gorge her bloody maw with other victims? Shall Joseph Smith be given into her hands illegally? Never! _No, never!!_ No, NEVER!!!"