To this petition the governor replied on the 4th of February, 1834; and said the request to be restored to their homes and lands needed no evidence to support the right to have it granted. In relation to the brethren organizing into military companies, the governor said: "Should your men organize according to law--which they have a right to do, indeed it is their duty to do so, unless exempted by religious scruples--and apply for public arms, the executive could not distinguish between their right to have them, and the right of every other description of people similarly situated." All these answers of the governor to the petition of the exiled saints, so far, were good, and manifested a spirit to administer even-handed justice. But when he comes to consider their request to be _protected_ in their possessions, as well as _reinstated_ in them, his reply was not so favorable. "As to the request," said he, "for keeping up a military force to protect your people, and prevent the commission of crimes and injuries, were I to comply it would transcend the power with which the executive of this State is clothed." Still, the laws of the State empower the "commander-in-chief, in case of actual or threatened invasion, insurrection, or war, or public danger, or _other emergency,_ to call forth into actual service such portion of the militia as he may deem expedient." In my judgment, it does seem that under the powers here conferred upon the executive by this provision of the fundamental law of the State--the constitution--the governor could have granted the request of the saints to be protected in their homes, until peace was restored. Surely the clause, _"or other emergency,"_ in the section of the law just quoted, was broad enough to justify him in protecting, by the State militia, twelve hundred citizens of the United States in their homes until mob violence had subsided--until respect for the civil law had been restored, and these citizens allowed to dwell in safety upon the lands they had purchased from the general government. Under this provision he could have "curbed those cruel devils of their will," without "doing even a little wrong, in order to do a great right"--without "wresting the law to his authority." But he chose to interpret the law otherwise--as follows: The words, "or other emergency," in our militia law, seem quite broad; but the emergency to come within the object of that provision, shall be of a public nature. Your case is certainly a very emergent one, and the consequences as important to _your society_ as if the war had been waged against the whole State, yet the _public_ has no other interest in it than that the laws be faithfully executed.