Next, the government at Washington had sent to construe and administer their laws men who were aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel.

True, Millard Fillmore had appointed Brigham governor of the new Territory--but there were chief justices and associate justices, secretaries, attorneys, marshals, and Indian agents from the wicked and benighted East; men who frankly disbelieved that the voice of Brigham was as the voice of God, and who did not hesitate to let their heresy be known.

A stream of these came and went-- trouble-mongers who despised and insulted the Saints, and returned to Washington with calumnies on their lips.

It was true that Brigham had continued, as was right, to be the only power in the Territory; but the narrow-minded appointees of the Federal government persisted in misconstruing this circumstance; refusing to look upon it as the just mark of Heaven's favour, and declaring it to be the arrogance of a mere civil usurper.
Under such provocation Joel Rae longed more than ever to be a Lion of the Lord, for those above him in the Church endured too easily, he considered, the indignities that were put upon them by these evil-minded Gentile politicians.

He would have rejected them forthwith, as he believed the Lord would have had them do,--nay, as he believed the Lord would sooner or later punish them for not doing.