In the Salt Lake Valley, Young acted as the executive authority while the Council of Fifty acted as a legislature. One of his main concerns in the early Mormon settlement was theft, and he swore that "a thief should not live in the Valley, for he would cut off their heads or be the means of haveing it done as the Lord lived." A Mormon listening to one of Young's sermons in 1849 recorded that he said that "if any one was catched stealing to shoot them dead on the spot and they should not be hurt for it."