  This speech of Senator Kearns' on "Conditions in Utah", created widespread interest at the time it was read in the Senate House, viz., on the 28th of February, 1905. It was quite universally commented upon by the press of the country, and generally to the disparagement of Utah, and the Mormon people. The consensus of opinion expressed in the newspapers who took for granted the statements of the speech as representing the facts in the case, are clearly set forth in an Editorial of the "New York Globe."
This conclusion might be quite logical, if the statements of Senator Kearns were true. All I ask is that after reading the speech of the Senator, the reader will suspend his judgement of the case until he shall have read the answer to it. I.Speech of the Hon. Thomas Kearns in the Senate of the United States.[A][Footnote A: From the Congressional Record.] The President pro tempore. The Chair lays before the Senate the resolution submitted by the Senator from Idaho [Mr. Dubois], which will be read. The Secretary read the resolution submitted yesterday by Mr. Dubois, as follows: Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be, and it is hereby, authorized and instructed to prepare and report to the Senate within thirty days after the beginning of the next session of Congress a joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress proposing to the several States amendments to the Constitution of the United States which shall provide, in substance, for the prohibition and punishment of polygamous marriages and plural cohabitation contracted or practiced within the United States and in every place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States; and which shall, in substance, also require all persons taking office under the Constitution or laws of the United States, or of any State, to take and subscribe an oath that he or she is not, and will not be, a member or adherent of any organization whatever the laws, rules, or nature of which organization require him or her to disregard his or her duty to support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the several States. Mr. Kearns. Mr. President, I will not permit this occasion to pass without saying, with brevity and such clearness as I can command, what it seems to me should be said by a Senator, under these circumstances, before leaving public life. Something is due to the State which has honored me; something is due to the record which I have endeavored to maintain honorably before the world and something, by way of information, is due to the Senate and the country. Utah, the newest of the States, to me the best beloved of all the States, appears to be the only one concerning which there is a serious conflict. I was not born in Utah, but I have spent all the years of my manhood there, and I love the commonwealth and its people. In what I say there is malice toward none, and I hope to make it just to all. If the present day does not accept my statements and appreciate my motives, I can only trust that time will prove more gentle and that in the future those who care to revert to these remarks will know that they are animated purely by a hope to bring about a better understanding between Utah and this great nation. Utah was admitted to statehood after, and because of, a long series of pledges exacted from the Mormon leaders, the like of which had never before been known in American history. Except for those pledges, the sentiment of the United States would never have assented to Utah's admission. Except for the belief on the part of Congress and the country that the extraordinary power which abides in that State would maintain these pledges, Utah would not have been admitted. There is every reason to believe that the President who signed the bill would have vetoed it if he had not been convinced that the pledges made would be kept. THE PLEDGES.As a citizen of the State and a witness to the events and words which constitute those pledges, as a Senator of the United States, I give my word of honor to you that I believed that these pledges consisted of the following propositions: First. That the Mormon leaders would live within the laws pertaining to plural marriage and the continued plural marriage relation, and that they would enforce this obligation upon all of their followers, under penalty of disfellowship. Second. That the leaders of the Mormon Church would no longer exercise political sway, and that their followers would be free and would exercise their freedom in politics, in business, and in social affairs. As a citizen and a Senator I give my word of honor to you that I believed that these pledges would be kept in the spirit in which Congress and the country accepted them, and that there would never be any violation, evasion, denial, or equivocation concerning them. I appeal to such members of this body as were in either House of Congress during the years 1890 to 1896, if it was not their belief at that time that the foregoing were the pledges and that they would be kept; and I respectfully insist that every Senator here who was a member of either House at that time would have refused to vote for Utah's admission unless he had firmly believed as I have stated. 1. Utah secured her statehood by a solemn compact made by the Mormon leaders in behalf of themselves and their people. 2. That compact has been broken willfully and frequently. 3. No apostle of the Mormon Church has publicly protested against that violation. I know the gravity of the utterances that I have just made. I know what are the probable consequences to myself. But I have pondered long and earnestly upon the subject and have come to the conclusion that duty to the innocent people of my State and that obligation to the Senate and the country require that I shall clearly define my attitude. RELIGION NOT INVOLVED.This is no quarrel with religion. This is no assault upon any man's faith. This is rather the reverence toward the inherent right of all men to believe as they please, which separates religious faith from irreligious practice. The Mormon people have a system of their own, somewhat complex, and gathered from the mysticisms of all the ages. It does not appeal to most men; but in its purely theological domain it is theirs, and I respect it as their religion and them as its believers. The trouble arises now, as it has frequently arisen in the past, from the fact that some of the accidental leaders of the movement since the first zealot founder have sought to make of this religion not only a system of morals, sometimes quite original in themselves, but also a system of social relation, a system of finance, a system of commerce, and a system of politics. THE SOCIAL ASPECT.I dismiss the religion with my profound respect; if it can comfort them, I would not, if I could, disturb it. Coming to the social aspect of the society, it is apparent that the great founder sought first to establish equality among men, and then to draw from those equal ranks a special class, who were permitted to practice polygamy and to whom special privileges were accorded in their association with the consecrated temples and the administration of mystic ordinances therein. The polygamous group, or cult as it may be called, soon became the ruling factor in the organization; and it may be observed that ever since the founding of the church almost every man of prominence in the community has belonged to this order. It was so in the time of the martyrs, Joseph and Hyrum Smith, who were killed at Carthage jail in Illinois, and both of whom were polygamists, although it was denied at the time. There were living until recently, and perhaps there are living now, women who testified that they were married in polygamy to one or the other of these two men, Joseph having the larger number. It has been so ever since and is so today, that nearly every man of the governing class has been or is a polygamist. Brigham Young succeeded Joseph Smith, and he set up a kind of kingly rulership, not unbecoming to a man of his vast empire-building power. The Mormons have been taught to revere Joseph Smith as a direct prophet from God. He saw the face of the All Father. He held communion with the Son. The Holy Ghost was his constant companion. He settled every question, however trivial, by revelation from Almighty God. But Brigham was different. While claiming a divine right of leadership, he worked out his great mission by palpable and material means. I do not know that he ever pretended to have received a revelation from the time that he left Nauvoo until he reached the shores of the Dead Sea, nor through all the thirty years of his leadership there. He seemed to regard his people as children who had to be led through their serious calamities by holding out to them the glittering thought of divine guardianship. So firmly did Brigham establish the social order in Utah that all of the people were equal, except the governing body. This may be said to consist of the president and his two counsellors, they three constituting the first presidency; the twelve apostles; the presiding bishopric, consisting of three men, the chief bishops of the church but much lower in rank than the apostles; the seven presidents of seventies, who are, under the apostles, the subordinate head of the missionary service of the church; and the presiding patriarch. These altogether constitute a body of twenty-six men. There are local authorities in the different stakes of Zion, as they are called, corresponding to counties in a State, but with these it is not necessary to deal. Practically all of these men under Brigham Young were polygamists. They constituted what one of their number once called the "elite class" of the community. To attain this rank one usually had to show ability, and attaining the rank he was quite certain to enter into or extend his already existing plural-marriage relations. These rulers were looked upon with great reverence. Brigham Young, besides being a prophet of God, as they believed, had led them through the greatest march of the ages. His nod became almost superhuman in its significance. His frown was as terrible to them as the wrath of God. He upheld all the members of the polygamistic and governing class by his favoritism toward them. He supremely, and they subordinately, ruled the community as if they were a king and a house of peers, with no house of commons. Not elsewhere in the United States, and not in any foreign country where civilization dwells, has there been such a complete mastery of man over modern men. The subordinates and the mass would perform the slightest will of Brigham Young. When he was not present the mass would perform the will of any of the subordinates speaking in his name. Below this privileged class stood the common mass. It had its various gradations of title, but, with the exception of rare instances of personal power, there was equality in the mass. For instance, as business was a part of their system, the local religious authority in some remote part might be the business subordinate of some other man of less ecclesiastical rank, with the result that this peculiar intermingling kept them all practically upon one level of social order; and the man who made adobes under the hot sun of the desert through all the week might still be the religious superior of the richest man in the local community, and they met on terms of equality and friendship. Their children might intermarry, the difference in wealth being countervailed by a difference in ecclesiastical authority. It was a strange social system, this, with Brigham Young and his coterie of advisers, to the number of twenty-six, standing at the head, self-perpetuating, the chief being able to select constantly to fill the ranks as they might be depleted by death; and all these ruling over one solid mass of equal caste who thought that the rulers were animated by divine revelation, holding the right to govern in all things on earth and with authority extending into heaven. So firmly entrenched was their social system that when Brigham Young passed away his various successors who came in time to his place by accident of seniority of service found ample opportunity without difficulty to perpetuate this system and to maintain their social autocracy. As the matter has appeared so fully before the country, I will not speak further of the method of succession, but will merely call to your minds that after Brigham Young came John Taylor, then Wilford Woodruff, then Lorenzo Snow, then Joseph F. Smith, the present ruler. Under these several men the social autocracy has had its varying fortunes, but at the present time it is probably at as high a point as it ever reached under the original Joseph or under Brigham Young. The president of the church, Joseph F. Smith, affects a regal state. His home consists of a series of villas, rather handsome in design, and surrounded by such ample grounds as to afford sufficient exclusiveness. In addition to this he has an official residence of historic character near to the office which he occupies as president. When he travels he is usually accompanied by a train of friends, who are really servitors. When he attends social functions he appears like a ruler among his subjects. And in this respect I am not speaking of Mormon associations alone, for there are many Gentiles in and out of Utah who seem to take delight in paying this extraordinary deference. If I have seemed to speak at length upon this mere social phase it has not been without a definite purpose. I want you to know how this religion, claiming to recognize and secure the equality of men, immediately established and has maintained for the mass of its adherents that social equality, but has elevated a class of its rulers to regal authority and splendor. Understanding how the chief among them has the dignity of a monarch in their social relations, you will better understand the business and political autocracy which he has been able to establish. In all this social system each apostle has his great part. He is inseparable from it. He wields now, as does a minister at court, such part of the power as the monarch may permit him to enjoy, and it is his hope and expectation that he will outlive those who are his seniors in rank in order that he may become the ruler. Therefore, if there be evil in this social relation as I have portrayed it, every apostle is responsible for a part of that evil. They enjoy the honors of the social class; they help to exert the tyranny over the subjugated mass. Those of you who do me the honor to follow my remarks will realize how close is the relation between the apostles and the president, and that the apostle is a responsible part of the governing power. While I may speak of the president of the church segregated from his associates and as the monarch, it must be understood constantly that he maintains his power by the support of the apostles, who keep the mass in order and in subjugation to his will, expressed through them. THE BUSINESS MONOPOLY.Whatever may have been its origin or excuse, the business power of the president of the church and of the select class which he admits into business relations with him is now a practical monopoly, or is rapidly becoming a monopoly, of everything that he touches. I want to call your attention to the extraordinary list of worldly concerns in which this spiritual leader holds official position. The situation is more amazing when you are advised that this man came to his presidency purely by accident, namely, the death of his seniors in rank; that he had never known any business ability, and that he comes to the presidency and the directorship of the various corporations solely because he is president of the church. He is already reputed to be a wealthy man, and his statement would seem to indicate that he has large holdings in the various corporations with which he is associated, although previous to his accession to the presidency of the church he made a kind of proud boast among his people of his poverty. He conducts railways, street-car lines, power and light companies, coal mines, salt works, sugar factories, shoe factories, mercantile houses, drug stores, newspapers, magazines, theaters, and almost every conceivable kind of business, and in all of these, inasmuch as he is the dominant factor by virtue of his being the prophet of God, he asserts indisputable sway. It is considered an evidence of deference to him, and good standing in the church, for his hundreds of thousands of followers to patronize exclusively the institutions which he controls. And this fact alone, without any business ability on his part, but with capable subordinate guidance for his enterprises, insures their success, and danger and possible ruin for every competitive enterprise. Independent of these business concerns, he is in receipt of an income like unto that which a royal family derives from a national treasury. One-tenth of all the annual earnings of all the Mormons in all the world flows to him. These funds amount to the sum of $1,600,000 annually, or 5 per cent upon $32,000,000, which is one-quarter of the entire taxable wealth of the State of Utah. It is the same as if he owned, individually, in addition to all his visible enterprises, one-quarter of all the wealth of the State and derived from it 5 per cent of income without taxation and without discount. The hopelessness of contending in a business way with this autocrat must be perfectly apparent to your minds. The original purpose of this vast tithe, as often stated by speakers for the church, was the maintenance of the poor, the building of meetinghouses, etc. Today the tithes are transmuted, in the localities where they are paid, into cash, and they flow into the treasury of the head of the church. No account is made, or ever has been made, of these tithes. The president expends them according to his own will and pleasure, and with no examination of his accounts, except by those few men whom he selects for that purpose and whom he rewards for their zeal and secrecy. Shortly after the settlement of the Mormon Church property question with the United States the church issued a series of bonds, amounting approximately to $1,000,000, which were taken by financial institutions. This was probably to wipe out a debt which had accumulated during a long period of controversy with the nation. But since, and including the year 1897, which was about the time of the issue of the bonds, approximately $9,000,000 have been paid as tithes. If any of the bonds are still outstanding, it is manifestly because the president of the church desires for reasons of his own to have an existing indebtedness. It will astound you to know that every dollar of United States money paid to any servant of the Government who is a Mormon is tithed for the benefit of this monarch. Out of every $1,000 thus paid he gets $100 to swell his grandeur. This is also true of money paid out of the public treasury of the State of Utah to Mormon officials. But what is worst of all, the monarch dips into the sacred public school fund and extracts from every Mormon teacher one-tenth of his or her earnings and uses it for his unaccounted purposes; and, by means of these purposes and the power which they constitute, he defies the laws of his State, the sentiment of his country, and is waging war of nullification on the public school system, so dear to the American people. No right-thinking man will oppose any person as a servant of the nation or the State or as a teacher in the public schools on account of religious faith. As I have before remarked, this is no war upon the religion of the Mormons; and I am only calling attention to the monstrous manner in which this monarch invades all the provinces of human life and endeavors to secure his rapacious ends. In all this there is no thought on my part of opposition to voluntary gifts by individuals for religious purposes or matters connected legitimately with religion. My comment and criticism are against the tyranny which misuses a sacred name to extract from individuals the moneys which they ought not to spare from family needs, and which they do not wish to spare; my comment and criticism relate to the power of a monarch whose tyranny is so effective as that not even the moneys paid by the Government are considered the property of the Government's servant until after this monarch shall have seized his arbitrary tribute, with or without the willing assent of the victim, so that the monarch may engage the more extensively in commercial affairs, which are not a part of either religion or charity. With an income of 5 per cent upon one-quarter of the entire assessed valuation of the State of Utah today, how long will it take this monarch, with his constantly increasing demands for revenue, to so absorb the productive power that he shall be receiving an income of 5 per cent upon one-half the property, and then upon all of the property of the State? This is worse than the farming of taxes under the old French Kings. Will Congress allow this awful calamity to continue? The view which the people of the United States entertained on this subject forty years ago was shown by the act of Congress in 1862, in which a provision, directed particularly against the Mormon Church, declared that no church in a Territory of the United States should have in excess of $50,000 of wealth outside of the property used for purposes of worship. It is evident that as early as that time the pernicious effects of a system which used the name of God and the authority of religion to dominate in commerce and finance were fully recognized. This immense tithing fund is gathered directly from Mormons, but the burden falls in some degree upon Gentiles also. Gentiles are in business and suffer by competition with the tithe-supported business enterprises. Gentiles are large employers of Mormon labor; and as that labor must pay one-tenth of its earnings to support competitive concerns, the Gentile employer must pay, indirectly at least, the tithe which may be utilized to compete with, and even ruin, him in business. And in return it should be noted that Mormon institutions do not employ Gentiles except in rare cases of necessity. The reason is obvious: Gentiles do not take as kindly to the tithing system as do the Mormons. The Mormon citizen of Utah has additional disadvantages. After paying one-tenth of all his earnings as a tithe offering, he is called upon to erect and maintain the meetinghouses and other edifices of the church; he is called upon to donate to the poor fund in his ward, through his local Bishop; he is called upon to sustain the Women's Relief Society, whose purpose is to care for the poor and to minister to the sick; he is called upon to pay his share of the expense for the 2,500 missionaries of the church who are constantly kept in the field without drawing upon the general funds of the church. When all this is done, it is found that, in defiance of the old and deserved boast of the predecessors of the present president, there are some Mormons in the poorhouses of Utah, and these are sustained by the public taxes derived from the Gentiles and Mormons alike. Broadly speaking, the Gentiles compose 35 per cent of the population and pay one-half of the taxes of Utah. In the long run they carry their share of all these great charges. The almost unbearable community burden which is thus inflicted must be visible to your minds without argument from me. Let it be sufficient on this point for me to say that all the property of Utah is made to contribute to the grandeur of the president of the church, and that at his instance any industry, any institution, within the State, could be destroyed except the mining and smelting industry. Even this industry his personal and church organ has attacked with a threat of extermination by the courts, or by additional legislation, if the smelters do not meet the view expressed by the church organ. Mr. President, I ask to have read at this point an editorial from the Deseret Evening News of October 31, 1904, which I send to the desk. The President pro tempore. The Secretary will read as requested. The Secretary read as follows:
Mr. Kearns. Mr. President, I must not burden you with too many details, but in order for you to see how complete is the business power of this man I will cite you to one case. The Great Salt Lake is estimated to contain 14,000,000,000 tons of salt. Probably salt can be made cheaper on the shores of this lake than anywhere else in the world. Nearly all its shore line is adaptable for salt gardens. The president of the church is interested in a large salt monopoly which has gathered in the various smaller enterprises. He is president of a railroad which runs from the salt gardens to Salt Lake City, connecting there with trunk lines. It costs to manufacture the salt and place it on board the cars 75 cents per ton. He receives for it $5 and $6 per ton. His company and its subsidiary corporation are probably capitalized at three-quarters of a million dollars, and upon this large sum he is able to pay dividends of 8 or 10 per cent. Not long since two men, who for many years had been tithe payers and loyal members of the church, undertook to establish a salt garden along the line of a trunk railway. One of them was a large dealer in salt, and proposed to extend his trade by making the salt and reaching territory prohibited to him by the church price of salt; the other was the owner of the land upon which it was proposed to establish the salt garden. These men formed a corporation, put in pumping stations and flumes, and the corporation became indebted to one of the financial institutions over which the church exercises considerable influence. Then the president of the church sent for them. There is scarcely an instance on record where a message of this kind failed of its purpose. These men went to meet the prophet, seer, and revelator of God, as they supposed, but he had laid aside his robes of sanctity for the moment and he was a plain, unadorned, aggressive, if not an able, business man. He first denounced them for interfering with a business which he had made peculiarly his own; and, when they protested that they had no intention to interfere with his trade, but were seeking new markets, he declared in a voice of thunderous passion that if they did not cease with their projected enterprise, he would crush them. They escaped from his presence feeling like courtiers repulsed from the foot of a king's throne, and then surveyed their enterprise. If they stopped, they would lose all the money invested and their enterprise would possibly be sold out to their creditors; if they went on and invested more money, the president had the power, as he had threatened, to crush them. Not only could he ruin their enterprise, but he could ostracize them socially and could make of them marked and shunned men in the community where they had always been respected. Is there menace in this system? To me it seems like a great danger to all the people who are now affected, and therefore of great danger to the people of the United States, because the power of this monarchy within the Republic is constantly extending. If it be an evil, every apostle is in part responsible for this tyrannical course. He helped to elect the president; he does the president's bidding, and shares in the advantages of that tyranny. I did not call the social system a violation of the pledges to the country, but I do affirm that the business tyranny of Mormon leaders is an express violation of the covenant made, for they do not leave their followers free in secular affairs. They tyrannize over them, and their tyranny spreads even to the Gentiles. In all this I charge that every apostle is a party to the wrong and to the violation. Although I speak of the president of the church as the leader, the monarch in fact, every apostle is one of his ministers, one of his creators, and also one of his creatures, and possibly his successor; and the whole system depends upon the manner in which the apostles and the other leaders shall support the chief leader. As no apostle has ever protested against this system, but has, by every means in his power, encouraged it, he can not escape his share of the responsibility for it. It is an evil; they aid it. It is a violation of the pledge upon which statehood was granted; they profit by it. THE POLITICAL AUTOCRACY.I pass now to the political aspect of this hierarchy, as some call it, but this monarchy as I choose to term it. I have previously called your attention to the social and business powers, monopolies, autocracies, exercised by the leaders. Through these channels of social and business relations they can spread the knowledge of their political desires without appearing obtrusively in politics. When the end of their desire is accomplished, they affect to wash their hands of all responsibility by denying that they engaged in political activities. Superficial persons, and those desiring to accept this argument, are convinced by it. But never, in the palmy days of Brigham Young, was there a more complete political tyranny than is exercised by the present president of the Mormon Church and his apostles, who are merely awaiting the time when by the death of their seniors in rank they may become president, and select some other man to hold the apostleship in their place—as they now hold it in behalf of the ruling monarch. In this statement I merely call your attention to what a perfect system of ecclesiastical government is maintained by these presidents and apostles; and I do not need to more than indicate to you what a wondrous aid their ecclesiastical government can be, and is, in accomplishing their political purposes. Parties are nothing to these leaders, except as parties may be used by them. So long as there is Republican administration and Congress, they will lead their followers to support Republican tickets; but if, by any chance, the Democratic party should control this Government, with a prospect of continuance in power, you would see a gradual veering around under the direction of the Mormon leaders. When Republicans are in power the Republican leaders of the Mormon people are in evidence and the Democratic leaders are in retirement. If the Democracy were in power, the Republican leaders of the Mormon people would go into retirement and Democrats would appear in their places. No man can be elected to either House of Congress against their wish. I will not trespass upon your patience long enough to recite the innumerable circumstances that prove this assertion, but will merely refer to enough instances to illustrate the method. In 1897, at the session of the legislature which was to elect a Senator, and which was composed of sixty Democrats and three Republicans, Moses Thatcher was the favored candidate of the Democracy in the State. He had been an apostle of the Mormon Church, but had been deposed because he was out of harmony with the leaders. The Hon. Joseph L. Rawlins was a rival candidate, but not strongly so at first. He was encouraged by the church leaders in every way; and finally, when his strength had been advanced sufficiently to need but one vote, a Mormon Republican was promptly moved over into the Democratic column and he was elected by the joint assembly. I do not charge that Hon. Joseph L. Rawlins, who occupied a seat with distinguished honor in this great body for six years, had any improper bargain with the church, or any knowledge of the secret methods by which his election was being compassed; but he was elected under the direction of the leaders of the church because they desired to defeat and further humiliate a deposed apostle. I will not ignore my own case. During nearly three years I have waited this great hour of justice in which I could answer the malignant falsehood and abuse which has been heaped upon a man who is dead and can not answer, and upon myself, a living man willing to wait the time for answer. Lorenzo Snow, a very aged man, was president of the church when I was elected to the Senate. He had reached that advanced time of life, being over eighty, when men abide largely in the thoughts of their youth. He was my friend in that distant way which sometimes exists without close acquaintanceship, our friendship (if I may term it such) having arisen from the events attendant upon Utah's struggle for statehood. For some reason he did not oppose my election to the Senate. Every other candidate for the place had sought his favor; it came to me without price or solicitation on my part. The friends and mouthpieces of some of the present leaders have been base enough to charge that I bought the Senatorship from Lorenzo Snow, president of their own church. Here and now I denounce the calumny against that old man, whose unsought and unbought favor came to me in that contest. That I ever paid him one dollar of money, or asked him to influence legislators of his faith, is as cruel a falsehood as ever came from human lips. So far as I am concerned he held his power with clean hands, and I would protect the memory of this dead man against all the abuse and misrepresentation which might be heaped upon him by those who were his adherents during life, but who now attack his fame in order that they may pay the greater deference to the present king. You must know that in that day we were but five years old as a State. Our political conditions were and had been greatly unsettled. The purpose of the church to rule in politics had not yet been made so manifest and determined. Lorenzo Snow held his office for a brief time—about two years. What he did in that office pertaining to my election I here and now distinctly assume as my burden, for no man shall with impunity use his hatred of me to defame Lorenzo Snow and dishonor his memory to his living and loving descendants. As for myself, I am willing to take the Senate and the country into my confidence, and make a part of the eternal records of the Senate, for such of my friends as may care to read, the vindication of my course to my posterity. I had an ambition, and not an improper one, to sit in the Senate of the United States. My competitors had longer experience in politics and may have understood more of the peculiar situation in the State. They sought what is known as church influence. I sought to obtain this place by purely political means. I was elected. After all their trickery my opponents were defeated, and to some extent by the very means which they had basely invoked. I have served with you four years, and have sought in a modest way to make a creditable record here. I have learned something of the grandeur and dignity of the Senate, something of its ideals, which I could not know before coming here. I say to you, my fellow Senators, that this place of power is infinitely more magnificent than I dreamed when I first thought of occupying a seat here. But were it thrice as great as I now know it to be, and were I back in that old time of struggle in Utah, when I was seeking for this honor, I would not permit the volunteered friendship of President Snow to bestow upon me, even as an innocent recipient, one atom of the church monarch's favor. My ideals have grown with my term of service in this body, and I believe that the man who would render here the highest service to his country must be careful to attain to this place by the purest civic path that mortal feet can tread. I have said enough to indicate that for my own part I never countenanced, nor knowingly condoned, the intrusion of the church monarchy into secular affairs. And I have said enough to those who know me to prove for all time that, so far as I am concerned, my election here was as honorable as that of any man who sits in this chamber; and yet I have said enough that all men may know that rather than have a dead man's memory defamed on my account, I will make his cause my own and will fight for the honor which he is not on earth to defend. This will not suit the friends and mouthpieces of the present rulers, but I have no desire to satisfy or conciliate them; and in leaving this part of the question, I avenge President Snow sufficiently by saying that these men did not dare to offend his desire nor dispute his will while he was living, and only grew brave when they could cry: "Lorenzo, the king, is dead! Long live Joseph, the king!" As a Senator I have sought to fulfill my duty to the people of this country. I am about to retire from this place of dignity. No man can retain this seat from Utah and retain his self-respect after he discovers the methods by which his election is procured and the objects which the church monarchy intends to achieve. Some of my critics will say that I relinquished that which I could not hold. I will not pause to discuss that point further than to say that if I had chosen to adopt the policy with the present monarch of the church, which his friends and mouthpieces say I did adopt with the king who is dead, it might have been possible to retain this place of honor with dishonor. Every apostle is a part of this terrible power, which can make and unmake at its mysterious will and pleasure. Early in 1902 warning had been publicly uttered in the State against the continued manifestation of church power in politics. The period of unsettled conditions during which I was elected had ended and we had opportunity to see the manner in which the church monarch was resuming his forbidden sway; and we had occasion to know the indignant feelings entertained by the people of the United States when they contemplated the flagrant breaking of the pledge given to the country to secure the admission of Utah. I myself, after conference with distinguished men at Washington, journeyed to Utah and presented a solemn protest and warning to the leaders of the church against the dangerous exercise of their political power. I did it to repay a debt which I owed to Utah, and not for any selfish reason. I knew that from the day I uttered that warning the leaders of the Mormon Church would hate and pursue me for the purpose of wreaking their vengeance. But as the consequences of their misconduct, their pledge breaking would fall upon all of the people of the State, upon the innocent more severely than upon the guilty, I felt that I must assert my love and gratitude to the State, even though my warning should lead to my own destruction by these autocrats. If there had been one desire in my heart to effect a conjunction with this church monarchy, if I had been willing to retain office as its gift, I would not have taken this step, for I knew its consequences. I began in that hour my effort to restore to the people of Utah the safety and the political freedom which are their right, and I shall continue it while I live until the fight is won. The disdain with which that message was received was final proof of the contempt in which that church monarchy holds the Senate and the people of the United States, and of the disregard in which the church monarchy holds the pledges which it made in order to obtain the power of statehood. They do not need to utter explicit instructions in order to assert their demand. The methods of conveying information of their desire are numerous and sufficiently effective, as is proved by results. To show how completely all ordinary political conditions, as they obtain elsewhere in the United States, are without account in Utah, I have but to cite you to the fact that after the recent election, which gave 57 members out of 63 on joint ballot to the Republican party, and when the question of my successor became a matter of great anxiety to numerous aspirants for this place, the discussion was not concerning the fitness of candidates, nor the political popularity of the various gentlemen who composed that waiting list, nor the pledges of the legislators, but was limited to the question as to who could stand best with the church monarchy; as to whom it would like to use in this position; as to who would make for the extension of its ambitions and power in the United States. THE MORMON MARRIAGE RELATION.And now I come to a subject concerning which the people of the United States are greatly aroused. It is known that there have been plural marriages among the Mormon people, by the sanction of high authorities in this church monarchy, since the solemn promise was made to the country that plural marriages should end. It is well known that the plural marriage relations have been continued defiantly, according to the will and pleasure of those who had formerly violated the law, and for whose obedience to law the church monarchy pledged the faith and honor of its leaders and followers alike in order to obtain statehood. The pledge was made repeatedly, as stated in an earlier part of these remarks, that all of the Mormon people would come within the law. They have not done so. The church monarch is known to be living in defiance of the laws of God and man, and in defiance of the covenant made with the country, upon which amnesty by the President, and statehood by the President and the Congress, were granted. I charge that every apostle is in large part responsible for this condition, so deplorable in its effects upon the people of Utah and so antagonistic to the institutions of this country. Every apostle is directed by the law-breaking church monarch. Every apostle teaches by example and precept to the Mormon people that this church monarch is a prophet of God, to offend or criticise whom is a sin in the sight of the Almighty. Every apostle helps to appoint to office and sustain the seven presidents of seventies, who are below them in dignity, and they are directly responsible for them and their method of life. It is quite evident that the church monarchy is endeavoring to re-establish the rule of a polygamous class over the mass of the Mormon people. Of the apostles not practicing polygamy there is at most only three or four men constituting the quorum of which this could be truthfully said. Special reasons may exist in some particular case why a man in this class has not entered into such relation. THE GENERAL SITUATION.Briefly reviewing the matters which I have offered here, and the logical deductions therefrom, I maintain the following propositions: We set aside the religion of the Mormon people as sacred from assault. Outside of religion the Mormons as a community are ruled by a special privileged class, constituting what I call the church monarchy. This monarchy pledged the country that there would be no more violations of law and no more defiance of the sentiment of the United States regarding polygamy and the plural marriage relation. This monarchy pledged the United States that it would refrain from controlling its subjects in secular affairs. Every member of this monarchy is responsible for the system of government and for the acts of the monarchy, since (as shown in the cases of the deposed apostle, Moses Thatcher, and others) the man who is not in accord with the system is dropped from the ruling class. This monarchy sets up a regal social order within this Republic. This monarchy monopolizes the business of one commonwealth and is rapidly reaching into others. This monarchy takes practically all the surplus product of the toil of its subjects for its own purpose, and makes no account to anyone on earth of its immense secret fund. This monarchy rules all politics in Utah, and is rapidly extending its dominion into other States and Territories. This monarchy permits its favorites to enter into polygamy and to maintain polygamous relations, and it protects them from prosecution by its political power. Lately no effort has been made to punish any of these people by the local law. On the contrary, the ruling monarch has continued to grow in power, wealth, and importance. He sits upon innumerable boards of directors, among others that of the Union Pacific Railway, where he joins upon terms of fraternity with the great financial and transportation magnates of the United States, who hold him in their councils because his power to benefit or to injure their possessions must be taken into account. I charge that no apostle has ever protested publicly against the continuation of this sovereign authority over the Mormon kingdom. Within a few months past the last apostle elected to the quorum was a polygamist—Charles W. Penrose—and his law-breaking career is well known. Previous to 1889 Penrose was living publicly with three wives. Under false pretenses to President Cleveland he obtained amnesty for his past offenses. He represented that he had but two wives, and that he married his second wife in 1862, while it was generally known that he took a third wife just prior to 1888. He promised to obey the law in the future, and to urge others to do so; yet after that amnesty, obtained by concealing his third marriage from President Cleveland, he continued living with his three wives. His action in this matter has been notorious. He has publicly defended this kind of law-breaking on the false pretense that there was a tacit understanding with the American Congress and people, when Utah was admitted, that these polygamists might continue to live as they had been living. And it was this traitor to his country's laws, this unrepentant knave and cheat of the nation's mercy, this defamer of Congress and the people, that was elected to the apostleship to help govern the church, and through the church the State. Is it not demonstrated that Utah is an abnormal State? Our problem is vast and complex. I have endeavored to simplify it so that the Senate and the country may readily grasp the questions at issue. THE REMEDY.Will this great body, will the Government of the United States, go on unheedingly while this church monarchy multiplies its purposes and multiplies its power? Has the nation so little regard for its own dignity and the safety of its institutions and its people that it will permit a church monarch like Joseph F. Smith to defy the laws of the country, and to override the law and to overrule the administrators of the law in his own State of Utah? What shall the Americans of that Commonwealth do if the people of the United States do not heed their cry? The vast majority of the Mormon people are law-abiding, industrious, sober, and thrifty. They make good citizens in every respect except as they are dominated by this monarchy, which speaks to them in the name of God and governs them in the spirit of Mammon. Any remedy for existing evils which would injure the mass of the Mormon people would be most deplorable. I believe that they would loosen the chains which they wear if it were possible. I think that many of them pay blood-money tithes simply to avoid social ostracism and business destruction. I believe that many of them do the political will of the church monarch because they are led to believe that the safety of the church monarchy is necessary in order that the mass may preserve the right to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience. The church monopoly, by its various agencies is usually able to uprear the injured and innocent mass of the Mormon people as a barrier to protect the members of that monarchy from public vengeance. It is the duty of this great body—the Senate of the United States—to serve notice on this church monarch and his apostles that they must live within the law; that the nation is supreme; that the institutions of his country must prevail throughout the land; and that the compact upon which statehood was granted must be preserved inviolate. May heaven grant that this may be effective and that the church monarchy in Utah may be taught that it must relinquish its grasp. I would not, for my life, that injury should come to the innocent mass of the people of Utah; I would not that any right of theirs should be lost, but that the right of all should be preserved to all. If the Senate will apply this remedy and the alien monarchy still proves defiant, it will be for others than myself to suggest a course of action consistent with the dignity of the country. In the meantime we of Utah who have no sympathy with the-now clearly defined purpose of this church monopoly will wage our battle for individual freedom, to lift the State to a proud position in the sisterhood, to preserve the compact which was made with the country, believing that behind the brave citizens in Utah who are warring against this alien monarchy stands the sentiment and power of eighty two millions of our fellow-citizens. II.Foreword.This speech was delivered in the Provo Tabernacle on the evening of March 14, 1905, in the presence of upwards of two thousand five hundred people, and the report of it was taken by Mr. Arthur Winter. When the speech was first published in full in the Deseret Evening News of March 25, 1905, the following explanatory note preceded it by the writer: A report of this speech in a local paper [the Salt Lake Tribune] contained many verbal inaccuracies and crudities which in many cases were the reporter's, not mine. It is too much to expect that extemporaneous speech will be free from verbal and rhetorical errors, and I do not claim that the speech as delivered at Provo was free from such defects. In the speech as here reported by Mr. Arthur Winter, some of these crudities have been eliminated so far as they could be and still retain the structure and spirit of what was said. One item has been added: a passage relating to the alleged threats against Gentile industries in the State of Utah. Concerning the criticisms that have been made of this speech—one of which extended through seven columns of as vapid and flaccid an aggregation of words, words, words as it has ever been my lot to wade through—I only care to notice one, that is the alleged harshness of some of my utterances. The conclusion is reached that some of my words were unbecoming both my calling and the place in which they were delivered. In answer I only wish to say that the propriety of one's expressions is governed very largely by the task one has before him. Even the Son of God, when he had occasion to denounce falsehood and reprove deceivers, no longer used the gentle tones by which he comforted the sorrowful or encouraged those bowed down in weakness; but he used language suited to the task before him. To the scribes and Pharisees, who were hounding himself and his friends to their death, and as a preliminary to that purpose were seeking to embitter the minds of the populace, he said:
I think I have not gone beyond this worthy example in anything I have said in this speech; and for the sacredness of the building in which my remarks were made, I in no way feel that there was a desecration, since when the task before one is to defend the innocent against misrepresentation, and denounce calumniators, then "all place a temple, and all seasons summer." II.Answer to Kearns.Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: On the 28th day of February, last, the then senior senator from the State of Utah delivered an address in the senate chamber of the United States, in which an attack was made upon the Mormon Church and against the best interests of the State of Utah. The speech was cunningly planned and adroitly phrased; and with the prestige of a senator of the United States behind it, among the masses of the people of the United States, uninformed of the true conditions existing in Utah, its effect will be misleading and mischievous. It is because of these opinions that I have formed of the speech that I think it a proper subject for this occasion, that our own people, at least, should be put upon their guard against the mischievous effects of this deliverance. I regret extremely that the speech was not answered upon the floor of the senate of the United States. The gentleman upon whom that duty properly rested may have had good and sufficient reasons for remaining silent. It is not for me to say. But when I think of the serious charges that are made, and the cunning with which those charges, false though they be, are sustained, I can conceive of no combination of circumstances that would justify the now senior senator from Utah for being silent on that occasion. The suggestion of friends may be a good thing to listen to sometimes; but occasions can arise—and this, in my judgment, was one of them—when the call of duty should lead one to reject the counsel of well-meaning but perhaps ill-informed friends, and the cold calculations of over caution. It might be possible, of course, that a reply such as one might desire to make, could not be made on the spur of the moment; but ten minutes devoted to denouncing the falsehoods of that speech, and the unmasking of the man who uttered it, would have had a beneficial effect upon the public mind, and would have been more effective than any reply that can now be made. Anything that may be said from this platform, or any other in Utah, or anything that may be said in the future upon the floor of the senate chamber, will not have the effect that an emphatic denial of the charges would have had while the gentleman who made them was still a senator of the United States.[A] That opportunity, however, is lost. All that may be done, here in Utah, at least, is to point out to our youth the untruthfulness of these charges, and disclose the sophistry by which an attempt is made to sustain them. I account myself fortunate in having an opportunity to undertake such a task before this magnificent assembly. [Footnote A: For Senator Smoot it is said that he followed his advisors among the senators, and that the event of retaining his seat by a vote rejecting the resolution to declare that seat vacant, is a vindication of his silence. The senator is, of course, entitled to that view of the case, but to what extent retaining his seat was due to his silence in the foregoing occasion is a value that can never be determined; and it does not matter now that the event has ended so happily for the senator and for Utah.] AUTHORSHIP OF THE KEARNS' SPEECH.Before proceeding to the speech itself, I want to say a word or two in relation to its authorship. It will go without saying that the ex-senator who stands responsible for it is not its author. Those of us who chance to be acquainted with the dullness of his mind and the density of his ignorance know very well that his mind never conceived the speech; nor did he fashion the polished and falsely eloquent sentences devoted to so bad a cause. Those of us who served with him in the Constitutional convention of this state painfully remembering the very few occasions on which he sought to express himself upon the floor of that convention hall, can never believe for a moment that he is the author of the speech. Those who were present in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City on the occasion when the President of the United States honored that city and the state with his presence, and who saw this now ex-senator when he addressed that assembly, with hands thrust deep into his pockets, with stomach thrown forward, and head thrown back, and in nasal tones only becoming a retired pugilist—and heard him say in the opening sentence of his speech, "We Americans ain't born to nuthin', but we git there just the same" (Laughter); and who had no better taste than to make the visit of the chief executive of this nation to our state the occasion of a partisan harangue, know very well that he is not the author of this senate speech. He is only the author of this speech in the sense that he has adopted it. This speech is his only in the sense that he bought it. I shall not undertake to describe all the contempt I feel for a man who occupies the high station of a senator of the United States, and who consents to repeat, parrot-like, the bought phrases fashioned by another mind. Jewelry in a swine's snout is as nothing to this. THE BOUGHT FABRIC OF ANOTHER'S RHETORIC.I glory in that pride, which would prefer to stand in tatters, though the biting winds of winter might nip one, rather than to be dressed in the cast-off clothing or the borrowed furs of a prince; so also I would glory in silence rather than to arise in my place in so august a body as the United States senate and repeat as mine the speech conceived and written by another, though its eloquence rivaled that of a Pitt, a Chatham or a Webster. Indeed the more eloquent the speech the deeper must be the embarrassment—the shame. But here I pause, though I had the language of a Solomon or a Shakespeare I should never be able to express my contempt for the senator who would consent to appear clothed in the borrowed or bought fabric of another's rhetoric. We may dismiss the ex-senator right here, so far as thinking that he had anything to do with this speech more than the reading of it. I wish now to say a word in regard to the spirit in which I propose to discuss this speech. I believe in the amenities of debate. There is nothing quite so joyous as to witness a debate when the differences discussed are honest differences, when opponents are honorable and talented men. I think I may be pardoned, altogether excused, in fact, from any exhibition of egotism, if I say that I take some pride in the reputation I think I have in this state for fairness in debate, and respectful treatment of my opponents. But the amenities of debate do not require me to say that my opponent's statements are true when I know them to be false; or that his argument is good and sound when I know it to be the merest sophistry; or that his motives are patriotic when I know them to be selfish and revengeful. Therefore, when I meet and have to deal with such a speech as the one before me, it is not to be expected that I shall handle it with gloves, and I promise you I shall not. THE QUESTION OF COMPACT BETWEEN THE STATE OF UTAH AND THE UNITED STATES.I now come to the speech itself; my reply will follow the order of the topics set forth in the speech, with very slight exceptions; and by reason of following the order of topics laid down in the speech, I come first of all to the consideration of the pledges under which Utah obtained statehood—the compact between the State of Utah and the United States. Of that long conflict that raged in Utah from early days down to the year 1890 I need not speak. You are familiar with its history. You know that the foundation facts of that controversy are these: that the Latter-day Saints believed a revelation had been given in which was made known, first of all, the eternity of the marriage covenant, with the permission and I may say injunction, under certain circumstances, for good men to have a plurality of wives. You know of the successive enactments of Congress, made at the demand of sectarian clamor throughout the United States against this practice. You know how these successive acts brought to bear hardships upon the Church, until at last we were relieved from the responsibility and obligation of maintaining in practice that plural marriage system, by the issuance of the Manifesto by President Wilford Woodruff in 1890. You know upon that step being taken, that the bitterness of feeling that had hitherto existed subsided; and there began to be manifested a desire that the old Church and anti-Church political parties should be disbanded, and that here in Utah, as in the other states of the Union, the people should divide according to their political convictions to one or the other of the great national political parties. These movements finally resulted in the passage of an Enabling Act, authorizing the election of a Constitutional convention for the purpose of framing a state government. This convention met in the spring of 1895, and was the instrument through which so far as the people of Utah are concerned, the compact between the State of Utah and the United States was made. When it is necessary to establish what a given compact is, instead of calling to mind this man's opinion, and that man's opinion of it, why not go to the compact itself, and after considering it give it a fair interpretation? That is the method of treatment that I have proposed to myself, and consequently I am going to that compact. The Enabling act contained this clause, which was the crystallized demand of the people of the United States upon the people of Utah:
That is what the people of the United States demanded of the people of Utah through the voice of the national Congress—nothing more than that, nothing less than that. Polygamous or plural marriages are to be forever prohibited. That is the demand of the people of the United States. That being the demand, what was the response to it on the part of the people of Utah, speaking through the Constitutional convention? This was the response:
You will observe that the convention incorporated in this provision the very language of the Enabling act. That was the demand, and that the response to the demand. But it was not all of the response. There was something more. After this declaration had been made, towards the conclusion of the work of the convention, when that part of the Constitution called the "Schedule" was introduced (and by the way, in order that you may understand that I have clear knowledge of these matters from personal participation in them, I may say that I was a member of the committee on "Schedule"), Mr. Varian, a member from Salt Lake county, called the attention of the convention to the fact that while we had made this declaration against "polygamous or plural marriages," he held, and very rightly, too, that it was not self-operating, and provided no penalties for its violation; but was merely a declaration, and he doubted if it would be sufficient to meet the expectations of the people of the United States. He therefore recommended a certain course now to be described. You perhaps will remember that our territorial Legislature of 1892 enacted what was virtually the Edmunds-Tucker law. They followed very closely the congressional enactment. Now, said Mr. Varian, in substance, your Legislature enacted practically the law of Congress against these offenses; that being the case, it expresses the willingness of your legislators to meet the demands of the country on this subject. Therefore, let us take so much of this territorial enactment as defines "polygamy, or plural marriage," and provides for the punishment thereof, and make it a provision in this Constitution, operating without any further legislation. Then the people of the United States will know that you mean really to prohibit "polygamous or plural marriages" against which you make your declaration in the ordinance. In pursuance of this proposition he introduced this resolution:
Mr. Varian was of the opinion that since this territorial enactment invaded the field already occupied by congressional enactment it was void, and that when Utah became a state the territorial law would not be in force in the state, and of course the congressional enactments applicable to the territory would cease to be operative upon the attainment of statehood; hence he thought it necessary to make this constitutional provision against "polygamous or plural marriages." But the part of the territorial law relating to polygamous living or "unlawful cohabitation"—to use the phrase of the law itself—was not made part of the Constitution of this state. And why? Because the demand made by the people of the United States did not reach to that condition. The demand was only: "provided polygamous or plural marriages are forever prohibited." There were other lawyers in the constitutional convention who contested Mr. Varian's opinion, and insisted that this law of the territory would be operative in the state, and therefore there was no need of adopting his amendment; whereupon a protracted and earnest debate took place, in the course of which it was pointed out to Mr. Varian that he had cut this old territorial law in two; he had taken the part that defined and prohibited "polygamy or plural marriages" and made it part of the Constitution, but he had left out the part of the law relating to unlawful cohabitation, and the effect of such action by implication would be to repeal that part of the territorial law defining and punishing unlawful cohabitation. In the course of the argument made on that point in the convention the following took place:
[Footnote A: Constitutional Convention Proceedings, vol. ii, p. 1748.] Mr. Varian's resolution was adopted and became part of the Constitution, so that in the matter of compact between Utah and the United States on the subject of polygamy [i. e., polygamous marrying] our response went even beyond the demand of the people of the United States as voiced in the Enabling act authorizing us to establish a state government, in that we not only adopted the very language of the enabling act, but accepted the definition of polygamy and provided the punishment, prescribed for that offense by Congress; but no demand was made and no action was taken respecting unlawful cohabitation; nor did it in any manner enter into Utah's compact with the United States.[B] [Footnote B: Mr. Varian held views in harmony with what he said in the discussion on the floor of the Constitutional Convention even before that Convention assembled in the spring of 1895, for at the Territorial Bar Association of Utah, in January of that year, Mr. Varian, then a member-elect of the Constitutional Convention, said, on referring to statehood for Utah:
And time developed the fact that the Constitutional Convention took no action whatsoever in relation to polygamous living, nor was any attempt made to deal with that phase of the question since the convention conceived that it had done its full duty, all that was required of it, by the Enabling Act, by "Forever prohibiting plural or polygamous marriages."] Now, understand me, I am not taking the ground that unlawful cohabitation—"polygamous living"—as it has come to be called—is not now contrary to the law in Utah. That it is under the ban of the law is known to every one. But it became so because our state Legislature, after the constitutional convention had settled this vexed question upon the terms here pointed out—our state Legislature (and why I have never yet understood) proceeded to unsettle what had been settled in that convention, picked up the part of the old territorial law that had been discarded by the convention and enacted it with the rest of the code prepared by the special code commission. Hence unlawful cohabitation is under the ban by our state enactment; and I am not arguing that polygamous living is not against the law, and am not attempting to justify any one in the violation of that law. I am now merely pointing out the fact that in our compact with the government of the United States disruption of marital relations coming down to us out of the past constituted no part of that compact. The terms of the compact are here in the Enabling act and in the Constitution, and may be read and known of all men. That compact was not made between the Mormon Church leaders, as claimed by Mr. Kearns' adopted speech, and the United States government, but between the people of the United States acting through Congress and the chief executive of the nation, and the people of Utah, acting through their representatives in the Constitutional convention. Utah's Constitutional convention sought earnestly to meet the demands made upon our people by the nation. The chief executive of the nation by accepting the Constitution we had formed and proclaiming Utah's admission into the Union, said we had succeeded in meeting those demands. To undertake now to read into that compact something that was not demanded by the Enabling act, and not conceded by the convention, that is not expressly found in its terms, and not fairly to be implied from them, is infamous. Yet that is what is constantly sought to be done, and we have all sorts of extravagant claims made as to what the Mormon Church leaders pledged in order to obtain statehood—the compact they made with the nation, and how the Mormon Church has broken it, but never a word do we hear as to the compact itself. The Mormon Church leaders made no pledges to obtain statehood, except as in common with all the people of the state they accepted and ratified the compact implied in the Enabling act and the provision in the Utah Constitution forever prohibiting polygamous or plural marriages and providing penalties for that offense. The Mormon Church officials pleaded for amnesty for their people, it is true, but amelioration of the hard conditions which a cruel enforcement of the law imposed, not statehood, was the object of their petition. The foregoing, then, was the compact between the State of Utah and the United States. The question now is, Has it been violated by the State of Utah or by the United States. Certainly not by the latter; and I affirm, with absolute confidence that the affirmation cannot be successfully contradicted, that the compact has not been violated by the State, or the people of Utah. On the contrary, I hold that the compact, such as it was, has been absolutely fulfilled. In this opinion I am sustained by the views of a very distinguished member of the House of Representatives, who discussed the subject somewhat at length on the floor of the House when the Roberts case was considered by that body. It was urged in the report of the special committee which investigated the right of the Representative from Utah to his seat in the House, that "his election as a Representative is an explicit and offensive violation of the 'understanding' by which Utah was admitted as a state." This "understanding" and the "compact" were discussed on the floor of the House by Representative Littlefield (of Maine) in the following language:
Discussing the question of "compact" further, Mr. Littlefield said:
With Mr. Littlefield, then, I say, that so far from the compact between Utah and the United States having been violated, it has been fulfilled. Utah has made no effort to repeal the Constitutional provision forever prohibiting polygamous or plural marriages. On the contrary, her State Legislature has even re-enacted the part of the old Congressional and Territorial law that had been ignored by the Constitutional convention, defining and punishing polygamous living—that is, "unlawful cohabitation." OF THE MORMON CHURCH BEING A MONARCHY.Passing from the matter of the compact which the speech to which I am replying falsely charges over and over again that we have violated, I come to the accusation and false charges made against the Mormon Church. Whoever constructed this speech made the central idea of it, the existence of a "monarchy" and a "monarch" in the State of Utah. The "monarchy" is the Mormon Church; the "monarch" is the President of that Church. In order that you may know I am not mistaken, I shall read to you a quotation from the speech on this point:
There is much more to the same effect, but this is enough to show you that the existence of both a "monarchy" and a "monarch" are charged as existing in the Church organization and in its president. I wish to call your attention to the fact that this is mere assumption. There is no "monarchy" and there is no "monarch" in the Mormon Church. It is a fundamental, constitutional, and I might say institutional principle in the Church that all things in the Church shall be done by common consent of the Church; (Doc. & Cov. sec. xxvi) and so long as that remains the great underlying principle of the government—and largely even of administrative functions,—of the Church of Jesus Christ, I ask you where the principle of monarchy can come in? Furthermore it is expressly provided that no officer of the Church can occupy a place in any of the general or local quorums of the Church, only as he is sustained and accepted by the members of the several divisions of the Church named. (Doc. & Cov. xx: 65.) Moreover, elections, which give the opportunity to get rid of undesirable officers, are more frequent in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, than in any other system of ecclesiastical government known to men. Will you tell me how a monarchy can exist in the face of these fundamental truths? I would like to see some explanation of that. Again, the President of the Church is no "monarch." Yet let me read to you how he is described in Mr. Kearns' adopted speech:
Can any of you recognize President Joseph F. Smith in that description? I cannot boast of an extremely intimate acquaintance with President Smith's domestic life, or his financial status; but it has been my good fortune to know him personally some 30 years. I know something of the severe economy and frugality which he practices. I know his homes are but cottages, without the grandeur here given them. I know that his family lives in economy and frugality, and that every tree, evergreen, shrub, or flowering plant, or plat of grass about any one of his cottage homes was planted by his own hands or the labor of his sons and wives. I do know that. And though he does now occupy an historic building, owned, not by Joseph F. Smith, but by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is more for the convenience of the people and those who have business with him that he dwells there than because of any "regal" or extravagant tastes that he himself possesses, and in that "official residence" he lives the simplest of lives. I know at least seven of his sons who have arrived at manhood's estate, and I know that they live by daily toil, as my sons and your sons do, as the sons of all the common people do, and occupying no very exalted positions in the industrial or business world, although they are capable, honest and hard working young men. One of them has assisted me in my office work as stenographer for three years. Don't you think if President Smith really affected this "regal state," "lorded" it over the people as he is here represented as doing, and lived in this "series of villas of sufficient exclusiveness" that he would undertake to elevate these sons of his and all his family above this toil in which they are engaged? The description presents a false picture. I brand it as such. It represents rather the style and state in which the writer of Mr. Kearns' speech would live if he possessed the opportunities he believes President Smith possesses, rather than the manner of President Smith's living. Especially as to the villas of "sufficient exclusiveness." Again, while President Smith, as we believe, has received a divine appointment to the station he holds, he is dependent for his continuance in that office, as he was dependent for his elevation to it, upon the votes of the people. He is subject to the laws of the Church, as much so as you or I; and a special provision is made in the laws of God for a tribunal before which, for acts of irregularity and unrighteousness, he can be called to account, testimony taken against him, and if his offenses are of sufficiently serious a nature he may be dismissed from his high office, and excommunicated from the Church; and the revelation which provides these arrangements concerning him says that the decision of the court in question is the end of controversy in his case. I know that some men, in their over-zeal to exalt the office of President of the Church have advanced extravagant ideas upon the subject such as saying that no complaint must be made of those occupying that position; that the people must go on performing their daily duties without question, and then if the President should do wrong, God would look after him. Such teachings have now and then been heard; but I call your attention to the fact that the Church Of God is greater than any one man within that Church, however exalted his station may be; that the Lord has provided means by which the Church can correct every man within it, and can-dismiss the unworthy from power. That right is resident in the Church of Christ; and the Church don't have to wait till God kills off unworthy servants before a wrong can be righted. The power exists within the Church to correct any evil, of whatever name or nature, that may arise within it, and that without disrupting the Church, or creating anarchy, but all things are to be done in order, and as God has appointed them. I could give you references to the Doctrine and Covenants covering all these points, but it is a matter of such common knowledge among you that it is not necessary. Again, the decisions of the First Presidency of the Church are not final in relation to matters of administration and government in the Church, if such decisions are made in unrighteousness, but from such decisions of the First Presidency appeals lie to the general assembly of all the quorums of the Priesthood, which constitute the highest spiritual authority in the Church, that is, all the quorums of the Priesthood are greater than any one quorum, even though it should be the First Presidency. (Doc. and Cov. sec. 107). Neither "monarchy" nor "monarch" can exist where these principles are recognized, as they are recognized in the Church. OF THE CHURCH TITHING SYSTEM AND ALLEGED COMMERCIALISM.The Church government rests purely and solely upon moral authority. Let me explain. Authority is represented in government as of two kinds. Our writers on government tell us that one is "effective authority" and the other is "moral authority." You see effective authority operative in the various governments of man, in kingdoms, empires and republics; their authority rests on force, on compulsion. But moral authority rests on persuasion, not upon compulsion or force. "The action of God," says one, "upon man is moral and moral only. By constituting man free, he has refused to exercise effective authority over him, and an ecclesiastic or politic society claiming divine authority must exercise moral authority only; for the moment it exercises compulsion it ceases to represent God and resolves itself into effective authority which is human, all human, and not at all divine," (Baring-Gold). The government of the Church of Latter-day Saints is such a moral government as is here described. It rests on moral authority only. I read to you from one of the revelations:
This is the spirit of the authority underlying this ecclesiastical institution that is described as a "monarchy!" Having laid the foundation for his argument in this assumption of the existence of a "monarchy" and a "monarch," the author of Mr. Kearns' speech weaves around it all sorts of fallacies, a few of which I shall examine. It is charged that the Church is a business corporation rather than a Church, and is establishing a monopoly in business, and threatens, as some gigantic trust might threaten, the industries of this intermountain region. This is not true. It is true that the Church has invested some of its means in various corporations and enterprises. In so doing it has manifested, as I think, profound wisdom. It has long been regarded as a wise policy in establishing endowments for charitable purposes to invest the original donations given by the generously inclined, and use only the interest upon them for the charitable purpose, and thus place the charity upon a basis sure to prolong its life of usefulness. I say that is a policy of good sense, and good judgment; and that is what is done and no more than that when the Trustee-in-Trust of the Mormon Church invests Mormon Church tithes in business enterprises. But the Church holdings in the various corporations where the investments are made are not sufficient to dominate those institutions or to establish them as trusts in the industrial affairs of the state. Charitable, educational and missionary work are the purposes to which the revenue of the Church is directly devoted. In proof of this let me call your attention to the work in which the Church is engaged, and in which our tithes are consumed. We teach, as you all know, the principle of gathering to our people. Wherever the gospel is preached the cry goes with it, "Come out of Babylon, oh ye, my people, that ye partake not of her sins and receive not of her plagues." And inasmuch as there is a gathering, must there not also be made some provision to care for the people who come to us? Must we not provide some way for them to gain a foothold in the land if they are to become inhabitants of Zion? Most assuredly; and so part of our tithe funds go into colonizing enterprises that provide a means of obtaining homes for the people. This is done not only in the interests of those who come to us from afar, but in the interests also of those who grow up in our own old centers of population and find the need of enlarged opportunities. The Church has to sustain publication houses in various parts of the world, and they are maintained, in part, by the general funds of the Church. We have churches to build in all the wards and stakes of Zion; and while I know, as you know, that part of that expense is met by the people, outside of their tithing, part of it is also met by appropriation from the general funds of the Church. Temples have been built, and not only built, but maintained. We have four of these magnificent structures now in the State of Utah, and others are in contemplation in other lands where our people are settled. We have a missionary system to support; and while it is true the missionary meets his own expenses largely, yet the Church from its general funds provides for his return to his home and here and there assistance is rendered where it becomes absolutely necessary. The Church has its employees to pay; while there is no organization in the world where so much of free labor is given to it—especially in the matter of its preaching ministry—as in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Church does of course require all the time and talent of some of its servants, and when that is the case it necessarily has to remunerate them for their services. A Church school system has been founded and must be maintained; and this is a much larger enterprise than many suppose it to be. We sustain, and chiefly from the general funds of the Church, the Brigham Young university, Provo, Utah; the Latter-day Saints' University, Salt Lake City, Utah; the Brigham Young college, Logan, Utah; the Weber Stake academy, Ogden, Utah; the Juarez Stake academy, Juarez, Mexico; the Snow academy, Ephraim, Utah; the Ricks academy, Rexburg, Ida.; The Thatcher academy, Thatcher, Ariz.; the Fielding academy, Paris, Idaho; the Cassia Stake Academy, Oakley, Idaho; the Emery Stake academy, Castle Dale, Utah; the St. Johns Stake academy, St. Johns, Arizona; the Snowflake Stake academy, Snowflake, Arizona; the Uintah Stake academy, Vernal, Utah; the Beaver Branch B. Y. University, Beaver, Utah. If you suppose that this school system does not make large drafts upon the general funds of the Church paid in by you and all of us, you are very much mistaken. Again, the Church has erected a magnificent hospital in Salt Lake City, the best in the west, and that chiefly from the general funds of the Church, and it will have to be maintained and doubtless enlarged in the same way. In addition to all this there is the maintenance of the poor, who are always with us, and who are always welcomed into the Church of Christ, though the maintenance and care of them always has been and is now a heavy draft upon the resources of the Church, but it is borne cheerfully since the love and care of the Church for the poor is one of the evidences of her divinity. When men came to the Son of God anciently and demanded to know "Art thou the Messiah, or must we look for another?" Jesus said, "Go and tell those who sent you that the sick are healed, that the blind see, that the lame walk;" and then, I think most glorious of all, he said, "And to the poor the Gospel is preached." And so in this dispensation of the fulness of times, one of the signs of the work's divinity is that it has preached the gospel to the poor, has gathered them from the nations of the earth, has tried to teach them how to sustain themselves, but where that has been out of their power the Church has nourished and supported them from its tithes and its free-will fast offerings, so that the cry of the poor does not reach the ears of the God of Sabbaoth from the midst of the saints. After the author of this Kearns' adopted speech had recalled the fact that Mormons looked upon this part of their work with pride, he says that in some of the institutions established by the state for the maintenance of the poor, notwithstanding Mormon pride in care of their poor, there are some Mormon poor in those institutions. Well, what of it? Have not the Mormons as well as other citizens a right to such assistance? It is conceded even in the speech under consideration that the Mormons pay half the taxes (and they pay much more than half) out of which the infirmaries with other state institutions are sustained. But notwithstanding there may be some few Mormons in these state institutions, it still remains true that the Mormon Church does much for the poor, and that this charitable work is a heavy draft upon her revenues. It is falsely represented in this speech that the tithes of the Church are the personal income of the Trustee-in-Trust of the Church. I know there are many here who, when I make that announcement, will doubtless think, surely Mr. Roberts must be mistaken; a charge so absurd as that would certainly not be made on the floor of the United States senate. But I will read you the charge:
I say that a meaner falsehood could not be uttered than is uttered in those sentences. And it was not done in ignorance. It was done with the intent to deceive the people of the United States, to awaken their bitterness against the great majority of the people in this state, and to represent the Mormons as subservient to a monarch, to a tyrant living in grandeur and upon the profits of their earnings, and was intended to work mischief towards the people of this state. I need not deny the falsehood—you all know the charge to be untrue—that the funds which flow into the hands of the Trustee-in-Trust are but trust funds. Not one dollar belongs to him personally. These funds are used for the various purposes that we have just been considering. Again, this speech falsely represents that the "government money" is tithed. I shall have to read the passage from the speech in which the charge occurs in order to get you to believe that, I know. So here it is:
Nor is the end yet:
And that is not all:
Then tell me why they spare it? That is my question. The tithes that are paid by Mormons are voluntary donations to carry on the work of the Church, and the Church possesses no power by which it can coerce man, woman or child to the payment of tithes. Will you tell me when a man was ever excommunicated solely because he did not pay his tithes. Is there any such case? But to proceed with the proof that this speech charges that government money is tithed:
Can straight-out lying or any other description of lying whatsoever beat this? Not from the regions of the lowest hell can come a spirit more damned in falsehood than the author of this speech, and a senator of the United States sank lower than the author of the falsehood by repeating it from his place in the senate chamber. One man works for the government; another teaches school. When such employees receive money for the Compensation of their services that money, of course, belongs to them. They own it. It is not government money. The farmer who digs and delves in the earth for his compensation, and who by virtue of his toil and going into partnership with nature—with the soil and the rain and the sunshine—produces his crop and sells it in the market, and holds the cash in his hand—I say that money is no more completely the farmer's than is the money earned by the government employee and the school teacher, theirs. It will go without saying that the school teacher and the government employee have just as much right to devote a portion of their income in the work of the church of their choice as has the farmer to contribute from his income to a like purpose. This part of the speech is an infamous appeal to the prejudices of the people of the United States, and is based on falsehood absolutely. I might, if it would not take too long, enter into those paragraphs of the speech which by wonderful twisting and turning undertake to make it appear that the Gentiles also are made to bear the burden of this tithing system—this alleged "ecclesiastical tax, levied upon the people of the state," but it would require too long a discussion, and so I shall pass it. Besides it is a proposition too absurd for serious consideration. A DESCRIPTION OF THE AUTHOR OF SENATOR KEARNS' SPEECH. [A][Footnote A: In the paragraphs under this heading are described the character and lightening like political changes of a certain politician, whom Senator Kearns employed upon his personal anti-Mormon newspaper, published in Salt Lake City; and who, it is quite generally conceded, wrote the Kearns Senate Speech.] These several clauses of the speech just considered indicate better than any others that I have found, the probable authorship of the speech; and I want to talk about that just five minutes. The man who can utter such bald-faced falsehoods as these is the kind of man who could believe with the Republicans at one time that the foreign importer of goods paid our tariff taxes, and then later could join with the Democrats and conclude, after all, that it must be the consumer who pays the tax. Such a person as wrote that speech could be one who, sent from a Democratic convention, held in one of the states, to the national Democratic convention, could enthusiastically wire back from the far east that he was well pleased with the Democratic platform and nominee, that the thing for Democrats to do was to "get together and stay together," and then could come home and, hearing the chink of silver, interpret it as a call to him to assist in the organization of a new party that should work for the defeat of the Democratic nominee and the Democratic policies. The kind of man who wrote that speech could perform any inconsistency in the most consistent manner. I warrant you that he is one who could eat his cake and yet have it; who could let go and hold on at the same time; he could run with the hare and yet bark with the hounds; if he were only a physical, equestrian acrobat, as he is a mental acrobat, he could perform a feat up to the present time regarded as impossible—that is, he could ride at the same time two horses going in opposite directions, whereas it has been quite universally held that if a man rides more than one horse at a time the horses must go in the same direction. The author of that speech is like one of old, who, however, shall be nameless, because his name is never mentioned in polite society, he can, I warrant you, "quote Scripture to his purpose, aye, and clothe his naked villainy with old odd ends stolen out of holy writ, and seem a saint when most he plays the devil." The author of that speech might be one who in the hour of his greatest need when on trial, in a way, before the people of the community where he dwelt, would solicit—or have solicited for him—and receive the assistance of a powerful friend in whom the people had confidence; a friend who hoped for his future, and who believed at the time, this possible author of the speech in question was being unfairly dealt with, and hence gave him a certificate which rehabilitated his reputation, and saved him from condemnation by the people; and after receiving such magnanimous treatment, dealt out to him in a spirit of mercy and generosity, this possible author could turn and smite the hand that blessed him, and bark, cur-like, at the heels of the one who did him the greatest kindness? Such an one as this might have written the speech which Senator Kearns adopted and took to the senate chamber of the United States for its christening. OF THE MORMON CHURCH BEING A MENACE TO GENTILE INDUSTRIES.It is falsely alleged in this Kearns adopted speech that the Mormon Church is a menace to Gentile industries in the state excepting mining and smelting, and even these, it charges, are threatened with extermination on certain conditions:
The charge that the smelters are threatened with extermination by the courts is refuted by the very article from the Deseret News the senator quotes in support of this supposed threat. The facts briefly stated are these: In the south end of Salt Lake valley, near to Salt Lake City, are a number of smelters that daily belch out volumes of smoke and deadly fumes which are injuring the interests of the farmers in that locality, and threaten in time to desolate the southern suburbs of Salt Lake City. The demand is that this evil shall be remedied, or else, of course, that the cause of the difficulty be removed, and now the proposition in the News which is not at all what Senator Kearns' adopted speech makes it out to be:
The other part of the senator's assertion on this point of the Mormon Church being a menace to Gentile industry I really would not consider were it not for the fact that others are taking up the refrain and publishing such pipe dreams as this:
I should think not. We may have had our differences with our Gentile neighbors and friends, but we should be exceedingly sorry to part with them. No, indeed; we would rather see them increase than diminish; ride in street-cars than see them walk; and burn electric lights rather than tallow dips, or coal oil. But to be serious, isolation for Mormonism is neither possible nor desirable. Here in Utah and the intermountain west our faith must teach its doctrines, and here our people so exemplify its principles that those who come in contact with them shall yet respect both the religion and those who accept it, and practice it. Mormons have no disposition at all to be unfriendly to Gentiles; and in refutation of the charge that Mormons are unfriendly towards Gentile industries and business, I call your attention to the fact that in the great and varied mercantile business of our state, in our commerce, in the banking business, in mining and smelting, our Gentile friends have become wonderfully prosperous, a condition that could not have been realized under circumstances described in Mr. Kearns' adopted speech. There has been formed no opposition against Gentiles looking to their injury; and I feel safe in saying there will be none. THE MORMON AND POLITICS.Now I come to the most interesting part of the speech, that which most becomes the now ex-senator to make. It is more worthy of himself. You observe I said the "ex-senator;" thank the Lord for the "ex!" It is charged in the speech that the Mormon Church is in politics. I read you the passage:
I plead not guilty to the charge of Mormon Democrats being in retirement—speaking for one Democrat, at least; and I know my own case is paralleled by many other cases of leading Mormon Democrats; we are never in retirement. We are always in evidence, much to the disgust, perhaps, of some people; nevertheless, when the drum sounds the war spirit is on, and we are in the fight; and expect to be in the fights of the future. I shall leave our Republican friends to plead their own case, knowing very well their ability to do so. THE PERSONAL CASE OF EX-SENATOR KEARNS.The ex-senator very courageously declared that he would not pass by his own case; and I am glad he did not, because there are some very interesting items in it that I shall be pleased to consider, and it constitutes him a very picturesque figure for at least one brief moment. First of all, I want to call your attention to the fact that this man admits that he was elected to the senate by Church influence. He claims a sort of a "far off" kind of friendship with President Snow. It certainly must have been very "far off," I can't make out the affinities on which it was based. It certainly did not arise out of any similarity of tastes, or anything in the compatibility of temperament between the two men, for the poles are not farther apart than the natures of these men. This is what the ex-senator says concerning his election:
There is more of it, but this is enough, I think, to constitute the admission that Mr. Kearns was elected, according to his view of it, by Church influence. Either to affirm or deny this claim is not my purpose. But mark further what Mr. Kearns says:
Then I put to him this question: "Why did you for four long years in dishonor retain the seat that came to you by these—according to your description—dishonorable methods?" The gentleman's speech comes four years too late to have any grace in it. If the next day after his election, knowing then as thoroughly as he knows now, the means and methods by which he secured that election—if at that time he had published to the people of Utah and to the people of the United States something like this: "I discover that I have been elected by the influence of the Mormon Church leaders. That influence was unsought by me, but I cannot afford to accept a seat in the senate of the United States procured by methods so injurious to the state, so disturbing to our peace. I therefore lay down the honor that this Legislature would put upon me; for if I go to the senate of the United States I must go unfettered by such obligations as would be implied by my accepting this position given me under such circumstances." If, I say, the gentleman four years ago had taken a position of that kind all men would have had some respect for him, and for his denunciation of the exercise of Church influence in political affairs. But after sitting in the high place of honor for four long years, enjoying the benefits of Church influence, then in the last days of his senatorial term to stand up and repudiate the means by which he says he was helped into that high station—it all comes with very poor grace from him, and places his wrath against the exercise of Church influence in politics under strong suspicion of hypocrisy. He stands as one who has received stolen goods, and with great generosity to himself appropriated these goods to his own use; they directly or indirectly clothed him, perhaps, and fed him, or ministered to his vanity; then after thoroughly exhausting the stolen goods and the proceeds from them, he arises in a spirit of lofty morality and denounces the means—if not the thieves—by which they were brought to him. What would be your thought of such an one? What excuse does the now ex-senator make for thus appropriating the high honors of a senatorship that came to him by reason of his election by Church influence? This is what he offers as his excuse:
A little later in the speech he also says:
I am happy to learn that this gentleman's ideals have grown. There was much need of such a growth, surely. But what a lofty morality breathes through these sentences! It is very impressive in view of what I am going to call your attention to presently. I want to reveal to you the character of this man. I will read again:
Mark that! And yet Mr. Kearns managed to retain his seat for four long years, after he had learned by what means it had come to him; and allowed his self-respect, meantime, to take care of itself. I suggest also that had his term of office extended four years longer—notwithstanding what he has learned about the honor and dignity of a United States senatorship, he would doubtless have continued to hold on to his "honors," through those four long, troubled years of "dishonor." I would like to know what development of ideas between the time of his election and the expiration of his term of office was possible concerning the mischief of Church interference in politics that could so wonderfully open the eyes of this ex-senator to the iniquity of the methods by which his election was procured? Why, from away back in territorial days, for forty-five years, this question of the relation of Church and state has been debated in Utah, and we have learned every lesson it seems to me there is to learn on the subject; and yet, after the long controversy, it took four years in the senate of the United States for this man to discover the wondrous iniquity of receiving Church influence in an election to the senate of the United States! But I have observed in several other of our experiences in the State of Utah that for some mysterious reason politicians never can see the mischief there is in the use of Church influence unless they can't get it, Or they suspect it is being used for the interests of "the other fellow." But to return to our ex-senator. He says:
You have seen Mr. Kearns—this semblance of a man that in nothing resembles a senator—rise in his place and attitudinize to fit the phrases of his adopted speech before the gaze of this great nation while he denounced the use of Church influence in politics; and now you hear him say that if he had only adopted the methods charged against him in obtaining his first election with the present "Church monarch," he might have retained this honorable seat in the senate "with dishonor." Would he solicit Church influence? the influence of the President of the Church, for his re-election? Certainly not! Such a thing never entered his politically pious mind! Yet, knowing full well the seriousness of the charge I make, I say to this great audience and would say it to the people of the United States if my voice could reach them, and that upon my word of honor, that this man, ex-Senator Kearns, notwithstanding all his lofty utterances, both directly and indirectly, too, sought that very influence for re-election which now he affects to scorn. He, by personal application to President Joseph F. Smith, sought it in the City of Washington, when President Smith was there to testify before the Senate committee on privileges and elections. He sought for that influence in Salt Lake City, sought it personally of the President of the Church, and received the grand reply, "We are not in politics." He sought Church influence indirectly, through what was intended to be the good offices of a fellow senator, whose influence rests upon the same basis as his own, the influence of wealth. Not only once did he thus seek it, but on several occasions. Yet he stands in his place in the Senate and declares that "No man can retain this seat from Utah and retain his self-respect after he discovers the methods by which his election is procured and the objects which the Church monarch intends to achieve!" Still, while in possession of all the knowledge he has now as to the methods and objects of the Mormon Church leaders, Mr. Kearns sought that influence which he says even to be the innocent recipient of would be dishonor! In what light does this man now stand before the people of this state and of the United States? To say that his course was one of lying and hypocrisy would but faintly describe it; but these terms, weak as they are, may be thrust into the very throat of him, "as deep as to the lungs." Let him pluck them out if he can! Not only did Mr. Kearns seek Church influence in order to encompass his own re-election, but the Tribune war made upon the Mormon Church was begun and carried forward in his interests; in the hope that the present leaders of the Church could be frightened into supporting him for re-dec-lion. I thank God that he found those whom he could not frighten; whatever else comes of it, I thank the Lord for that. THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF EX-SENATOR KEARNS.In concluding his adopted speech the ex-senator suggests a remedy for all our Utah ills; and of course there is none of us who would question his ability to tell the senate just what ought to be done to a state that will no longer have Mr. Kearns for its senator. The recommendation in substance is this: Notice must be served upon the Church leaders that they must live within the law. That notice was received a long time ago; and the Mormon Church leaders not only received the notice, but acquiesced in it, too. Prest. Wilford Woodruff received an inspired word that relieved the Church of the burden of maintaining in practice a principle which before then had been regarded as a duty to maintain, in practice as well as in faith. Thus the way was opened for the Mormon leaders to make a concession to the sentiment of the people of the United States, and to the laws of Congress. It is realized by the Mormon leaders also that even if they could they cannot with profit nor to the advantage of the community treat with defiance those laws of the state which prohibit polygamous living. But while that is the case, those involved in that system of marriage which was taught as a divine institution for more than a generation in Utah, have the common rights that belong to those who enjoy the privileges of our free institutions, including home rule, and the administration of the law according to the sentiments of the people where they reside, just as they have the right to be tried by juries of the vicinage where it is alleged the laws are broken. If that local, popular sentiment shall decide that it would be against public policy and the welfare of a large class of the community to rigidly enforce those laws, then I say they are entitled to that clemency. It is for that very reason that home rule in government is so precious a boon, and so necessary to the preservation of the liberties of the people. It is not just that those involved in the Mormon marriage system shall be put in jeopardy of fines and imprisonment by a contemptible spotter and spy, merely an employee of the lowest sensational paper in the United States, the very worst of yellow journals. They have a right to be free from that kind of oppression, and to be subject to the law as administered in harmony with the American spirit of law administration. COMMENT OF THE EX-SENATOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS.Some one will say, however, that there are violators of the law in Utah; and that, too, in relation to new marriages since the issuance of the Manifesto, and since the admission of the state into the Union. If that be true, if all that is claimed in relation to it be true, (but that is not admitted,) then why not execute the law against those who have violated it, and who have broken, so far as they are concerned, the pledge that was given by the state on this subject? Why not prosecute them, and not attempt to do what Edmund Burke a long time ago declared he knew not the method of, namely, to draw an indictment against, an entire people? In other states are not the laws violated? And who is held responsible for that violation? The whole community who are not parties to the violation 'of the law? No; the absurdity of that appears upon the face of it. Why should the people of Utah be judged by a standard different from that by which would be judged the people of Ohio, or the people of Pennsylvania, or the people of Montana? From the first Utah has suffered from this kind of treatment. Every murder that was committed in the community in early days was charged to the "Mormon" Church. When there was a hanging in Montana, or a throat cutting in Nevada, or a lynching bee in Wyoming, the parties concerned were the ones indicted and compelled to bear the burden of their awful crime; but if such a thing happened in Utah, the "Mormon" Church must be involved. And so now in these alleged violations of the law concerning polygamous marriages, the Church is made a party to the transgressions of individuals. I say that the State of Utah has kept the compact that she made with the people of the United States. When she said as she did say in her Constitution that polygamous or plural marriages shall forever be prohibited and provided for the punishment of such crimes, the State of Utah could not guarantee that every one would obey the law, any more than the inhabitants of Arizona, when they say through the law that horse thieves shall be imprisoned, can engage that a horse shall never again be stolen in that territory, and no horse thief ever escape. What they do mean to say is that if such a crime is committed, and the parties are arraigned under the processes of the law, they shall meet the just penalty of their acts under the law. That is alt they are pledged to do. And so I say concerning those in Utah who may violate the laws, they are amenable to the laws of the state, and if brought before the courts, and the evidence is sufficient, there can be no doubt but they will be punished. But those who are accused of crime have a right to the protection of the forms and processes of the law; and they can not be hailed before a judge and cast into prison merely because sensational charges are made against them in sensational anti-Mormon newspapers; or because Madames Rumor and Neighborhood Gossip say they are guilty as charged. Let the men guilty of violation of the law bear their own burdens. The people of Utah have neither lot nor part in their offense; and it is an infamy, the like of which is not matched elsewhere in our nation, to attempt to throw the responsibility of their wrong doing upon the great mass of the citizens of Utah, upon the state, or upon the Mormon Church, when they are not parties to their crimes. So long as there is no attempt to change or annul the compact that the people of Utah entered into with the people of the United States, which compact is found consummated in the Constitution of our state, as demanded by the terms of the Enabling act, and so long as no effort is made to shield those who violate the law, so long the people of Utah are keeping their pledges. Now a few words in conclusion. We find ourselves a very cosmopolitan community in Utah, gathered from all parts of the world, of all sects and persuasions in religion, of all parties in politics, engaged in all of the common avocations of life, from cultivating the soil to delving in the bowels of the earth for its precious ores, its coals and its oils. We inhabit a state the industries of which are varied and profitable; and if it were not for this apparently irrepressible conflict concerning social and religious matters, we might by united effort make of this old "Dead Sea State" a very live and splendid commonwealth, where hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens besides those now on the ground, could find homes where they would enjoy more cloudless days during a year than in any other state of the Union; homes where they might cultivate soil the most fruitful in our great country; homes where they might enjoy an atmosphere that thrills the human system like glorious wine, giving life, health and vitality to men. We might rear here a splendid manhood and womanhood, and have peace and contentment, and show the world how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. All this is possible, notwithstanding our varied religious faiths and our various political convictions. And it does seem to me that the time has come when the wise and conservative citizens of our state of all religions and of all political parties should take counsel together and see if this glorious result to which I have pointed cannot be attained; for when knaves conspire, wise men should counsel together. A while ago I told you that isolation for the Mormon people is both impossible and undesirable. The idea of the withdrawal of our Gentile population is nonsense, and not upon the program. It is equally true that the Latter-day Saints, come what may, will not surrender their religious faith. That cannot be done. Our Gentile friends must learn to tolerate us, notwithstanding what they may regard as the absurdity of our religious belief. On the other hand, Mormons recognize their amenability to the laws of the state, and we say to them—at least I utter it as my personal conviction—that Mormons hold themselves amenable to the laws of the state, and if their friends and neighbors in the vicinity where they respectively reside are offended at their conduct, taking generously into account the past from which some of our obligations (I will not say troubles) come, why then there is nothing for it but submission to the law as interpreted by the courts and by the people in the vicinity where we reside. I say, under these conditions, our Gentile friends must learn to tolerate us, as we are willing to tolerate them. The great bulk of our Gentile friends came to these mountain valleys because of the financial prospects they saw here spread out before them. They came here to establish homes, to enjoy the climate, to regain health, in some instances, and to possess with their fellow citizens, though Mormons, a goodly land. They are not interested in Mormon polemics. They care not a fig, in the main, for the Mormon religion. Then why not say to those who are a disturbing element and making false charges not only against the Mormons but against the state false charges which we have been considering here tonight, in the speech of the man who was, unhappily, a United States senator from Utah, and whose personal newspaper day after day vomits the bitterness Of hate against the greater part of the community—why not say to these disturbing elements, as God says to the sea, "Hither to shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?" If Mormons and Gentiles in their treatment of each other will adopt this spirit, and such a course as is here suggested is pursued, there is a glorious future for Utah; and I am not at all despondent. It is my faith that as a commonwealth we shall attain to the high destiny that we have held in our hopes for our beloved Utah. I believe that wise counsels will at last prevail. I believe the time will come when our citizens will dwell together in peace and unity. That is my fixed faith, and what little I may be able to do I intend shall be done for the accomplishment of so desirable an object. With all my heart I thank you for this splendid hearing.[A] [Footnote A: Throughout the speaker was frequently and loudly applauded by his great audience.] |
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