Читать книгу Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Vol.1&2) - B. H. Roberts - Страница 36

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.

[1: From the Congressional Record.]

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.