Читать книгу Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Vol.1&2) - B. H. Roberts - Страница 50

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:

"For some reason he [President Snow] 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 mean 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. * * * I was elected. After all their trickery my opponents were defeated, and to some extent by the very means which they had basely invoked."

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:

"No man can retain his seat from Utah and retain his self respect after he discovers the methods by which his election is procured and the object which the Church monarchy intends to achieve."

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:

"I have served with you four years, and have sought in a modest way to make a credible 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."

A little later in the speech he also says:

"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 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:

"No man can retain his 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."

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:

"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 relinquish 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."

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.