OCR Text |
Show ! I f THEOCRATIC GOVERNMENT. Jl Apostle Smoot in his testimony before the 1 1 Committee In Washington declared that he had Mjj lii "never asked a man to vote for him because he K! : lii was an apostle." HI4 No one who knows anything about affairs in HI t ; Utah ever supposed he did, for the excellent rea- H'' HI son that it was not necessary. There is precisely H 111 . where the trouble comes in. The fact that he Ki ill ij was an apostle and a candidate with the consent Hf III 'i of the president of the church were all that Hi III 1 were needed by any devout Mormon to cause Hi ff J him to support Apostle Smoot. IB Kill! There was no estimate made by such voters B ' iHI i of Mr. Smoot's capacity and fitness for the high office, rather the- thought was that the church would be advanced by his election, that it would be the gainer in power and influence, for was he not one of the elect in direct line toward the presidency, pres-idency, that the presidency means something so exalted that the president is infallible; that he is the representative of God on earth. The proof of this can be made clear by the simple statement state-ment that, while as a mere citizen Mr. Smoot was not the choice of one voter in ten, nevertheless never-theless because of his ecclesiastical office he was, just as sure of his election the day he announced himself a candidate as he was after the votes were counted. And had some man who was brought up in Mr. Smoot's church, who had been a more devout churchman than Mr. Smoot; who, moreover, possessed -all the qualities which naturally nat-urally caused men to think that he would make an ideal senator, still -if ho had not reached a higher station than, bishop in his church, he would have had no more chance to defeat Mr. Smoot than would an unsanctified Gentile. In other words Mr. Smoot's ecclesiastical position made it only necessary for him to announce himself him-self a candidate to insure his political preferment. prefer-ment. The mere statement of this fact makes clear the wrong of that election, for it was a notice to every young Mormon in Utah that no matter 'what his nature, brain or heart may be, no matter what his accomplishments might be, no matter however much he might apply himself to become be-come an honor to himself and his State, neither character nor attainment would count in his favor fa-vor if he dared to assume to become a candidate against a high priest of his creed, and that If he would be honored by office his struggle must bo, not to be eminently worthy of it but to attain at-tain to a high station in the church, for there station and not attainments or character count. And the enforcement of a rule of that nature is a direct insult to American institutions, a djroct perversion of the laws and the whole spirife of free government, for it makes the State as subservient sub-servient to the church in this country as it is where a theocracy rulos without question. |