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Show f SENATOR SMOOT'3- DEFENSE. The defense which Senator Smoot sets up to the allegations made aa reasons why he should not be allowed to retain his sent in the U. S. Senate will make Utah people gasp. They are of a character char-acter In their denials such as a defendant defend-ant sets up In a case In the courts, where In order to allow himself complete com-plete liberty of action he denies what he knows to be substantially true. It Is, that is to say. technical and evasive, save only on the one point of his personal per-sonal marital relations, which is full nnd complete according to the usual definition of words; and yet it leaves out all reference to "sealing," which under the decision of our State Supreme Court, Is practically the same thing as marriage, polygamous or otherwise, and yet, so far as is known or believed In Utah, lie could be equalb' explicit in denials of this form of marriage also with perfect truth. In his denial as to the oath he Is supposed to have taken, he Is clearly evasive: his denial is that he has ever taken any oath "controlling his duty under oath as a Senator." That is. any oath made specific as to the control of his duly under oath as a Senatqr. Probably Prob-ably he has not. But that is not charged; charg-ed; the charge Is a general one, embracing em-bracing not only that duty but all other functions that he may be called upon to perform. His denial aa to the control of the twelve apostles, and to that quorum being a sclf-perpetualijig body is merely mere-ly technical, and to be denying. That it is such a body is well known. Thnt the theocratic control and claim of divine agency and right to rule rests with the First Presidency and the Twelve does not admit of the slightest doubt. Mr. Smoot's Involved language on this point Is merely intended to befog the minds of the committee and the Senators, and to confuse their judgment on the matter. mat-ter. The things he denies In this regard are substantially true, as he very well knows none better. Hla treatment of the question as it Is related to the practice of polygamy and the teachings of it, Is evidently disingenuous. disin-genuous. It relics on special definitions, rather than on fact. For Instance, his Idea of the practice of polygamy is the entering into of new polygamous marriages; mar-riages; whereas, the country will generally gen-erally understand that when he says he or a community has abandoned the practice of polygamy, that the living with more than one woman In tho marital mar-ital relation has ben abandoned. This, however. Is technically unlawful cohabitation, cohab-itation, and a man may cohabit with all the wives he had before Statehood, and still be said to have abandoned the practice of polygamy, merely because he takes no more wives. This sort of technical evasion will need but to be exposed in order to bring discredit upon most of Senator Smoot's answer. His presentation of the political phase of his candidacy and election is lamentably lament-ably weak. The Thatcher case, in which the denial of the right of a high churchman to be a candidate candi-date for the office without the consent con-sent and counsel of his quorum was explicitly ex-plicitly affirmed and enforced, is a stumbling-block that cannot be got over. As The Tribune pointed out at the time, this irrevocably and indisputably makes any such candidate when he enters the field, the church candidate; and that It is useless to eppose the church candidate candi-date was demonstrated, not only by the fact that when' Apostle Smoot announced announc-ed his candidacy for the Senate, there was not only no Republican candidate against him, but no Democratic candidate. candi-date. His election was assured, no matter mat-ter what turn politics might take, by the mere fact that he was known to be the candidate approved by his church quorum. ti.L. |