OCR Text |
Show HOW IT CAME ABOUT. On Aug. 2d the news was telegraphed that a measure had passed the Senate conferring upon the Governor of Utah power to fill vacancies caused by the expiration of the terms of certain Territorial officers. A later dispatch announced the concurrence of the House in the measure held; that at such election there would have been chosen successors to all the present county officers, and also to the territorial auditor and treasurer, as directed by territorial statute; that those successors cannot now be chosen for the reasons given; that the failure to elect is liable to cause general disturbance and trouble, especially in view of the well known fact that many of the present incumbents are understood to be polygamists, and so disqualified under the law above referred to to hold office. We therefore ask that Congress shall take such measures as will provide for legal successors to all the present incumbents of office whose successors would have been chosen at the August election, and thereby secure the continuance of good order, and the regular and undisputed support of organized government, which otherwise would be seriously jeopardized. We have delayed this representation as long as possible, hoping for the advent of the election officers, but they have not yet come. Dated July 20, 1882. John A. Hunter, Chief Justice. Philip H. Emerson, Associate Justice, Stephen P. Twiss, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Utah. The provision as at first framed, would have made indefinite the term of office of the Governor's appointees. Senator Brown of Georgia, however, saw the danger of empowering the Governor to appoint men to office with a tenure that might continue for years, and through his earnest efforts the clause limiting to eight months the continuance in office of the Governor's appointees, was added. There is no question but that the above communication had considerable weight with Congress in leading to the adoption of a measure that clothes the Governor of Utah with an autocratic power utterly at variance with republican institutions, and better fitted for a minion of the Czar than for the governor of an incipient republic. The reasoning of the Justices' communication is fallacious as might easily have been shown, had some honorable Senator been properly posted. There was no danger of disorder, confusion nor unsupplied vacancies as urged by the Justices. The commissions of present incumbents empower them to act until their successors are duly elected and qualified, hence, until the holding of an election they would remain legal offices in as perfect a sense as if newly elected. Without a further explanation of the motives of the Supreme Court Justices in sending that communication to Congress, the people of Utah will be justified in regarding their action as an effort to secure for a fellow Federal official a degree of power far more dangerous to the rights, peace and prosperity of the Territory, than an indefinite postponement of an election could be. As there is a likelihood that the constitutionality of the law so empowering the Governor will be tested by some of the office-holders sought to be removed under its operation, it may not be amiss to mark foreshadowing indications of what the decision of our Supreme Court upon it will be. Nothing is more evident than that deep laid schemes, looking to the destruction of the rights and liberties of the people of Utah, are in operation, and when the higher courts, the bulwarks of those rights and liberties, indicate in advance their sympathy with such schemes, a gloomy future is forecast, and unless rescued by some interposing providence, the dissolution of republican forms and institutions may with certainty be predicted. If the minority can endure to have Utah transformed into a province ruled by an autocrat possessed of irresponsible and despotic power, the majority can. But if such a transformation should be accomplished, the men who are to-day working to bring it about will be the first and greatest sufferers. The Guy Fawkes who wrongfully undermines and destroys with a petard a stately edifice, ought to be and usually is the first killed by the explosion and falling debris-the first victim of his own plot. |