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Show SMOOT NOT A CITIZEN. In the Deseret News Apostle Smoot reaffirms his candidacy for the United States Senatorshlp and further declares that he has the same right as any American citizen to become a Senator, and the fact of his being a Mormon is no bar to his election. Further, that as a church member he stands on the same footing as any other member -of the church. There are several errors in the foregoing. The first is that he is only an American citizen in name. He owes a higher fealty to another temporal tem-poral government than he does to the Government Govern-ment of the "United States. He is bound to it by the most binding oaths that can hold a mortal to a cause; to him the president of the Mormon church is, in authority, far superior to the President of the United States, though backed by both houses of Congress and the Supreme court. "We saw this during "the Teign of terror" in the '80s, when the then president presi-dent of the church was defying all the authorities and laws of the United States, and when that president was telling his people that if the la-ss of the United States conflicted with the laws of God by which he meant the despotism of the Mormon church to ohey the latter. And when hundreds of poor Mormons were being sent to the penitentiary because of the fear in their hearts of what would follow if they disobeyed the mandates of that church, Reed Smoot had neither the courage nor desire to proclaim that it was the first duty of a Mormon to submit to the laws of this free Republic. We affirm that such a man is no citizen of the United States in the sense of the understanding of earthly governments of what citizenship means. He is in error on another point. He does not stand on the same footing as any other member of the church, except his brother apostles and the First Presidency. He is held as a quasi prophet and seer by the whole body of the Mormon people, as one to whom the presidency of the kingdom might come tomorrow. He has been "set apart" with rites which the world knows nothing of; he as leached a point in authority in the church which is so binding upon the Mormon people that We saw his brother apostles, presidents of stakes and bishops all scrambling like so many ward. Politicians In. the conventions to secure legislate legisla-te candidates who would vote for him in the Senate, and in the election, under orders from e chiefs of the church, Mormons by thousands who had never before voted a so-called Republican Repub-lican ticket, voted for those candidates. That is, the reason there is a vast majority of the legislators-elect who stand ready to vote for him, is because the Utah theocracy, proceeding under the forms of the Republic, performed its perfect despotic work to secure for him a Legislature to elect him. Suppose he were to go to the Senate and were to inclose in his certificate of election a truthful statement of the facts, how would he be received? It would read something like this: "I was overwhelmingly elected by the Utah Legislature to the Senate of the United States. But that Legislature was selected for the purpose, pur-pose, and was elected through the order (or request, re-quest, the same thing )of the chiefs of the church to which I belong. "Under the superstition and fear upon the souls of the members of that creed, they dare not disobey counsel from those chiefs. Further, I beg to say that while I stand ready to take the oath prescribed for Senators, I can give only a subordinate subordi-nate fealty to the Republic of the United States. I was brought up to believe and do believe that such Government is but an usurpation; the only true temporal government in the world being that of God as it was handed down by him to Joseph Smith and which by regular descent fell in turn upon Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wil-ford Wil-ford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow and finally upon Joseph F. Smith, and the apostles, of which I am one." Does any one believe that he would obtain his seat? But there is another and most serious reason why Reed Smoot should be denied a seat in the Senate of the United States. To give him that seat would be a notice to every young and old Mormon in Utah that the only path to promotion for them must be through their church. No matter mat-ter what their abilities may be, no matter what just hopes may be theirs; no matter how eminent may be their achievements as citizens; their only hope of preferment lies in their obtaining honors in their church. This is a direct perversion of the spirit and of the principles on which our Government Gov-ernment was founded and through which triumphs so magnificent and wonderful have been won. Finally, Reed Smoot is not. either by education educa-tion nor training, fitted to hold the exalted position posi-tion of Senator. He grew up in a narrow groove; he knows less of the genus of American institutions institu-tions than the ordinary boy of fourteen years of age. His life has been narrow from the beginning; begin-ning; all his ambition has been limited to devotion devo-tion to a despotism and to gaining money, and save for his priestly office, there is not a soul in Utah that would have the audacity to even suppose sup-pose him fitted for a seat in that hall that was originally dedicated as a reward for greatness and patriotism, and which is hallowed by the memories memo-ries of a Clay, a Calhoun, a Webster, a Thurman, a Baker, a Benton and scores more of immortals who in the past made of it a more honored place than was the Roman Senate, when the awed Greek wrote back to his country that it impressed him as an assemblage of Kings. |
