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Show j THE "CONTINGENT FEE." j The Tribune of yesterday morning undertook a defense of Governor Murray's Mur-ray's acceptance of $2,000 for messenger for Executive office for the years 1884-5. j . It says : i The facts are simply these and we obtain them entirely from a banker of this city: Two years ago when the Governor's term had expired, the $2,000 was tendered to him on account of contingent fond for 1882-3, j which he refused to acoept, holding that it ? I was a Bop thrown to him. The Legislature ;( then voted the same to the Governor for . ,.- 1884-5. Governor Murray was re-appointed J: and the money became his by action of law. It seeing the Governor himself looked f upon this $2,000 as a sop when it was , first tendered to him, and refused to accept it. Very good. If that $2,000 was i a sop when "tendered to him on account of contingent fund for 1882-3," did it I cease to be a sop in 1884-5 when sugar- I : coated as "Eli H. Murray, Governor, for I services of messenger, etc., for the Ex- I ecutive office for the years 1884-5, $2,000?" j We very much doubt if such things are "done in every Territory and Stale in the Union," as the Tribune avers, and if it is, , it is wrong. States may give their Gov- ernors what they please ; not so with the Territories. The services of Governor f Murray are paid for by the United ; States, and they alone' are entitled j to them. Why, then, should the Territory appropriate money for hia use and benefit? This $2,000 wa3 ostensibly for paying for the services of a messen- ; ger, yet no one has ever seen such an in dividual. That $2,000 was a sop thrown ' to Governor Murray by the Legislature, and it was given him in the hope and an-1 an-1 ticipation that he would thereby be "pla cated. Yet the Tribune saj-s that such t approjiriations "are entirely proper." : They certainly mu?t . be if the Tribune says so and Governor Murray accepts money so appropriated, but we would suggest that when the Tribune says that it is "entirety propsr" for the Utah Legis- ilature to appropriate $2,000 for the use of the Governor, that it remember that just one week before it justified the Legislature Legisla-ture in this matter it wrote of the Utah Legislature as follows : . . . At present we expect they will meet and organize, and that then, in all important legislation, they will do as they shall be instructed in-structed to do by the First Presidency of the Mormon Church. I ' An appropriation of money is always an important matter and is generally j thoroughly discussed even in the Utah I Legislature, yet the Tribune on the 13th inst., wrote as follows, and wrote truthfully, truth-fully, we believe : There is not a man Mormon or Gentile who does not know that in Utah the State is but the veriest slave of the Church; who does not know that in all the years past neither nei-ther the City Council of this city nor the Legislature of the Territory has dared to pass one important measure without the Approval first of the heads of the church. Does the Tribune think that this $2,000 for Governor Murray's messenger was appropriated ap-propriated by the Utah Legislature without with-out "the approval first of the heads of the church?" The Tribune says that "in Utah the State is but the veriest slave of the church." Now will it explain why this "veriest slave" appropriated $2,000 for the benefit of Governor Murray and why it approves such appropriation ? It would be well for the Tribune to remember what it says about tlie absolute influence of the Mormon church in Utah and of its lobby in Washington, and then reconcile the methods of that church, according to its own saying, with the appropriation of $2,000 by the Utah Legislature, which is Mormon, for "Eli H. Murray, Governor, I for services' of messenger, etc., for the j Executive office for the years 1884-5." |
