Within a few months past the last apostle elected to the quorum was a polygamist—Charles W. Penrose—and his law-breaking career is well known. Previous to 1889 Penrose was living publicly with three wives. Under false pretenses to President Cleveland he obtained amnesty for his past offenses. He represented that he had but two wives, and that he married his second wife in 1862, while it was generally known that he took a third wife just prior to 1888. He promised to obey the law in the future, and to urge others to do so; yet after that amnesty, obtained by concealing his third marriage from President Cleveland, he continued living with his three wives. His action in this matter has been notorious. He has publicly defended this kind of law-breaking on the false pretense that there was a tacit understanding with the American Congress and people, when Utah was admitted, that these polygamists might continue to live as they had been living.
And it was this traitor to his country's laws, this unrepentant knave and cheat of the nation's mercy, this defamer of Congress and the people, that was elected to the apostleship to help govern the church, and through the church the State.
Is it not demonstrated that Utah is an abnormal State? Our problem is vast and complex. I have endeavored to simplify it so that the Senate and the country may readily grasp the questions at issue.
THE REMEDY.
Will this great body, will the Government of the United States, go on unheedingly while this church monarchy multiplies its purposes and multiplies its power? Has the nation so little regard for its own dignity and the safety of its institutions and its people that it will permit a church monarch like Joseph F. Smith to defy the laws of the country, and to override the law and to overrule the administrators of the law in his own State of Utah?
What shall the Americans of that Commonwealth do if the people of the United States do not heed their cry?
The vast majority of the Mormon people are law-abiding, industrious, sober, and thrifty. They make good citizens in every respect except as they are dominated by this monarchy, which speaks to them in the name of God and governs them in the spirit of Mammon. Any remedy for existing evils which would injure the mass of the Mormon people would be most deplorable. I believe that they would loosen the chains which they wear if it were possible. I think that many of them pay blood-money tithes simply to avoid social ostracism and business destruction. I believe that many of them do the political will of the church monarch because they are led to believe that the safety of the church monarchy is necessary in order that the mass may preserve the right to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience. The church monopoly, by its various agencies is usually able to uprear the injured and innocent mass of the Mormon people as a barrier to protect the members of that monarchy from public vengeance.
It is the duty of this great body—the Senate of the United States—to serve notice on this church monarch and his apostles that they must live within the law; that the nation is supreme; that the institutions of his country must prevail throughout the land; and that the compact upon which statehood was granted must be preserved inviolate.
May heaven grant that this may be effective and that the church monarchy in Utah may be taught that it must relinquish its grasp.
I would not, for my life, that injury should come to the innocent mass of the people of Utah; I would not that any right of theirs should be lost, but that the right of all should be preserved to all.