retirement.  If the Democracy were in power, the Republican leaders of the Mormon people would go into retirement and Democrats would appear in their places.  No man can be elected to either House of Congress against their wish.  I will not trespass upon your patience long enough to recite the innumerable circumstances that prove this assertion, but will merely refer to enough instances to illustrate the method.  In 1897, at the session of the legislature which was to elect a Senator, and which was composed of sixty Democrats and three Republicans, Moses Thacher was the favored candidate of the Democracy in the State.  He had been an apostle of the Mormon Church, but had been deposed because he was out of harmony with the leaders.  The Hon. Jos.  L. Rawlins was a rival candidate, but not strongly so at first.  He was encouraged by the church leaders in every way; and finally, when his strength had been advanced sufficiently to need but one vote, a Mormon Republican was promptly moved over into the Democratic column and he was elected by the joint assembly.  I do not charge that Hon. Joseph L. Rawlins, who occupied a seat with distinguished honor in this great body for six years, had any improper bargain with the church, or any knowledge of the secret methods by which his election was being compassed; but he was elected under the direction of the leaders of the church because they desired to defeat and further humiliate a deposed apostle.

I will not ignore my own case.  During nearly three years I have waited this great hour of justice in which I could answer the malignant falsehood and abuse which has been heaped upon a man who is dead and can not answer, and upon myself, a living man willing to wait the time for answer.  Lorenzo Snow, a very aged man, was president of the church when I was elected to the Senate.  He had reached that advanced time of life, being over eighty, when men abide largely in the thoughts of their youth.  He was my friend in that distant way which sometimes exists without close acquaintanceship, our friendship (if I may term it such) having arisen from the events attendant upon Utah’s struggle for statehood.  For some reason he did not oppose my election to the Senate.  Every other candidate for the place had sought his favor; it came to me without price or solicitation on my part.  The friends and mouthpieces of some of the present leaders have been base enough to charge that I bought the Senatorship from Lorenzo Snow, president of their own church.  Here and now I denounce the calumny against that old man, whose unsought and unbought favor came to me in that contest.  That I ever paid him one dollar of money, or asked him to influence legislators of his faith, is as cruel a falsehood as ever came from human lips.  So far as I am concerned he held his power with clean hands, and I would protect the memory of this dead man against all the abuse and misrepresentation which might be heaped upon him by those who were his adherents during life, but who now attack his fame in order that they may pay the greater deference to the present king.