d 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.

You must know that in that day we were but five years old as a State.
Our political conditions were and had been greatly unsettled. The
purpose of the church to rule in politics had not yet been made so
manifest and determined. Lorenzo Snow held his office for a brief
time--about two years. What he did in that office pertaining to my
election I here and now distinctly assume as my burden, for no man shall
with impunity use his hatred of me to defame Lorenzo Snow and dishonor
his memory to his living and loving descendants.

As for myself, I am willing to take the Senate and the country into my
confidence, and make a part of the eternal records of the Senate, for
such of my friends as may care to read, the vindication of my course to
my posterity. I had an ambition, and not an improper one, to sit in the
Senate of the United States. My competitors had longer experience in
polities and may have understood more of the peculiar situation in the
Stat