ah."

On the same day a minority report was presented by Senators J. B.
Foraker, Albert J. Beveridge, Wm. P. Dillingbam, A. J. Hopkins and P.
C. Knox. They found that Reed Smoot possessed "all the qualifications
prescribed by the Constitution to make him eligible to a seat in the
Senate;" that "the regularity of his election" by the Utah
legislature had not been questioned; that his private character was
"irreproachable;" and that "so far as mere belief and membership in
the Mormon Church are concerned, he is fully within his rights and
privileges under the guaranty of religious freedom given by the
Constitution of the United States." Having thus summarily excluded all
the large and troublesome points of the investigation, these Senators
decided that there remained "but two grounds on which the right or title
of Reed Smoot to his seat in the Senate" was contested. The first was
whether he had taken a certain "endowment oath" by which "he obligated
himself to make his allegiance to the Church paramount to his allegiance
to the United States;" and the second was whether "by reason of his
official relation to the Church" he was "responsible for polygamous
cohabitation" among the Mormons.

As to the first charge, the minority found that the testimony upon the
point was "limited in amount, vague and indefinite in character and
utterly unreliable, because of the disreputable character of the
witnesses"--oddly overlooking the fact that one of these witnesses had
been called for Apostle Smoot; that no attempt had been made to impeach
the character of this witness; that the other witnesses had been
denounced, by a Mormon bishop, named Daniel Connolly, as "traitors who
had broken their oaths to the Church" by betraying the secrets of
the "endowment oath;" and that all the Smoot witnesses who denied the
anti-patriotic obligation of the oath refused, suspiciously enough, to
tell what obligation was imposed on those who took part in the ceremony.

The charge that Smoot, as an apostle of the Church, had been responsible
for polygamous cohabitation was as easily disposed of, by the minority
report. He had himself, on oath, "positively denied" that he had "ever
advised any person to violate the law either against polygamy or against
polygamous cohabitation," and no witness had been produced to testify
that Apostle Smoot had ever given "any such advice" or defended "such
acts." True, it was admitted that he had "silently acquiesced" i