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Concerning the criticisms that have been made of this speech—one of which extended through seven columns of as vapid and flaccid an aggregation of words, words, words as it has ever been my lot to wade through—I only care to notice one, that is the alleged harshness of some of my utterances. The conclusion is reached that some of my words were unbecoming both my calling and the place in which they were delivered. In answer I only wish to say that the propriety of one's expressions is governed very largely by the task one has before him. Even the Son of God, when he had occasion to denounce falsehood and reprove deceivers, no longer used the gentle tones by which he comforted the sorrowful or encouraged those bowed down in weakness; but he used language suited to the task before him. To the scribes and Pharisees, who were hounding himself and his friends to their death, and as a preliminary to that purpose were seeking to embitter the minds of the populace, he said:
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the Prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the Prophets. Fill ye up, then, the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?"
I think I have not gone beyond this worthy example in anything I have said in this speech; and for the sacredness of the building in which my remarks were made, I in no way feel that there was a desecration, since when the task before one is to defend the innocent against misrepresentation, and denounce calumniators, then "all place a temple, and all seasons summer."
II.
Answer to Kearns.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: On the 28th day of February, last, the then senior senator from the State of Utah delivered an address in the senate chamber of the United States, in which an attack was made upon the Mormon Church and against the best interests of the State of Utah. The speech was cunningly planned and adroitly phrased; and with the prestige of a senator of the United States behind it, among the masses of the people of the United States, uninformed of the true conditions existing in Utah, its effect will be misleading and mischievous. It is because of these opinions that I have formed of the speech that I think it a proper subject for this occasion, that our own people, at least, should be put upon their guard against the mischievous effects of this deliverance.
I regret extremely that the speech was not answered upon the floor of the senate of the United States. The gentleman upon whom that duty properly rested may have had good and sufficient reasons for remaining silent. It is not for me to say. But when I think of the serious charges that are made, and the cunning with which those charges, false though they be, are sustained, I can conceive of no combination of circumstances that would justify the now senior senator from Utah for being silent on that occasion. The suggestion of friends may be a good thing to listen to sometimes; but occasions can arise—and this, in my judgment, was one of them—when the call of duty should lead one to reject the counsel of well-meaning but perhaps ill-informed friends, and the cold calculations of over caution. It might be possible, of course, that a reply such as one might desire to make, could not be made on the spur of the moment; but ten minutes devoted to denouncing the falsehoods of that speech, and the unmasking of the man who uttered it, would have had a beneficial effect upon the public mind, and would have been more effective than any reply that can now be made. Anything that may be said from this platform, or any other in Utah, or anything that may be said in the future upon the floor of the senate chamber, will not have the effect that an emphatic denial of the charges would have had while the gentleman who made them was still a senator of the United States.[1] That opportunity, however, is lost. All that may be done, here in Utah, at least, is to point out to our youth the untruthfulness of these charges, and disclose the sophistry by which an attempt is made to sustain them. I account myself fortunate in having an opportunity to undertake such a task before this magnificent assembly.
AUTHORSHIP OF THE KEARNS' SPEECH.
Before proceeding to the speech itself, I want to say a word or two in relation to its authorship. It will go without saying that the ex-senator who stands responsible for it is not its author. Those of us who chance to be acquainted with the dullness of his mind and the density of his ignorance know very well that his mind never conceived the speech; nor did he fashion the polished and falsely eloquent sentences devoted to so bad a cause. Those of us who served with him in the Constitutional convention of this state painfully remembering the very few occasions on which he sought to express himself upon the floor of that convention hall, can never believe for a moment that he is the author of the speech. Those who were present in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City on the occasion when the President of the United States honored that city and the state with his presence, and who saw this now ex-senator when he addressed that assembly, with hands thrust deep into his pockets, with stomach thrown forward, and head thrown back, and in nasal tones only becoming a retired pugilist—and heard him say in the opening sentence of his speech, "We Americans ain't born to nuthin', but we git there just the same" (Laughter); and who had no better taste than to make the visit of the chief executive of this nation to our state the occasion of a partisan harangue, know very well that he is not the author of this senate speech. He is only the author of this speech in the sense that he has adopted it. This speech is his only in the sense that he bought it. I shall not undertake to describe all the contempt I feel for a man who occupies the high station of a senator of the United States, and who consents to repeat, parrot-like, the bought phrases fashioned by another mind. Jewelry in a swine's snout is as nothing to this.
THE BOUGHT FABRIC OF ANOTHER'S RHETORIC.
I glory in that pride, which would prefer to stand in tatters, though the biting winds of winter might nip one, rather than to be dressed in the cast-off clothing or the borrowed furs of a prince; so also I would glory in silence rather than to arise in my place in so august a body as the United States senate and repeat as mine the speech conceived and written by another, though its eloquence rivaled that of a Pitt, a Chatham or a Webster. Indeed the more eloquent the speech the deeper must be the embarrassment—the shame. But here I pause, though I had the language of a Solomon or a Shakespeare I should never be able to express my contempt for the senator who would consent to appear clothed in the borrowed or bought fabric of another's rhetoric. We may dismiss the ex-senator right here, so far as thinking that he had anything to do with this speech more than the reading of it.
I wish now to say a word in regard to the spirit in which I propose to discuss this speech. I believe in the amenities of debate. There is nothing quite so joyous as to witness a debate when the differences discussed are honest differences, when opponents are honorable and talented men. I think I may be pardoned, altogether excused, in fact, from any exhibition of egotism, if I say that I take some pride in the reputation I think I have in this state for fairness in debate, and respectful treatment of my opponents. But the amenities of debate do not require me to say that my opponent's statements are true when I know them to be false; or that his argument is good and sound when I know it to be the merest sophistry; or that his motives are patriotic when I know them to be selfish and revengeful. Therefore, when I meet and have to deal with such a speech as the one before me, it is not to be expected that I shall handle it with gloves, and I promise you I shall not.
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