Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Volume 1 of 2)Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Religion
Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Volume 1 of 2)
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Latter Day Saint churches
[Footnote A: For Senator Smoot it is said that he followed his advisors
among the senators, and that the event of retaining his seat by a vote
rejecting the resolution to declare that seat vacant, is a vindication
of his silence. The senator is, of course, entitled to that view of the
case, but to what extent retaining his seat was due to his silence in
the foregoing occasion is a value that can never be determined; and it
does not matter now that the event has ended so happily for the senator
and for Utah.]
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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