The nation, having accepted responsibility for past polygamy, now, by accepting Senator Smoot, gave its responsible approval to the new polygamy and to the commercial and political tyrannies of the Church. In the old days the Mormons had claimed immunity for their practice of polygamy on the ground that the constitution of the United States protected them in the exercises of their faith. The Supreme Court of the country determined that the free-religion clause of the constitution did not cover violations of law; and the Church deliberately abandoned its claim of religious immunity. But now a majority of the Senate, supported by President Roosevelt, took the old ground--which the Supreme Court had made untenable and the Mormons themselves had vacated--and practically declared that violations of law were a part of the constitutional guaranty! Chapter XVI. The Price of Protest The members of the Mormon hierarchy continually boast that they are sustained in their power--and in their abuses of that power--"by the free vote of the freest people under the sun." By an amazing self deception the Mormon people assume that their government is one of "common consent;" and nothing angers them more than the expression of any suspicion that they are not the freest community in the world. They live under an absolutism. They have no more right of judgment than a dead body. Yet the diffusion of authority is so clever that nearly every man seems to share in its operation upon some subordinate, and feels himself in some degree a master without observing that he is also a slave. The male members of the ward--who would be called "laymen" in any other Church--all hold the priesthood. Each is in possession of, or on the road to, some priestly office; and yet all are under the absolutism of the bishop of the ward. Of the hundreds of bishops, with their councillors, each seems to be exercising some independent authority, but all are obedient to the presidents of stakes. The presidents apparently direct the ecclesiastical destinies of their districts, but they are, in fact, supine and servile under the commands of the apostles; and these, in turn, render implicit obedience to the Prophet, Seer and Revelator. No policy ever arises from the people. All direction, all command, comes from the man at the top. It is not a government by common consent, but a government of common consent--of universal, absolute and unquestioning obedience--under penalty of eternal condemnation threatened and earthly punishment sure.