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 State.  They sought what is known as church influence.  I sought to obtain this place by purely political means.  I was elected.  After all their trickery my opponents were defeated, and to some extent by the very means which they had basely invoked.  I have served with you four years, and have sought in a modest way to make a creditable record here.  I have learned something of the grandeur and dignity of the Senate, something of its ideals, which I could not know before coming here.  I say to you, my fellow Senators, that this place of power is infinitely more magnificent than I dreamed when I first thought of occupying a seat here.  But were it thrice as great as I now know it to be, and were I back in that old time of struggle in Utah, when I was seeking for this honor, I would not permit the volunteered friendship of President Snow to bestow upon me, even as an innocent recipient, one atom of the church monarch’s favor.  My ideals have grown with my term of service in this body, and I believe that the man who would render here the highest service to his country must be careful to attain to this place by the purest civic path that mortal feet can tread.

I have said enough to indicate that for my own part I never countenanced, nor knowingly condoned, the intrusion of the church monarchy into secular affairs.  And I have said enough to those who know me to prove for all time that, so far as I am concerned, my election here was as honorable as that of any man who sits in this chamber; and yet I have said enough that all men may know that rather than have a dead man’s memory defamed on my account, I will make his cause my own and will fight for the honor which he is not on earth to defend.  This will not suit the friends and mouthpieces of the present rulers, but I have no desire to satisfy or conciliate them; and in leaving this part of the question, I avenge President Snow sufficiently by saying that these men did not dare to offend his desire nor dispute his will while he was living, and only grew brave when they could cry:  “Lorenzo, the king, is dead!  Long live Joseph, the king!”