Now it seems to me that if the Supreme Court of the {334} United States
knows what a bill of attainder is, the eighth and ninth sections of
this act are clearly in violation of the Constitution. When I took a
seat in this House I took an oath to support the Constitution of the
United States. I can not and will not swear to a lie even to emphasize
my abhorrence of polygamy or to punish a Mormon, and with my views of
this act I would have had to do so if I had voted for the bill when it
passed. It would seem that after organizing a packed jury to convict,
the authors of the bill ought then to have been willing to await a
conviction before depriving American citizens of the right to vote or
hold office. For what is an American, deprived of those rights? He may
live in a land of boasted freedom, but thus stripped of the rights and
privileges that freemen most value, he is no better than a slave.
Let the carpet bagger, expelled finally from every State in the
American Union with the brand of disgrace stamped upon his brow, lift
up his head once more and turn his face toward the setting sun. Utah
beckons him to a new field of pillage and fresh pastures of pilfering.
Let him pack his grip sack and start. The Mormons have no friends,
and no one will come forward to defend or protect their rights. A
returning board, from whose decision there is no appeal, sent out
from the American Congress baptized with the spirit of persecution
and intolerance, will enter Utah to trample beneath their feet the
rights of the people of that far-off and ill-fated land. Mr. Speaker,
I would not place a dog under the dominion of a set of carpet-baggers,
re-enforced by a returning board, unless I meant to have him robbed of
his bone. A more grinding tyranny, a more absolute despotism was never
established over any people.
The Mormons have been guilty of believing in, and some of them
practicing, polygamy. But they have been guilty of another sin also.
They have committed the offense of belonging to the democratic party.
That Territory now has a population about large enough to be admitted
into the Union. It would not do to let it enter the Union as a
democratic State. There is not now the least danger of it. After it
has passed under the manipulations of the returning board, after her
people have been driven from their homes under the oppressive laws
that will be passed under the powers conferred by this law, after
the carpet-bagger has gone in and taken possession, Utah, clothed in
the habiliments of the republican party, will be welcomed into the
sisterhood of States. I did desire to notice some other features of
this law, but time forbids. It {335} was passed under the operation of
the previous question, and no one had the opportunity to discuss it or
to point out its imperfections. The Delegate sent here by the people of
that Territory, by a barefaced usurpation on the part of the governor,
was denied a certificate of election, and was not allowed to take the
seat to which he had been elected, or to speak in behalf of his people
while they were being robbed of their rights.
HON. JAMES W. STILLMAN, FREETHINKER, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 12TH FEB.,
1884.
The bill which Senator Hoar has reported is an _ex post facto_ law,
because it changes the rules of evidence as already indicated. The
Edmunds bill is a bill of attainder; and it is an _ex post facto_ law,
because it punishes these people without a judicial trial; it increases
the punishment for polygamy by disfranchisement and disqualification to
hold office. Every Senator and every Representative who voted for that
bill had taken a solemn oath to support the Constitution of the United
States, and yet, unmindful of that oath, actuated by the spirit of
religious bigotry and fanaticism which I have denounced here to-night,
they lost sight entirely of their constitutional obligations, and
nullified one of the most important provisions of that great instrument.