erarchy should preserve a political control over the people. I
cannot say that the feeling had wholly passed. It had continued to show
itself, here and there, whenever a candidate was so pertinacious in
his independence that words of disfavor were sent out from Church
headquarters in one of those whispers that carry to the confines of the
kingdom of the priests. But the progress was apparent. The tendency was
clear. And in 1898 there was neither internal revolt nor external threat
to provoke a renewal of the exercise of that force which is necessarily
despotic if it be used at all.

Yet, in September, 1898, President Snow, if he did not instigate, at
least authorized the candidacy of Brigham H. Roberts for Congress--a
polygamist who had been threatened with excommunication for his
opposition to the "political manifesto" of 1896 and who had recanted and
made his peace with the hierarchy. His election, now, would be a proof
that the Church could punish a brilliant orator and courageous citizen
in the time of his independence and then reward him in the day of his
submission; and the authorities would thus demonstrate to all the people
that the one way to political preferment lay through the annihilation of
self-will and the submergence of national loyalty in priestly devotion.
Such a candidacy was a sufficient shame to the state; but there was
also a United States Senatorship to be bestowed; and it was deliberately
bargained for, between the Church authorities and a man who deserved
better than the alliance into which he entered.

Alfred W. McCune was a citizen of Utah who had gone out from the
territory in the days of its poverty (and his own), had made a fortune
in British Columbia and Montana, and had returned to his home state to
enrich it with his generosities. He was not a Mormon, but he had wide
Mormon connections. He spent his millions in public enterprises and
benefactions; and the Church had benefited in the sum of many thousands
by his subscriptions to its funds and institutions.

Apostle Heber J. Grant, a Republican by sentiment but a Democrat by
pretension, was selected by President Snow to barter the Senatorship to
McCune. There can be no doubt of it. Everyone immediately suspected
it. Letters from Grant, published in the newspapers of January, 1899,
subsequently confirmed it. And President Snow's actions, toward the end
of the campaign, proved it.

The other candidates were Judge O. W. Powers, a prominent