the terms of their amnesty, against the laws and the constitution of
the state, and contrary to the "revelation of God" by which the doctrine
of polygamy had been withdrawn from practice in the Church!

President Joseph F. Smith admitted that he was violating the law of the
State. He was asked: "Is there not a revelation that you shall abide by
the law of the State and of the land?" He answered, "Yes, sir." He was
asked: "And if that is a revelation, are you not violating the laws
of God?" He answered: "I have admitted that, Mr. Senator, a great many
times here."

Apostle Francis Marion Lyman was asked: "You say that you, an apostle
of your Church, expecting to succeed (if you survive Mr. Smith) to
the office in which you will be the person to be the medium of Divine
revelations, are living, and are known to your people to live, in
disobedience of the law of the land and the law of God?" Apostle Lyman
answered: "Yes, sir." The others pleaded guilty to the same charge.

But this was not the worst. There had been new polygamous marriages.
Bishop Chas. E. Merrill, the son of an apostle, testified that his
father had married him to a plural wife in 1891, and that he had been
living with both wives ever since. A Mrs. Clara Kennedy testified that
she had been married to a polygamist in 1896, in Juarez, Mexico, by
Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., in the home of the president of the stake.
There was testimony to show that Apostle George Teasdale had taken a
plural wife six years after the "manifesto" forbidding polygamy, and
that Benjamin Cluff, Jr., president of the Church university, had
taken a plural wife in 1899. Some ten other less notorious cases were
exposed--including those of M. W. Merrill, an apostle, and J. M. Tanner,
superintendent of Church schools. It was testified that Apostle John W.
Taylor had taken two plural wives within four years, and that Apostle M.
F. Cowley had taken one; and both these men had fled from the country in
order to escape a summons to appear before the Senate committee.

President Joseph F. Smith, in his attempts to justify his own polygamy,
gave some very involved and contradictory testimony. He said that he
adhered to both the divine revelation commanding polygamy and the
divine revelation "suspending" the command. He said he believed that the
principle of plural marriage was still as "correct a principle" as when
first revealed, but that the "law commanding it" had been suspended
by Presi