A.L.O.C.

“ There are few communities, however small, that have not been aroused and stirred into action, by some uncommon event, or where opposing parties have never rejoiced, and mourned over a triumph of one at the other's expense, and often have men and women, unappreciated by the many, bravely suffered for their fidelity to a good and beloved cause. Thus the little County of Brome has been stirred to the depths of its soul by the actions of contending parties, and especially by a deliberate attempt to hinder the work and destroy the life of a law-abiding citizen. ”

“ The Company knows well how slight a matter often creates a prejudice for or against a railway which affects its dividends for years, and they know well also that when an act of this kind is actually done and unearthed, that it appeals to principles held as sacred by the public of our Dominion. They also know that, however the temperance (p. 112) ballot holders may be divided in their political allegiances, in a matter of this kind, when no political ties bind them, they would be practically a unit in resenting an act not only tyrannical, but under the circumstances cowardly and immoral. ”

“ One cannot believe that this shrewd Company of high-minded and acute business gentlemen would be guilty of the folly attributed to them. Their effort is in every way honorable to attract their own line, and it is past belief that they should play into the hands of the Grand Trunk and other competing lines in any such manner as the accusation, if proved, would mean. Give them time and opportunity for an explanation before any expression of indignation manifests itself, and especially before any hasty and inconsiderate act of discrimination against the Company is made. ”

“ Seeing the people outside, neither he nor Mr. Jenne dared resist, and, being assured by the latter that he would soon have him free again, Howarth accompanied the constable to the jail at Sweetsburg, feeling, doubtless, much less pleased with his future prospects than he had felt when planning by violence and bloodshed to frighten the temperance people into submission or silence, and leave himself and his congenial associates free to drink and sell as much liquor as they chose. ”

“ In the management of your Company it is not our part to interfere, but when an employee of your Company is dismissed, as alleged by the Assistant Superintendent, and now confirmed by yourself, for publicly advocating those principles which this Alliance is organized to promote, and for promoting the observance of the laws of his country, it is right for us to express to you the protest of a very large portion of the people of Canada, and their indignation at seeing one of their number thus suffer for conscience sake. ”

“ Who is safe in the discharge of his duty and in the performance of the God-given work to which every Christian man is called?
"If the law protects a rumseller who has a license in his business of selling the liquid poison, should not that same law protect a man who, residing in a town where the Scott Act is in force, prosecutes liquor sellers who are dealing contrary to the laws? Let us have fair play! If the law is like a game of checkers, in which, not the best man, not the righteous cause wins, but the party wins who makes the most dexterous move, then the least we can ask is fair play. ”

“ If the temperance people of Canada wish to have a powerful voice in such matters as this, or if they would have great institutions like the Canadian Pacific Railway conducted on principles of temperance and true freedom, let them work for prohibition, and send representatives to Parliament who will do the same. And just now, when they hold in their hands a key which may be the means of unlocking to us the gate of Prohibition for our country, let them use it to the best advantage, by giving a powerful majority for good when the Plebiscite vote is taken. ”

“ Jenne, Howarth and Wilson, you are arrant cowards, and your weakness is only exceeded by the devilishness of your malice!
"These are the men who say we cannot enforce prohibition, and undertake to make the law a dead letter. Men who will murder—no, they lack that courage, but will hire the slugger—if they are not permitted to carry out their work of death. Shall we make our laws to please, or to restrain and punish such men? ”

“ Commercial corporations do not pretend to have souls or conscience. Nobody expects them to have any, and consequently no one is angry when they show that they have not. Quite apart from all questions of morals, the money interests of the Company are those of the country, and the liquor business does not promote the business of the country. Moreover, it is in the interest of the railway, and eminently so of its customers, to have railway servants protected from drink, and the enforcement of the laws against liquor is the most direct way to protect them from drink. ”

“ It is, therefore, apparent to every business man that any person who adopts this course at once renders himself less useful than he would otherwise be in any position (such, for instance, as a station agent) in the employment of a Railway Company, whose main object must be to increase its business from every possible source, and who must be careful not to antagonize any portion of the community upon whose patronage, as part of the general public, the success of the Company depends. ”

“ The cheap John part of this affair is in Fair Play's letter, in which in one breath he professes to be a temperance man, and says a hotel keeper who violates the law and gets punished gets just what he deserves, and in the next breath tells us that liquor is a necessity, and asks why trouble the man who furnishes it. Surely, we see the hem of the cloak of hypocrisy. Fair Play should also give the public his name, so that people may judge for themselves the value of his peculiar and disinterested view of fair play ”

“ When we consider that traffic in strong drink means a trade in the souls of men, women and children, and in innocence, virtue and hope; when we remember that the bartender daily takes from his customers the price of food, clothes, health, respectability and all that he has of real value in the world, and gives him in return nothing but liquid ruin; when we know that the rumseller's business is a sort of wholesale murder continually, inasmuch as by it millions of lost souls are sent into eternity annually ”

“ Not those alone who are interested in temperance, but every man who believes that men are other than serfs, and who would have established beyond question the right of a man to have his own conscience in matters which relate to himself and the community, should be concerned to make impossible such tyrannical exercise of power. ”

“ Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the liquor sellers of the present day are remarkable for their subtility, and many are the innocent victims entangled in the meshes of the net woven by their deceptive tongues; therefore, it need not seem strange that they should display great power and influence, even in a so-called temperance community. ”

“ There is a limit beyond which self-constituted conservers of public morals must not go; and good men should not be brutally attacked in public by agents of the Alliance on the strength of the admissions of a fellow, who, if he tells the truth, is one of the meanest rascals that ever cumbered the earth. I refer to the fellow Kelly, Mr. Smith's self-confessed assailant. ”

“ It taxes one's credulity to too great a degree to ask one to believe that, in view of the recent plebiscite taken in several Provinces, that any officer, possessed of mental qualifications sufficient to secure a position of power in the Company, would ally himself with a coterie of lawbreakers in a secluded village, and perpetrate an act which would be resented by thousands of business men and tens of thousands of the travelling public in our Dominion, and attach a stain to the name of the Company which would challenge contempt for years future. ”

“ It is, of course, for the Company to judge how best to promote its own business, but when so large a portion of the public as those who support temperance laws and seeks their enforcement is openly snubbed in the interests, and it would seem at the instance, of illicit and murderous dealers in a contraband article, from the transport of which your Company seeks profit, we may fairly ask the question whether the Company is acting even the part of worldly wisdom. ”

“ I believe in temperance, and if those who knowingly violate the law against the sale of intoxicants are brought to judgment and punishment, they get but what they deserve, and all good men will applaud the vindication of the majesty of the law. ”

“ First, I should like to ask what is meant by poisoning the public mind?
"If Fair Play means enlisting the sympathies of the public on the side of the temperance party, all that is needed is a clear statement of the plain, unvarnished facts. ”

“ God and humanity against the powers of evil, that the grand result of these dark plots that were formed by outlawed liquor sellers in an illegal barroom shall be the adding of many fresh recruits to the ranks of those whom they wished to destroy. And whenever we have an opportunity of defeating these enemies of good and taking from them some of their ill-used power, let us strive, lest the victory be theirs, to give a strong majority on the side of right. ”

“ It is impossible to shut one's eyes to the ill-feeling that is growing throughout the County of Brome, and spreading itself over the district, as a result of what is known as the Smith assault case. Hitherto, only one side of the case has found an echo in the public press, but to-day we open our columns to a correspondent who expresses in moderate language the sentiments of those who think there is something to be said on the other side. ”

“ It is not to be supposed that this power asserted over the lives of its employees is going to be insisted on by the Company as against every thing they do, and that every man who takes part in a baseball match or a mock parliament will be dismissed. It is not to be supposed that the man who busies himself even in politics will be dismissed if he takes care that he does not do so on a side distasteful to the Company. ”

“ They had greater success attending their efforts, but probably there was no more hatred or revenge in their hearts than was in the hearts of the Brome County liquor sellers when they sent to Massachusetts for a prize fighter to come north to injure and perhaps kill a Christian temperance worker.
Through the providence of God, the plans of these men do not always succeed, and when they do the real victory is often for God and the right rather than for them, because no right-thinking man or woman can but oppose them and their business when they see such fruits of the traffic. ”

“ But, apart from all loyalty to right principle, on the part of the officiary of the Company, it is to me simply inconceivable that shrewd business men as these officials are known to be would be guilty of an act which from a purely business point of view would be a stupidly suicidal one. ”

“ Smith should be free to participate in the agitation to drive the criminal liquor traffic out of the country without being called upon to suffer the loss of income. The man who braved the liquor party, and nearly sealed his devotion to the temperance reform with his life blood, was not the man to abandon his convictions at the command of a railway manager. ”

“ He saw a long weapon of some sort waving fiercely above his head, and now and then received a blow from it, while his assailant was constantly dragging him nearer the door, and he struggling to remain in the room fearing the villain might have associates outside. Mr. Smith was all the time shouting "murder," as loudly as possible, but, his mouth being filled with blood, he was unable to make himself clearly heard, and his calls brought no assistance. ”

“ It is not sufficient to answer that this is not the position of the Company; that its employees, as a rule, are allowed to go to what church they think best, to take part in Christian Endeavor, or football, or whatever they may prefer as the occupation of their leisure. The fact remains that the Company has, through Mr. Brady, announced its right to check a man, (p. 100) if it chooses, in the exercise of his ordinary rights and duties as a citizen and as a Christian, and has, by sanctioning Mr. Smith's dismissal for temperance lecturing, formally approved Mr. Brady's attitude. ”