The Story of a Dark Plot | Page 9

without fighting vigorously to retain it, and no important reform was ever inaugurated but it met with strong opposition from the first.
The more important a reform also, that is to say, the more it is opposed to the rule of the powers of darkness, the more bitter the persecution is likely to be which meets it at every step. Witness the fierce opposition to the spread of Christianity in the early centuries and the persecution which has almost always followed its introduction into a new, neglected region. The temperance reform has been no exception in this respect, and as a leading temperance worker has said: "The martyr-roll of temperance is just as sacred as that of any other reform that was ever inaugurated."
This same worker, Mr. J. C. Nichols, gives a sketch in this connection which may be of interest to the readers of this narrative. It is of a young man in New Orleans--a young man pure and earnest, such as the world everywhere has need of. He was a zealous temperance worker, and had met with considerable success in this work, which lay so near his heart. One dark night, alone and unarmed, he was crossing a bridge beyond which lay a clump of bushes. When he reached these bushes he was confronted by six men with weapons who lay in ambush waiting for him. They sprang out and shot him, and, not content with that, bruised and battered his features beyond recognition. And then his noble mother wrote to Miss Willard, President of the World's W. C. T. U., that she had yet two boys left, and she had rather they would die as he had, fighting for the right, than that either of them should turn aside to the right hand or the left.
These six men, attacking one defenceless temperance man, displayed the same spirit of cowardice as their northern brethren show when they hire a stranger to do the work for them. 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. North or south, the nature and effects of intemperance are ever the same.
CHAPTER III.
THE AUTUMN COURT.
The Autumn Court of the District of Bedford was opened at Sweetsburg, Que., on Thursday, August 30th, 1894, and at this session the Sutton Junction Assault Case was considered. The lawyers in charge of the case were H. T. Duffy, on behalf of the Alliance, and E. Racicot, on behalf of the accused hotel keepers. The court room was thronged each day with eager listeners, and much interest was evinced both by the temperance and anti-temperance people.
The following account of proceedings at court and other matters relating to the assault case is from The Templar, a temperance paper, published in Hamilton, Ont., and a large part of this description was also published in the Montreal Daily Witness:
"The excitement in Brome County, Quebec, over the arrest of several prominent liquor sellers on the charge of conspiring to murder Mr. W. W. Smith, President of Brome County Temperance Alliance, increases as the developments are becoming known to the public. According to the evidence, there remains no longer any question that Mr. Smith's devotion to Prohibition, and particularly his determined stand for the honest enforcement of the Scott Act, which is in force in that county, made him a shining mark for the vengeance of the men whose trade and profits were so seriously affected thereby. The confession of Walter Kelly, the assailant, that he was employed to 'do up' Mr. Smith because he was a man who gave the hotel keepers much trouble, and had to be thrashed, as well as the payment of money by Mr. Jenne, proves the animus of the assault, while the general evidence indicates a wide-spread conspiracy, embracing others than the accused, to cause the diabolical crime. The publicans of Brome, and, indeed, the liquor traffic as a whole, lie under the terrible suspicion of sympathy with this crime. It is not beyond the traffic. Its record is traced in blood as well as tears. The Templar is quite ready to believe that there are men in the business who would shrink with horror from the very thought of engaging in such a deed of blood, but the assault upon Mr. Smith,