Thus ended this assault case, so far as its hearing at Sweetsburg was concerned, and the prisoners and their friends departed from the court room well pleased with its termination.
CHAPTER X.
THE DECISIONS OF ANOTHER TRIBUNAL.
The Court of Public Opinion is an important tribunal before which all such affairs as this we have been considering must come for decision, and its judgments are not always identical with those of the judges and juries in the courts of law. Therefore, it must not be supposed that the temperance public were at all satisfied with the termination of the assault case related in our last chapter. On the contrary, they were quite disappointed and indignant, although their opponents seemed very well pleased with the turn affairs had taken.
Some of the criticisms from temperance papers and people are here given. The following comment by the Montreal Witness was quoted in The Templar of March 22d:
"The sentence of one month in jail for each of the tavern keepers, who pleaded guilty to having procured an American idler to commit an atrocious assault upon Mr. Smith, the President of the Brome County Alliance, is probably as severe as can be looked for in a county where a jury dare not find men guilty. That the purpose was to commit murder, the fatal weapon provided proves. The plea of guilty on the part of the prisoners is a plain condemnation of the jury in failing to bring in a verdict.
"The liquor men, for the sake of whose illicit trade the Canadian Pacific Railway Company dismissed Mr. Smith from its services, are self-convicted at least of the most dangerous and brutal ruffianism. Mr. Brady, who took the part of those customers of the Company against his own subordinate, Mr. Smith, remains the accredited authority of the Company in that section of the country. This is a fact which should be generally known."
Below is the view expressed by The Templar, itself, and also repeated by the Witness.
"The result of the trial of the conspirators to 'do up' W. W. Smith, President of the Brome County Branch of the Dominion Alliance, for his zeal in bringing to justice the men who would persist in maintaining an illicit liquor traffic contrary to the fully expressed judgment of the people, has been a confession of 'guilty' by the accused, and the imposition a sentence of one month in jail at hard labor.
"The confession and the facts brought out in evidence reveal the liquor traffic in a most unenviable light.