"The plot was hatched in a barroom, a liquor seller hired a Marlboro, Mass., bartender to do the 'job,' and he was the guest of hotel keepers while he was spying out the land preparatory to his murderous assault. Never was a more cool, calculating and infamous deed wrought in this country. The wretch, Chatelle, acted under a sudden impulse to gratify an abnormal passion, but these wretches planned weeks ahead to 'do up' Smith, yet such cowards were they, they dared not strike the blow, but hired the Marlboro tool to do it for them. 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?
"Not the least ignominious feature of the trial was the failure of the jury to convict upon the clearest evidence. Their disagreement was rebuked by Judge Lynch, and later by the prisoners themselves pleading guilty. The murderous assault and the terrorizing of the jury furnish all the evidence that is requisite to justify the demand for prohibition."
The Witness of March 16th contained the following, giving the opinions of certain local papers respecting the decisions of the court in this trial:
"The Huntingdon Gleaner, referring to the sentence of a month's imprisonment passed on the defendants in the Smith assault case, says: 'This is a most inadequate punishment. Had Kelly put more force into the first blow he struck with his piece of lead pipe, Smith would assuredly have been killed. The liquor men, who were the authors of the foul deed, should have been sent to the penitentiary.'
"Referring to the disgraceful conduct of the jurors in disagreeing, despite Kelly's confession, the Waterloo Advertiser says: 'The jury might, at least, have brought in the verdict of a Western jury that tried a man for assault with intent to kill. After being out two minutes the jury filed into court, and the foreman said: "May it please the court, we, the jury, find that the prisoner is not guilty of hitting with intent to kill, but simply to paralyze, and he done it." The trial has been an expensive one to the Crown, and its inglorious ending will hardly satisfy the public that the ends of justice have been served and the law vindicated.'"
The following appeared as an editorial in the Witness of March 27th:
"We have received many very strong expressions with regard to the failure of justice in the matter of the cold-blooded and cowardly attempt on the life of Mr. W. W. Smith, the President of the Brome County Alliance. A leading citizen of the district proposes a public demonstration to denounce the jury and judge for this failure. As for the judge, as we said at the time, we cannot see that he can be blamed much for the lightness of the sentence upon a verdict for only common assault. So far as can be gathered from the conduct of their representatives on the jury the people of the district have concluded to live in a condition of timid subjection to a band of assassins settled among them. And not only they, but the great national railway, which passes through their district, felt called upon, on behalf of the same lawless crew, to heap abuse and obloquy upon, and finally to dismiss one of its own officers for busying himself with the enforcement of law against them. We should be greatly cheered to think that this jury which betrayed the public safety committed to it by law, was exceptional, and that the district could yet be roused to vindicate law and order."
In all these articles it is assumed that the reason of the jurymen not agreeing on a verdict of guilty was their personal fear of the liquor men. There is another possible aspect of the case which is not touched upon by these papers, viz., that the jurors may have been friends of the liquor party, and their disagreement may have been intended not to secure their own safety, but to shield the hotel keepers from such punishment as must follow a decision of guilty on the part of the jury.
We quote here some of the communications mentioned above, which were sent to the editor of the Witness regarding the settlement of the assault case. The letter given below, signed "Justice," was written from Sweetsburg under date of March 12th, 1895: