Chapter 4

PROS AND CONS OF PUBLIC OPINION.

As may be supposed this assault case became the subject of a great deal of discussion and controversy, not only in the vicinity of its occurrence, but also in places far distant, and among people who had no personal knowledge of any of the parties especially concerned in it. If the assault upon Mr. Smith had been committed for almost any other reason than the one which really led to it, it would probably have caused less intense feeling than it did. But an assault of such a serious nature, made on account of a man's temperance principles and practices, appealed to the public sense of right, and seemed the signal for a war of pens and tongues between the opposing parties of temperance and inebriety. Very few of the latter party proved brave enough to have their opinions submitted to the press (or else the press would not accept them), but doubtless those opinions were freely expressed in private.

We purpose devoting this chapter to a few of the views of societies and individuals respecting this affair, as they were published in the columns of certain newspapers. The following from _The Templar_ shows the feeling of the Alliance in a border county to that in which the deed was committed, as expressed just before the opening of court:

"The Missisquoi County Alliance, at a meeting held August 28th, passed the following resolution, which was unanimously adopted amid applause: '_Resolved_, That this County Alliance now assembled desires to record its deepest sympathy with Mr. W. W. Smith, President of the Brome County Alliance, in the recent outrage perpetrated upon him by the emissaries of the liquor traffic. We rejoice to know that there is a prospect of the speedy bringing to justice of the perpetrators of that assault. We also desire to record our high appreciation of the valued services to the cause of prohibition in this section by Mr. Smith, and trust that he may long be spared to continue his heroic efforts to free our country from the ravages of strong drink.'"

The following resolution was adopted by the executive of the Quebec provincial branch of the Dominion Alliance, at a meeting held in the parlors of the Y. M. C. A., in Montreal:

"That this Alliance records its profound sympathy with Mr. W. W. Smith, President of the Brome County Alliance, in the recent murderous assault made upon him, resulting from his earnest and successful efforts in the cause of law and order in the County of Brome, and this Alliance trusts that full justice will be meted out to the perpetrators of this atrocious crime."

The letter given below appeared in _The Knowlton News_ of Oct. 12th, 1894, under the heading "A Few Words on the Other Side:"

"To the Editor of _The News_:

"SIR,--In the discussion of a case which has and is now agitating this good County of Brome, that spirit of British fair play which has attained to the dignity of a proverb has been lost sight of to a marked degree. I refer to the alleged assault on Mr. W. W. Smith, at Sutton Junction, in July last. The Dominion Temperance Alliance and its friends are doing their best, by means of the press and otherwise, to poison the public mind in advance of the trial against the party who is charged with procuring the assault on Mr. Smith, and also against divers other persons in the county who are said to be his accessories, charging them with the commission of a grave crime without a scintilla of reputable evidence on which to base such a charge. This, I say, is not fair play, and those guilty of the unfairness need not find fault if lovers of justice refuse to follow them in their raid on men and characters, or by silence lend strength to the unwarranted assumption that each and every one of those so flippantly accused are guilty from the word 'go,' and must be pilloried in public and private, and subjected to the shame and embarrassment arising from these attacks on their character, as law-abiding citizens and legal subjects of Her Majesty.

"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.

"I offer nothing in defence of lawbreakers, nor would I, if I could, do aught to mitigate in the least degree the punishment that may be meted out to the person who wantonly assaults a peaceable citizen, but candor and strict impartiality force me to refuse to accept as truth all the rubbish of tergiversation with which this agitated Smith case has been surrounded by the intemperate zeal of professed temperance men. 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. But we are scripturally enjoined to be 'temperate in all things.' This applies as well to words as to the use of stimulants, and the grossly unfair attacks on men's characters by certain of the Alliance emphasize the necessity for a strong curb on that unruly member, the tongue, which has brought many a good man and worthy cause into grave disrepute, and made them enemies where otherwise they might have had friends.

"This whole Smith business has a 'cheap John' flavor, which makes careful men view it askance. Who witnessed the assault on Smith? Nobody. He tells of being struck three times on the head with a piece of lead pipe, weighing some four pounds, and has in evidence the terrible weapon. Did his person bear evidence of the murderous assault? No. All who saw him in the early morning following the alleged assault were surprised that he bore no marks of the terrible struggle for life through which he claimed to have passed. Why, one blow from such a weapon as he exhibits would have crushed his head as if it were an egg shell, yet he claims to have sustained three blows, and is alive to tell of it! Shades of Ananias and of Munchausen!

"But it were useless to pursue the subject further.

"It is to that spirit of fair play so characteristically British, and to which we are proud heirs, that I would appeal. Everything is being said and done to prejudice the public against those who are accused of instigating Kelly to the assault on Smith; but, singular as it may seem, Kelly is patted on the back and called a good fellow. Why? Admitting the truth of Kelly's story, is he less guilty because he had confederates? A strange feature of the case is that Kelly willingly came back to Canada, when extradition would have been about impossible.

"He was taken to Montreal instead of to Sweetsburg, and was there royally entertained instead of being put in close jail. While in Montreal he was interviewed,--and by whom?--the Crown prosecutor? No; but by Smith and his counsel, Mr. Duffy. Meantime, several so-called 'detectives' were scouring the country for evidence. Of what? They had Smith's assailant, and he had told his story. Those whom he charged as being instigators of his crime were attending to their business, and might have been apprehended within twenty-four hours after Kelly's arrest in the States. Then what were the detectives seeking?--what were they after? That $1000 reward was in sight, and this may have been the inducing cause of this prowling.

"It would seem to 'A man up a tree' that there are certain revenges to be completed--sundry old grudges to be satisfied, and the Crown is asked to assist in this questionable work. Those familiar with the matter say that in our broad Dominion there are no better conducted hotels than those to be found in the Eastern townships. They are well kept, and the travelling public is most hospitably entertained, well fed and comfortably lodged. A well-conducted hotel adds to the strength and business character of a village, and a faithful landlord is expected to furnish guests certain necessities, one of which may be liquor.

"And because he does this should he be reviled, and persecuted, and driven out of business? That liquor is a great evil, no one can honestly deny, and being such, and being beyond the power of man to destroy, let us do the next best thing--curb and control the evil in the best manner possible.

"A dozen wrongs will never make a single right, and the wrongs that are being committed in this Smith case have appealed to one who believes in

"_Brome, Oct. 8th, '94._ FAIR PLAY."

The following comments appeared in an editorial in the same paper:

"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. We commend his letter to the attention of our readers without in any sense committing ourselves to the writer's conclusions. Everybody must feel sorry for the misfortunes of Mr. Smith, and if, as it is alleged by some, he has allowed his zeal to get the better of his discretion, he is not the first man who has been carried away by a superabundance of enthusiasm, or who has suffered therefor. Mr. Smith's friends will try to make a martyr of him. We doubt that they will succeed."

If, as the Editor of _The News_ seems to consider, "the sentiments of those who think there is something to be said on the other side" are expressed in the above letter in "moderate language," how must those views sound when expressed in the most forcible terms of angry barroom parlance? Let us thank God that we are not compelled to hear these opinions when thus declared, nor even to see them made known through the press.

It is said in the above note that Mr. Smith's _friends_ would try to make a martyr of him, but it was doubtful if they would succeed. We think the Editor of _The News_ is mistaken in this, it was Mr. Smith's _enemies_ who appeared desirous of making a martyr of him, and they very nearly succeeded; but, through the providence of God, he is still in the ranks of temperance workers. We are told that "one with God, is a majority," and more than one in Brome County are true to the right, therefore, the liquor party with all their efforts are still in the minority there. In the next issue of _The News_, dated Oct. 19th, appeared the following replies to the above epistle from "the other side:"

"To the Editor of _The Knowlton News_:

"SIR,--In regard to the communication in your issue of October 12th, over the signature of Fair Play, your correspondent says:

"'This whole Smith business has a "cheap John" flavor, which makes careful men view it askance. Who witnessed the assault on Smith? Nobody. Did his person bear evidence of murderous assault? No. All who saw him in the early morning following the alleged assault were surprised that he bore no marks of the terrible struggle for life through which he claims to have passed. Shades of Ananias and Munchausen!'

"Mr. Editor, here we have the substance calling upon the shadows. As one who visited Mr. Smith on the morning following the assault, I assert that Fair Play makes a direct departure from the truth. I challenge Fair Play to give the name of a single reputable individual who now will corroborate his assertion. Such a statement is in direct contradiction to the sworn testimony of our respected fellow-citizen, R. T. Macdonald, M. D. Mr. Smith was visited on the following morning by scores of people, and they saw upon his person the evidence of a violent and brutal assault. Many of the visitors expressed their determination to see fair play, and their willingness to subscribe, which they subsequently did, to a fund to bring the guilty party or parties to justice. Fair Play need not worry about the slandered characters of the hotel keepers of this county. Their characters are in their own keeping, just as the characters of merchants, mechanics and ministers are in theirs. If the parties who are accused of complicity in this affair are innocent, they will have the opportunity of proving themselves so.

"And why should not your correspondent exercise that spirit of fair play, the lack of which he so much deplores in others, and not make the useless attempt to impeach Mr. Smith's veracity in the case of this assault. Such an attempt is both useless and senseless, for within an hour or two of the assault he was under the professional care of one of the most eminent and reputable physicians of the Province, who surely would at once have exposed any imposture.

"Even Fair Play would be willing to see an assaulter punished, but seems to have made a discovery which, singular to say, in nearly three months of intervening time no one has yet thought of, namely, that no assault was committed.

"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; farther, some folks are already conjecturing who the author was, and it is not fair to let any one be under the imputation of a thing he did not do, and surely no man need be afraid or ashamed to have his own views appear over his own name. He asks, Who saw the assault? and answers, Nobody. Who saw Hooper try to drown his wife? Nobody. And yet one of these so-called detectives was instrumental in landing him in prison, and people seem to think that he did get fair play.

"Fair Play says careful men view this askance. In this town, where naturally the keenest interest is taken in this affair, nearly or quite all of the representative men have condemned the assault in the most decisive manner.

"Now, Mr. Editor, let me say that among the great mass of the people of this vicinity, there is no desire to make out that Mr. Smith is either a hero or a martyr. It is a question of law and order on the one hand, and crime and violence on the other. The assault is admitted, and a conspiracy is alleged. No doubt there are landlords in this country who would not implicate themselves in any illegal proceedings against Mr. Smith nor sympathize with the same. Such men are suffering nothing, but it is doubtful if there is a person of ordinary capacity in this vicinity who does not believe that the assault was the outcome of a conspiracy, and men are not slow in expressing the wish that if we have such people living among us that they may be exposed in their true character and punished, whether they profess to be saints or sinners, and the people of this town would extend the same sympathy and offer the same assistance to the accused parties, if they had been the victims of an assault and suspicion pointed to Smith and the Alliance as its instigators.

"MERIT LONGEWAY. "_Sutton, October 15th, 1894._"

"To the Editor of _The News_:

"SIR,--Permit me to reply to some of the statements of 'Fair Play' in your paper of October 12th. 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. There need be no 'unwarranted assumption,' or charges without evidence, for members of the liquor party before that assault at Sutton Junction, and more especially since that time, have themselves acted in a way that has estranged some who have been their warm supporters, as they have procured the discharge of Mr. Smith from the employ of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, whom he had served faithfully for fifteen years, and have also threatened the lives of other peaceable citizens, because they chanced to frown upon violence and lawbreaking.

"Furthermore, Fair Play declares that the Temperance Alliance and its friends, of which he plainly is not one, are charging divers persons in this county with the commission of a grave crime of which they have no reputable evidence. Thus does this very brave apostle of 'the other side' fearlessly assert, with no proof for his statement, that all the various persons who have given evidence in this case in Mr. Smith's favor are disreputable, and their testimony of no value. Truly this is a bold statement, and it would seem that sometimes pens as well as tongues need 'curbing.' Although Fair Play declares that he 'offers nothing in the defence of lawbreakers,' yet his entire epistle is plainly in defence of just that class of people, for it is written in behalf of the hotel keepers who have repeatedly broken the law, and were convicted of liquor selling in court, not long since.

"Again, this 'believer in fair play,' in speaking of Mr. Smith, says:

"'Did his person bear evidence of murderous assault? No, etc.' Either the writer of these words has very little regard for truth, or else he knows very little of the subject he is talking about. What is he going to do with the evidence of the skillful physician who attended Mr. Smith, and who upon his first visit dared not promise that he would ever recover? What is the opinion of those people who were awakened at dead of night by cries of murder, and who found Mr. Smith with the marks of the combat freshly upon him? Why is it that he has not yet fully recovered from the effects of this assault? And what reason has Fair Play for doubting the testimony of Mr. Smith himself, even if there were no other proof? He says, 'One blow from such a weapon as he exhibits would have crushed his head, as if it were an egg shell.' Perhaps he has forgotten that circumstances alter cases, and the position of the victim, the courage of the assailant, and the direction of the blow might alter this case very much. It is little wonder that at this point he invokes the aid of the shades of Ananias and of Munchausen! He next states that while the public are being prejudiced against the liquor sellers of this county, 'Kelly is patted on the back, and called a good fellow.' Would Fair Play wish to be patted in the same way, being retained in a prison cell, knowing not what punishment may await him?

"We would repeat the question asked, 'What were the detectives seeking?' But we do not conclude, like Fair Play, that it was the $1000 reward they were working for, as no such reward was ever offered. The objects for which these detectives were really seeking were those men whom Kelly had accused, who, according to Fair Play, 'were attending to their business,' and perhaps they were, but if so, they must have had much business abroad. He next enlarges upon the merits of Eastern township hotels, and among other things says 'A faithful landlord is expected to furnish guests certain necessities, one of which may be liquor. And because he does this, should he be reviled, and prosecuted, and driven out of his business?' How does this compare with his former statement that he 'offers nothing in defence of lawbreakers,' and that 'all good men will applaud the vindication of the majesty of the law?'

"TRUTH."

In the following number of _The News_ appeared this note:

"We are in receipt of another letter from 'Fair Play,' but as personalities are indulged in, and as we are averse to entering upon a prolonged and bitter controversy, we are constrained to decline the publication of this communication."

In this we seem to see a hint of that spirit of harshness and unfairness which so often characterizes the actions of the liquor party, and which sometimes leads to just such deeds as this brutal assault, which "Fair Play" would persuade the public had never occurred.