ad on the pages of fiction exciting and blood-curdling
tales of deep laid plots for murder and other crimes, but just when
our feelings are being aroused to the highest pitch, we pause and
comfort ourselves with the thought that after all this is only
imaginary.

Or perchance, we may read the truthful details of a more or less
successful attempt to end the life of a fellow being, but if we are
unacquainted with the persons concerned in the affair and the
circumstances which led to it, and especially if it happened some
distance from us, we feel but little interest in it.

Again we find in the records of the past that thousands have suffered
and many died in a really good cause,--the victims of depraved and
brutish persecutors who hated what was good. We cannot doubt the truth
of the statements nor the innocence of the sufferers, but we may be
tempted to complacently remark "the martyr age is past." But if we
look about us with unprejudiced eyes, we must see that the sufferers
for conscience sake are still not a few.

The details of the dark plot as given in these pages are all matters
of fact, and perhaps if all the particulars could be known, it might
seem blacker even than now. Moreover, it happened in an old and
progressive county of Eastern Canada, just across the border from New
England, and Mr. Smith had incurred the anger of his persecutors only
by trying to enforce law and order and working for the protection and
uplifting of his fellow-men.

In view of such facts, let the voters of our Dominion pause ere they
give their sanction to a system which throws around the makers and
venders of alcoholic liquors the protection of the strong arm of the
law.

That this volume, by showing the liquor party in its true light, and
thus warning our countrymen of their position and danger, may be the
means of arousing some who, though temperance people at heart, are
sleeping on guard, and of adding a few to the ranks of active workers
for the cause of right, is the earnest prayer of

THE AUTHOR.

INTRODUCTION.

The publication of this book has been with the approval of some of the
best thinkers on the temperance question, and we doubt not that its
_careful_ perusal by all who read it will prove a stimulus in
connection with the cause of temperance, and if they are timid or
hesitating will cause them to become decisive in the noble work for
humanity. It is a well-known f