e brewers, distillers and liquor venders
of this county, to warrant their taking the present stand, they
are adopting the most extraordinary course of any corporation
seeking public patronage I have ever known. The following is, as
I understand it, the present position of the affair:

"1. There are lawbreakers in the county of Brome.

"2. An employee of the C. P. R. aids in detecting them, and
bringing them to justice.

"3. The lawbreakers hire a man to murder him, who fails to quite
accomplish his task.

"4. The employee, in his hours off duty, denounces the practices
of the lawbreakers, and the traffic that creates such lawbreakers
and murderers.

"5. A district superintendent of the C. P. R. informs him that
for so doing he is dismissed.

"6. The Dominion Alliance asks why this should be so? Is it not
interfering with the liberty of the British subject? Is not
slavery revived in another form for an employer to say to an
employee, 'You must not express an opinion on any subject of
social reform or otherwise on pain of being dismissed from my
employ.'

"7. The Assistant General Manager comes out in a two-column
letter explaining the attitude and act of the C. P. R. The
purport of that letter is that the man who antagonizes a
considerable portion of the community is therefore ... less
useful than he otherwise would be in any position (such, for
instance, as a station agent) in the employ of a railway company,
whose main object must be to increase the business, from every
possible source, and who must be careful not to antagonize any
portion of the community upon whose patronage, as a part of the
general public, the success of the Company depends. In all this
letter there is no distinction between the law-abiding and
lawbreaking sections of the community. The logical inference of
the whole letter is, the agent at Sutton antagonized the
lawbreakers of Brome, and those who abetted their doings, and,
therefore, the superintendent of the road was justified in
dismissing him. But by that act the superintendent 'antagonizes'
a very large section of the community, stretching from Halifax to
Vancouver, but he is sustained by the Company in his act.
'Consistency, thou art a jewel!' As a Canadian I have felt just
pride in th