Prohibition must again be mentioned as the first subject of Canadian interest during the past month as an extraordinary murder has taken place owing to the attempts being made to make people moral—if that can be said to be the aim—by Act of Parliament. In recent letters it has been pointed out that smuggling of liquor has been going on at a most prodigious rate into the United States, let alone from one province to another, and that this was particularly so in the districts bordering Detroit. The Rev. J. L. Spracklin, a Methodist Minister, has been making himself very prominent la the cause of prohibition in these parts, and was instrumental in, securing several convictions for infringements of the Temperance Act.
The smuggling and the lawlessness increased, so the Attorney-General of Ontario took the curious step of appointing him an officer to enforce the law. In the course of this eminently suitable work for a clergyman he considered it his duty to raid a house owned by a man called Trumble whom he believed was offending against the law. On attempting to enter with his men he was met by Trumble, and he declares that the latter produced a revolver, threatened to shoot him, and so as to. prevent this sad' catastrophe he—shot Trumble dead instead. There is 9 great conflict of evidence, as Mrs. Trumble declares that her dead husband was attending her as she was ill, and when he heard Spracklin's raid and went downstairs to see what it meant, he had nothing but a harmless hot water-bottle in his hand. Her evidence is corroborated by witnesses, one no revolver has so far been produced as belonging to Spracklin.
The case has naturally stirred the country, and more particularly so as the Attorney-General, who is 2 most pronounced Prohibitionist, seemed at first disposed not to bring Spracklin to trial. The public outcry against this was 50 great that Spracklin is out $90,000 bail. and will be tried very shortly. What effect this murder will have upon the cause of Prohibition remains to be seen, but there would appear to be the like-Yihood of its leading to a large increase in the already large opinion that Prohibition, meaning an extreme measure, will only lead to extremes of deplorable kinds, and that State regulation of the liquor trade, by which people can obtain a reasonable amount 0 Tiquor, is the proper method of securing temperance.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.