From Wealth to Poverty Part 14

They all joined in a laugh at Flannigan's Hibernianism.

"That is a genuine Irish bull, Captain," said Sealy. "But as we are here we may as well have an informal talk as to the best course to pursue in the present contingency. In my opinion, it is our best policy not to make a very strong fight this time. I would be for almost letting them have a walk over. And then when they think the victory is theirs, I would commence the real battle.

After it becomes law I would sell whiskey just the same as ever, and entice all the b.u.mmers in the country to drink and have a regular drunken carnival. You will not have to pay any license, so you will be able to stand being fined a time or two. But I can tell you what it is, boys, they will have a hard time to convict.

From my experience--and it has been considerable--I have learned it is a pretty difficult thing to worm the truth out of unwilling witnesses. Then there is another thing in your favor, the majority of the magistrates have no sympathy with this movement. I would therefore badger and bother them all I could, and have free trade in whiskey; and after the people are thoroughly disgusted I would go in for repeal. I saw Jobson, the President of the Licensed Liquor Sellers' a.s.sociation, the other day, and when I suggested this course to him he said he thought it would be the wisest one to pursue. Have you heard from him, Rivers?"

"Yes, I received a letter yesterday," answered Rivers. "And I have notified the members of the a.s.sociation in the county to meet here on Sat.u.r.day, when I shall use my influence to get them to play a waiting game, and then, when the time comes, we will force the fighting."

"I think that will be the wisest policy," said the sheriff.

"If the Act is carried, there will be whiskey enough drunk here to satisfy Bacchus himself. We won't have to fight our battles without a.s.sistance, as we have had promised to us all the money that is really necessary from the outside. The Licensed Liquor Sellers' a.s.sociation will supply all the needful we want. And if we don't flood this county with whiskey, then you may call Charley Rivers a liar. They may have a chance to chuckle for a while, but we'll be more than even with them yet."

"Your craft is in danger," sneered Dalton, who, though he was such a slave to liquor, sympathised with the temperance party and constantly manifested his sympathy with them. "There is no doubt but you will fight for your interest, no matter who suffers."

"Now, Charley, don't be raising another row," said Ginsling. "You are as p.r.i.c.kly as a hedgehog."

"What I say is the truth," he answered. "When the tavern-keepers fight against the Dunkin Act they are fighting in company with their father, the devil, and his angels, their brethren, against the right. My sympathy is with the temperance party, for I know that every one who really cares for me is among them, and my only hope in this world and the world to come is in their success. If there was no liquor to be got I might be a man yet."

"Well, if you sympathise with them you had better a.s.sociate with them. We would manage to exist without you."

Rivers spoke very angrily, for he was irritated almost beyond endurance by the words and manner of Dr. Dalton.

"It is my intention to join them; so you had better not concoct any more schemes in my presence; but I promise what I have heard to-night shall never be repeated outside. Yes, I will join them; for if I continue as I am the end is not far off, and G.o.d only knows what that end will be."

"Come, Judge, let us go. I perceive you have about as large a cargo as you can conveniently carry. You will not be fit for court to-morrow, if you don't take time to sober off."

The judge had not been in the room during the time they were doing the greater part of their talking, as he had been called out just after he had replied to the sheriff; for though he sympathised with them they would not have talked quite so freely in his presence. In answer to Dalton he said:

"You will oblige me if you take care of yourself, Doctor, and leave me to mind my own affairs. I--hic--hic--have an idea it is just about as much as you can attend to, and I think I know what I am doing."

The worthy judge then turned to the company and said: "Good night, gentlemen. Don't all get drunk, or some of you may be more formally introduced to me. Come, Doctor, if I leave you here there is sure to be a row."

He then took the arm of Dalton, and bowed himself out, and as the last bow he made was rather an elaborate effort, he lost his equilibrium; and, if Dalton had not held him up, he might have demonstrated that a judge could be lowly as well as learned.

When they were out of hearing, Rivers said: "I am glad that fellow, Dalton, has gone. If the judge had not been with him I would have kicked him out long ago. He has a sharp, impudent tongue, when he has a mind to be ugly."

"Yes," said Sealy, "I am glad he has gone and taken the judge with him; for, even though he was more than half-seas-over, he did not wish to compromise himself by listening to our conversation upon that subject. I think he was glad that Peters called him out."

"He is on our side, though," said Rivers, "and will use every technicality that the law furnishes to baulk the fanatics and make their efforts fruitless."

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CONSPIRATORS FORMULATING THEIR SCHEME.

After the judge and Dr. Dalton had left, the worthies who remained sat long in council concocting their Satanic schemes for the final defeat of the Dunkinites. Each one who was present promised to exert all his influence to make as many drunk as possible, after the law was adopted in the county.

"You, Bottlesby, will be able to give a good account of Dalton, and you, Ginsling, can take care of Ashton," said Rivers. "I know that old Gurney and his wife will be doing their level best with them, but if you only work your cards for what they are worth they will not succeed worth a cent, for if whiskey is put in their way they are bound to drink."

"But what about the fine, Rivers?" said Capt. Flannigan. "If we sell liquor we will be fined, and if we have to pay a couple of hundred dollars in this way, or kape company with the rats for five or six months in jail, I guess we'll soon tire of that game. And they say that ould nager of a service is a regular sleuth-hound on the hunt. By St. Patrick! if he comes nosing round my place I will bate him until his skin is blacker than it is at present, and to do that I'll have to nearly murder him entirely."

"Don't you do anything of the kind; for if you did you would be putting your foot in it," said Rivers. "The Dunkinites would like us to resort to that kind of thing that they might get up a howl about ruffianism, brutality, etc. They well know this would enlist the sympathy of the public to their side of the question; now this would just defeat the object I have in view. What I intend to do is to sell liquor as usual, and when I can't sell it I will give it away, and make as many drunk as possible. If some of those to whom I sell give me away, and I am hauled up, I will then show what I can do on the fight."

"You'll beat them every time," said Bottlesby, "for almost every sensible magistrate in the county will sympathise with you."

"Yes, I am counting on that, and those who are not on our side I intend to employ a good sharp lawyer to badger and bother as much as possible, and I guess you are aware that a great many of our Justices of the Peace are as innocent of any knowledge of law as a ten-year-old boy. I have no doubt but most of them can be so frightened as to be afraid to convict. And you know most of the witnesses will be our friends, and, as Seely has just remarked, it will be pretty hard to worm the truth out of unwilling witnesses."

"But supposing they do convict, what will you do then?" asked Capt. Flannigan.

I will appeal, and if it is decided against me in the lower court then I will appeal to a higher, and during the time it remains _sub judice_ my friends and I will be flooding the county with liquor."

"But who will pay the piper?" asked Ginsling.

"The Licensed Liquor Sellers' a.s.sociation," answered Rivers. "The a.s.sociation is bound to beat if it costs them a hundred thousand dollars. The hotel-keepers of this county will only have to pay their fee into the society, and it won't cost them a cent more; so you see we can afford to fight and be cheerful. And after we have bothered them and kept them from carrying out the law for six or seven months, having, in the meantime, deluged the county with whiskey, we will then start the cry that the Act is a failure; and any one who is at all acquainted with human nature knows that it will not be long before we will have thousands to join in the cry."

"Of course they will," said Bottlesby, "the great majority of those who vote for it will do so because it is fashionable. They don't care a cent who gets drunk so long as they don't lose anything. It happens that just now it is thought rather respectable to be on the side of temperance, and so they are voting for it; but in their hearts half of them hope it will fail, and they will not turn their fingers to make it a success. And if the plan which has been suggested by my friend, Rivers, is carried out, that is, to badger and bother them in every way we can, and at the same time to make this county, if possible, a perfect pandemonium of drunkenness and revelry, these parties will then eagerly join in the cry that the Act is a huge failure, and when we try to have the thing repealed they will give us their active support, because they will be able to a.s.sume the same role upon our side they did on the other, that is, that they are philanthropic citizens working on the side of morality and order. You mark my words, in a year from the present we will carry the repeal with an overwhelming majority."

The party broke up in the small hours of the morning, and the only one who was then sober was the landlord. In fact it was well understood, even among his cronies, that he was too mean to drink to any excess except he drank on the treats of his numerous customers; and then he was careful not to be so much under its influence as to neglect his business. He was one of those men of whom, alas! the world has too many, who live to satisfy their own selfish interest no matter who may be made to suffer.

CHAPTER XXIV.

ALDERMAN TOPER'S FLATTERING OPINION OF THE "DODGER."

The next week the "Licensed Liquor Sellers' a.s.sociation" of the county held the meeting of which Rivers had spoken, and there were also representatives present from Toronto and other places. They all agreed that the plan outlined by Rivers would be the best to adopt; that was, if the reader recollects, to play a waiting game, and at the same time to treat the law with supreme contempt.

"I tell you what it is," said Alderman Toper, who was one of the representatives from the city--having been elected an alderman by the whiskey interest, for He was proprietor of the "Toper House,"

one of the largest second-cla.s.s hotels in the city--"I will spend a thousand dollars of my own money in order in the end to beat them."

"Don't you think, Toper," said Rivers, "it would pay us to employ Gustavus Adolphus Dodger. I hear he is one of the best stump-speakers in the country, and that he can do as he likes with an average crowd What do you think? You know him better than I do."

"Yes," said Toper, in an undertone, "I know his face better than I do his dimes, for I have had the former at my bar every day for the last six months, though nary one of the latter have I seen.

But 'he is just the man for Galway,' for all that. He is the aptest, smoothest, most oily rascal I have ever met, and there is not a man in Canada that can hold a candle to him as a speaker in his own line. Why, I remember at a certain meeting he addressed a crowd who had been shouting themselves hoa.r.s.e against the man in whose behalf he was about to speak, but he pleaded so eloquently and plausibly for his friend--and he was the man's friend, because he had received a consideration--that, before he was through, they shouted as loudly for the one whose cause he was advocating as they had a few moments before for his opponent."

"I suppose," said William Soker, one of the delegates from the county, "there is no fear of the other side getting the start of us and buying him up, for, from what you say, I should judge he was in the market and ready to sell himself to the highest bidder."

"There is no danger of that," said Toper, "for he has committed himself, soul and body, to the liquor interest, both upon the stump and through the press; and, though a man may not be troubled with that inconvenient article called principle, yet he has, to secure success, to be somewhat consistent."

"Oh, bosh about consistency," remarked Bottlesby; "I would not trust the rascal if he could make more than he could with us."

"Neither would I, if he had any chance to sell us, not a bit quicker than I would a fox in a goose-pen or a monkey on a peanut-stand, but there is no fear of the Dodger (that's what we call him) in this case, because he has so far committed himself to our side that the public would not believe him if he turned. But if he were ever so willing, the teetotal party 'wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole.'"

That night, after they were through with the business part of their programme, a supper was held by them at the Bayton House.