John, N. B.
The plaintiffs were children of said Nicholson, and beneficiaries under the will. Being dissatisfied with defendants' management of the estate V, plaintiffs had endeavoured to get R.
If I chose to retaliate, as you richly deserve, I could put the Dominion Government in possession of information which would justify them, either now or at any time within fifty years, in seizing the books and property of the estate, and leaving you all simply paupers with the reputation of the family irretrievably ruined, and the public astonished with a revelation of over twenty years of the most successful fraud, not only on the Government but on themselves as customers.
The question has often been put to me : How has Mr. Nicholson accumulated such a large fortune when other liquor dealers could not ? I and four others in St. John could answer that question, and could tell how night after night the shutters of the store would be put up, the door carefully locked and barred, all lights extinguished except on the lower story, all chinks in the windows covered over, the nuts cautiously taken off the copper hasps of the customs bonded warehouse, the doors opened, cask after cask rolled out, one-fourth of the contents transferred to empty casks ready in the duty paid warehouse, the quantity abstracted replaced with alcohol water and colouring mixture, the adulterated casks marked with chalk on the chine, rolled back into the bonded warehouse and afterwards sold to the public, and the Government defrauded of the duty on the quantity abstracted. Every cask that came into the store, whether