108 THE STORY OF THE U.F.O. 



reasons for this change. The old name was a 

 cumbrous affair, and it was believed that with 

 Goldwin Smith as a regular contributor under the 

 pen name of "A Bystander," the paper would 

 make an appeal to urban as well as to rural 

 Ontario. This latter belief, however, proved to 

 be not well founded. From the first the readers 

 of The Weekly Sun, as had been the case with 

 The Canada Farmers' Sun, were found almost 

 exclusively among farmers. Despite the dis- 

 couraging circumstances attendant upon the 

 re-birth of the farmers' paper, circumstances 

 arising out of the lassitude and discouragement 

 following the Patrons' collapse and the general 

 economic conditions at the end of a long period 

 of depression, The Weekly Sun grew steadily in 

 circulation and influence until its list of sub- 

 scribers numbered between ten and twelve 

 thousand. 



Then arose two causes which resulted in a 

 severe set-back, the Boer War and the beginning 

 of an agitation which found its culmination in 

 Provincial Prohibition. Goldwin Smith was a 

 man of strong convictions and he never side- 

 stepped an issue. A man of absolutely clean 

 life, and temperate in all things, he conscientious- 

 ly believed that the use or non-use of intoxicating 

 liquor was a matter to be settled by the individ- 

 ual conscience rather than by legislation, and 



