“Now, one of two things: either you are in a position to free yourself from this charge of deception and untruthful statement put forward for the purpose of deceiving the public, or you are not. If you are in a position to do so, come forward immediately, in the interests of the Congo Reform Society, and of yourself as its secretary. If you are not in a position to disprove this statement and to substantiate your words, you stand convicted of flagrant deception and falsehood on a most important public matter, and the people of this country will know how to judge a person, or a society, which descends to such methods for the purpose of bolstering up selfish and disgraceful designs. “At the very moment that you were writing this denial in the columns of the _Daily News_, you were in treaty with a former Congo official, and bribing him for the purpose of giving evidence against the Congo State, and as a witness to the document that passed between you, you called in Mr. John Holt, merchant, 81, Dale Street, Liverpool, who was associated with you in this attempt to purchase testimony, and who actually paid, at the Exchange Hotel, Liverpool, on the 21st November last, a sum of £40 to Mr. Benedetti, the Congo ex-official referred to, and yet you have the impudence and the hardihood to assert that the Liverpool shippers and Liverpool merchants are not associated with the Congo Reform Society! “Nor are these all the inventions, perversions, and misrepresentations which can be proved against you in connection with this movement. “The book that you have just written and published is packed with such lies and suppressions of truth. You print a travesty of the case of the man Stokes, who was executed in the Congo, and you say that the charge against him was ‘of trading with natives,’ whereas, as a matter of fact, he was proved to have supplied the cruel and barbarous Arab slave raiders of the Congo, who have been put down by the Congo Government, with guns and ammunition for the purpose of carrying on their nefarious work. “These slave raiders evidently receive your warm sympathy, and the man Stokes, who helped them to carry on their trade, is held up by you as a martyr! Yet you dare to appear before the people of this country as a friend of the natives of the Congo, and your present campaign is ostensibly carried on for the amelioration of their condition! “Again, you have ventured to make a most infamous charge against Catholic missionaries in the Congo. In a letter to the _Times_ you said that ‘they dared not state in public what they have said in private.’ In other words, you accuse them of double dealing of the basest character, like Mr. Fox Bourne, who says, ‘they offer religion to the natives only as a bribe, or to terrorise them into further enslavement.’