The Times of Saturday, the 24th inst., contains a corre-
spondence between Canon Hensley Henson and the solicitors for the three ex-directors of the Peruvian Amazon Company, whose responsibility for the Putumayo atrocities had been asserted by Canon Hensley Henson in a sermon preached in Westminster Abbey on August 4th. The solicitors describe his statements as "absolute untruths" and "outrageous slanders " ; they accuse him of attempting to screen him- self behind the sanctity of the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, and having expressly disclaimed the intention of threatening him, "either from a legal or from any other point of view," they describe his conduct as "unworthy of a clergyman of the Church of England, unworthy of a gentleman, unworthy of a man." As the responsi- bility of the British directors is to be the subject of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, we cannot enter into the details of the controversy, but until the directors have exculpated themselves before that body their position is not likely to be improved by such violent letters as those written by their solicitors—letters which afford no answer to Canon Henson's contention that the plea of ignorance is not permis- sible in the case of men whose business it is to know.
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