"Mr. Sumner, who wrote the little book in a hot fit, soon regretted it (as any man would do whose conscience showed him in a calmer moment when his 'respectability' returned with his repentance, that he had grossly misrepresented), and just before it appeared offered to order its suppression if the army would pay the costs already incurred, and which he was unable to bear."
"The New Papacy" fills sixty closely printed duodecimo pages. It is carefully written, and for the most part in studiously moderate language; moreover, it contains many precise details and
figures, the ascertainment of which must have taken much time and trouble. Yet, forsooth, it was written in "a hot fit."
I sincerely hope, for the sake of his own credit, that Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn does not know as much about this melancholy business as I do. My hands are unfortunately tied, and I am not at liberty to use all the information in my possession. I must content myself with quoting the following passage from the preface to "The New Papacy":—
"It has not been without considerable thought and a good deal of urging that the following pages have been given to the public. But though we would have shrunk from a labour so distasteful, and have gladly avoided a notoriety anything but pleasant to the feelings, or conducive to our material welfare, we have felt that in the interests of the benevolent public, in the interests of religion, in the interests of a band of devoted men and women whose personal ends are being defeated, and the fruit of whose labour is being destroyed, and, above all, in the interests of that future which lies before the Salvation Army itself, if purged and purified in its executive and returned to its original position in the ranks of Canadian Christian effort, it is no more than our duty to throw such light as we are able upon its true inwardness, and with that object and for the
furtherance of those ends we offer our pages to the public view."
The preface is dated April 1889. According to the statement in the "Toronto Telegram" which Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn does not dare to dispute, his Canadian fellow-"Commissioner" bought and destroyed the whole edition of "The New Papacy" about the end of the third week in April. It is clear that the writer of the paragraph quoted from the preface was well out of a "hot fit," if he had ever been in one, while he had not entered on the stage of repentance within three weeks of that time. Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn's scandalous insinuations that Mr. Sumner was bribed by "a few sovereigns," and that he was "bought off," in the face of his own admission that Mr. Sumner "offered to order its suppression if the army would pay the costs already incurred, and which he was unable to bear" is a crucial example of that Jesuitry with which the officials of the army have been so frequently charged.
Mr. "Commissioner" Booth-Clibborn says that when "London headquarters heard of the affair, it disapproved of the action of the Commissioner." That circumstance indicates that headquarters is not wholly devoid of intelligence; but it has nothing to do with the value of Mr. Sumner's evidence, which is all I am concerned about. Very likely London headquarters will disapprove of its French