317. Deceiving mediums are stigmatized as they deserve in the following letter in the Review of Au gust, 1 86 1 : — " Paris, July 21, 1861. " Sir : One may disagree on certain points, and agree on others. I have just read, page 213 of the last number of your journal, reflections on frauds in spiritualist (or spiritist) experiments, to which I am happy to give my entire assent. There all differences in matters of theory or doctrine disappear as by en chantment. .
" I am not, perhaps, as severe as you in regard to mediums who, in a worthy and suitable way, accept a remuneration as indemnity for the time they devote to experiments often long and fatiguing ; but I am quite as much so —and one cannot be too much —in re gard to those who, in such cases, supply, on occasion, by trickery and fraud, the absence or insufficiency of the result's promised and expected. (See No. 311.)
" To mingle the false with the true, when phenom ena obtained through the intervention of spirits is in question, is wholly infamous, and there must be an utter obliteration of all moral sense with the medium who can do so without scruple. As you have so well observed, it is casting discredit upon the cause in the minds of the undecided, to find it mixed withfraud. I would add that it is compromising in the most deplora ble manner the honorable men who give to mediums the disinterested support of their knowledge and their light, who are guarantees of their sincerity, and in one way their patrons ; it is committing a veritable crime against them.
" Every medium convicted of fraudulent maneuvers, taken, to use a common expression, with his hand in the bag, deserves to be ostracized by all spiritualists and spiritists, for whom it should be a rigorous duty to unmask them, and send them adrift. " If you choose, sir, to insert these few lines in your Journal, they are at your service. " I am, &c, "Matthew ."
