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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |A Memorial to the Secretary of States|10-484}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |A Memorial to the Secretary of States|10-484}} | ||
... | {{Style P-No indent|magistrate, two Peers of Parliament,” and that “some of the most powerful psychics or mediums are children aged from seven to twelve.” [“''What am I?''” Vol. II., p. 305. Edition of 1874.] The experience of many of your Memorialists confirms this statement.}} | ||
11. The literature of the subject includes many hundreds of volumes, all devoted to special or general aspects of Spiritualism; and the collateral literature dealing with general facts of Psychology is infinitely more extensive. The contributors to this literature include the names of men of great scientific and literary eminence, as well as many of high social position. Without pretending to mention more than a few typical names, your Memorialists would draw your attention to the fact that among those who have investigated and satisfied themselves of the reality of some of the phenomena of modern Spiritualism are ranked the names of Archbishop Whately; the late Professor de Morgan, President of the Mathematical Society of London; the late Dr. Robert Chambers, F.R.S.E.; the late Dr. Wm. Gregory, F.R.S.E., Prof. Chemistry in University of Edinburgh; the late Lord Brougham; Dr. Lockhart Robertson, F.R.S., long one of the Editors of the ''Journal of Mental Science''; the late Dr. J. Elliotson, F.R.S., sometime President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London; the late W. Howitt; the late Dr. Ashburner; the late George Thompson; Mr. T. Adolphus Trollope; Mr. Epes Sargent, of Boston, U.S.A.; Governor Tallmadge; the late Hon. J. W. Edmonds, sometime Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New York; the late Hon. R. Dale Owen, sometime Minister of U.S.A. at the Court of Naples; the Hon. J. L. O’Sullivan, sometime Minister of Confederate S.A. at the Court of Portugal; the late Professor Mapes, the eminent chemist, U.S.A.; the late Dr. Robert Hare, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, U.S.A.; the late Lord Lytton; the Earl of Duraven; Mr. S. C. Hall, F.S.A.; Captain R. F. Burton, H.B.M. Consul at Trieste; Miss Martineau; Mr. H. G. Atkinson, F.G.S.; the late Mr. Serjeant Cox, President of the Psychological Society of Great Britain; the Baron and Baroness von Vay; the Baron von Dirckinck-Holmfeld; Dr. Robert Friese, of Breslau; the Baron du Potet; Mons. Camille Flammarion, the well-known astronomer; the Comte de Bullet; Count A. de Gasparin; M. Leon Favre, Consul-General of France; the late Baron L. de Guldenstubbe; the Hon Alexandre Aksakof, Russian Imperial Councillor; the late Prince Emile de Sayn Wittgenstein; His Imperial Highness Nicholas, Duke of Leuchtenberg; the late Abraham Lincoln, President U.S.A.; Mr. W. Lloyd Garrison; William Crookes, Editor of the ''Quarterly Journal of Science'', Fellow, Gold Medallist, and Member of the Council of the Royal Society; Cromwell Varley, F.R.S., C.E.; Lord Rayleigh, F.R.S., Professor of Experimental Physics in the University of Cambridge; Lord Lindsay, M.P., F.R.S., President of the Royal Astronomical Society; A. R. Wallace, F.R.G.S., the eminent naturalist, sometime President of the Biological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; W. F. Barrett, Professor of Physics in the Royal College of Science, Dublin; Professor Ch. Cassal, LL.D.; Professors Wagner and Butlerof, of the University of St. Petersburg; Dr. Maximilian Perty, Professor of Natural Science in the University of Berne; Dr. Franz Hoffmann, Professor of Philosophy, Wurtzburg; Professor Friedrich Zöllner, of Leipzig, the eminent physicist, author of ''Scientific Treatises, Transcendental Physics'', &c., whose recent researches in this subject have attained a world-wide fame; Gustave T. Fechner, Professor of Physics in the University of Leipzig, also the author of many volumes bearing on the general subject of Psychology; Professor Scheibner, the renowned teacher of mathematics in the same University; W. E. Weber, also Professor of Physics in the University of Göttingen, and known as one of the main workers in connection with the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy; J. H. von Fichte, Professor of Philosophy at Leipzig; not to mention many eminent members of learned societies in our own country, and a vast number of names eminent in literature, science, art, and in the ranks of social life, which we have no authority to mention. | |||
12. Having regard to the position, literary and scientific, as well as social, of the persons above-named, the list of whom might be indefinitely increased were it not that many decline to incur the obloquy which prejudice and injustice, fostered by the state of the law, combine to throw around the subject, your Memorialists submit that to perpetuate this method of treatment is to insult a large body of cultured and eminent men, whose deliberate opinions, formed after patient investigation, are worthy of attention and respect. They allege further that this subject of which the scientific or phenomenal side has alone been touched upon in this Memorial, is intimately associated with the religious faith of a large number of persons; and that to subject this faith to persecution and unjust repression is to act in a spirit with which this age has no sympathy, and to repeat a blunder which history shows to have been invariably productive of the opposite result to that sought to be attained. Whether, then, the religious or the scientific aspects of the subject be considered, your Memorialists plead for a wise and enlightened toleration as the only method of treatment that is in harmony with the spirit of the age, and which can really advance the cause of truth. And to this end, with some shame that it should be necessary, but with a regretful recognition of the need, they respectfully urge upon you a revision of the said Act, or a more careful restriction of its application to the purposes for which it was originally devised. | |||
13. Finally, your Memorialists respectfully call your attention to the Act of 9 Geo. II., c. 5, whereby a former Act of James I. against witchcraft is repealed, and the following provision is substituted:—“And for the more effectual preventing and punishing any pretences to such arts and powers as are before mentioned, whereby ignorant persons are frequently deluded and defrauded, it is further enacted that if any person shall pretend to exercise or use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration, or undertake to tell fortunes, or pretend by his or her skill or knowledge in any occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner any goods or chattels, supposed to have been stolen or lost, may be found, every person so offending, being thereof lawfully convicted, on indictment or information . . . shall for every such offence suffer imprisonment by the space of one whole year without bail.” | |||
Although the above-recited Act has not yet been put in force or attempted to be put in force against mediums, the application of it to their case has been threatened, and may hereafter be attempted. In the absence of any decision on this point, your Memorialists are unable to say whether the exercise of mediumship is condemned by law under the descriptions “witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration,” or any of them, but they submit that scientific enquiry is degraded by the very possibility of such construction; that it should be free from all danger of obstruction from the terms of an obsolete enactment; and they respectfully request that in any reconsideration of the law applicable to the subject of this Memorial, the above statute may not be overlooked. | |||
The Council of the Association from which this Memorial proceeds was elected by Ballot, and consists of a President, six Vice-Presidents, and thirty-six Ordinary Members. | |||
The National Association of Spiritualists is working in alliance with a number of similar Societies at home and abroad, each consisting of many members, and pursuing a like method of investigation. | |||
It also numbers in its ranks the names of sixty-six eminent Spiritualists and Psychologists from various countries, all known by their researches in the various branches of psychological science, especially that known as Spiritualism. | |||
Your Memorialists are fully aware of the impracticability of presenting anything like a full and complete statement of their case within the reasonable limits of such a document as the present Memorial. They recognise further the extreme difficulty of presenting a fair view of a subject so unfamiliar in its various aspects and details as that on which they address you. But they confidently submit that they have made out a ''primâ facie'' case to which the interests of truth and justice imperatively claim your attention. And for the purpose of affording further information on the general subject, or of elucidating any of its details, they respectfully request that you will be pleased to name a day on which it may be convenient to you to receive a deputation of gentlemen who are specially qualified by personal knowledge and experience to give such information as may be of important assistance to you. | |||
<center>''And your Memorialists will ever pray, &c., &c.''</center> | |||
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... | {{Style S-Small capitals|Singular Application.}}:‑-Mr. Mann (Messrs. Alsop, Mann and Co.), applied at Marlborough Street Police Court for a summons against a lady, practising as a “healing clairvoyante” and “spirit medium,” for having obtained from Mr. Stewart Cumberland the sum of 2s. 6d. on the 15th inst., for some pills, professing the same to be spiritually prescribed for the cure of Mr. Cumberland’s neuralgia.—Mr. Mann said that the pills had turned out, upon analysis, to be sugar only.—Mr. Mansfield suggested that it was spiritualistic sugar.—Mr. Mann said the spirits had breathed on them, and added that it appeared that the lady had a number of influential believers, and he was instructed that many cases of a similar nature could be proved.—After some discussion as to the legal false pretence, which Mr. Mann submitted was the representation of the pills as of a healing medicament, the same being in fact only sugar, Mr. Mansfield granted the summons.—''Daily Chronicle'', ''September'' 27''th''. | ||
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