[[p. 160]] Sir,--In my letter which you published last week, and which I wrote in order to defend an absent man [[p. 161]] from what I considered an unfair attack, I find that I made use of words which are held to involve an accusation of wilful untruth against Mr. Massey. This was not my meaning. I wished to imply that while, in that matter, Mr. Fletcher was quite free from blame, the accusation was made and supported in a way which I and many others thought both unfair and reprehensible. Inasmuch as my words go beyond this meaning, I willingly and unreservedly retract them and apologise to Mr. Massey for having hastily written them.

     I have not at hand the numbers of the Spiritualist containing the controversy, and must therefore defer an exact statement of what I consider so especially reprehensible till next week. But I may now clear the way by a few remarks on the expression which was the subject of the accusation and controversy. The words used were (as I am informed on good authority)--"If American mediums have ruined Spiritualism, I will do my best to uplift it, &c., &c.;" and this was said to be an attack on Slade, because he was the latest American medium who had been accused of imposture. But everyone knows (or ought to know) that almost all popular notions of Spiritualism in England and almost all the obloquy it has endured, have been derived from American mediums. Mrs. Hayden, Mr. Foster, Mr. Home, and the Davenport Brothers, have all been treated as impostors for the last twenty years, and theirs are the names most constantly referred to by Dr. Carpenter and others in their attacks on Spiritualism. More recently, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes were "exposed" by a body of London Spiritualists, and afterwards in America another alleged "exposure" of the same mediums led to the celebrated declaration of R. D. Owen, which did so much harm to the cause. Then we had Mrs. Fay, whose sensational performances were so violently attacked by Dr. Carpenter, and her "exposer," Mr. Bishop, supposed by some to have been medium and juggler combined. Surely here is an ample list of American mediums whose doings have injured the cause of Spiritualism in England, and it was to the last four or some of them that I and many other Spiritualists at once understood Mr. Fletcher to refer; yet he was accused of meaning to insult Slade, of whom he was known by his friends to think very highly! The facts I have stated above being so well known, Mr. Fletcher very properly refused to mention names, but he did deny that he referred to Slade, and that ought to have closed the controversy. Although myself a friend of Mr. Slade and one who gave evidence in his favour, I can yet fully endorse Mr. Fletcher’s statement--that Spiritualism in England owes much of its bad repute to American mediums--not, as I believe, on account of their own bad conduct, but due rather to errors of judgment, and to the prevailing ignorance of the laws and conditions of spiritual phenomena even among Spiritualists themselves.

Alfred R. Wallace.