Apart from the more or less unintelligent prejudices of the public generally, the scientific investigation of the phenomena of mediumship is hampered by the professional antagonisms of the Church and the Law. The menace of legal proceedings, while a terror to the fraudulent, is also a deterrent to the supply of genuine phenomena. Mediums are usually persons of a very sensitive and nervous temperament, and the fact that at any moment a Mrs Leonard is liable to the same legal procedure and the same conviction as the most insignificant fortune-teller is not conducive to the regular supply of those supernormal facts which form the subject-matter of scientific psychical research. From time to time, and apparently by concerted action, legal proceedings are set on foot by the authorities against public mediums. The requisite evidence is furnished by detectives or journalists who have secured sittings with the defendants, and the prosecution takes place under an Act of George IV, directed against “vagabonds” and “fortune-tellers”. Our magistrates usually maintain on these occasions that the essential part of the legal offence is the medium’s claim to “foretell the future”, and this is apparently accentuated and aggravated by the “intention to deceive” or the acceptance of money or reward. During an epidemic of legal medium-baiting in 1917, men and women were sentenced to heavy fines, up to £50, or imprisonment, because of their claims to foretell the future. Yet a little reflection might have caused our magistrates to remember that all the official representatives of organized religion are regularly engaged in foretelling the future and are paid――and quite rightly――for their services in this respect. The so-called “sport” of the race-course is――as many of us know to our cost――built upon an elaborate and extensive system of prophecy for payment――whether the forecasts are made in the columns of the most respectable newspapers or in the circulars of professional tipsters. Nor, indeed, can one wholly dissociate those manifold pledges which disfigure our political elections from the same suspicion; for these prophetic anticipations are made in order to win votes and so secure the social and pecuniary rewards which result from electoral success. Some of the magistrates who tried and condemned these mediums displayed a pitiable ignorance of the whole subject of psychic phenomena. Almost anybody indeed appears to be considered competent to dogmatize about theological or psychic matters without any credentials in the shape of adequate study or experience. The following extract from the well known “Brockway” case serves to illustrate the mental equipment of a magistrate for a trial of this character: