Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/133

Rh is about two miles from the Hudson River, and is high ground, overlooking a beautiful country. Mr. Field has purchased thirteen acres of land surrounding it, which he proposes to convert into a park; and, when completed, he will present the property to the citizens of Tappan. The shaft is to be surrounded by an iron railing, and around it at the cardinal points are to be planted four trees, oaks or elms, two English and two American.

The remains of Major André repose with the illustrious dead in Westminster Abbey. They were exhumed and carried to England in 1821 by the Duke of York, who was sent over by the British Government for that purpose.

We are glad that this monument has been erected. It indicates the strengthening and a triumph of the nobler sentiments of civilization and a decline of the intensity of international prejudice. And it is especially fitting that Mr. Cyrus W. Field, to whom we so largely owe that grandest of all unifying agencies among nations, the intercontinental telegraph, should have carried out the spirit of this great work, by doing honor to the memory of an enemy of his country, which has been especially odious for these hundred years. To be sure, André was hanged, but that was merely one of the chances of war. Washington would have been hanged also, if the luck of war had run differently. Is it not time to begin to judge of the merits of men independently of the casualties that happen to befall them? We should be sorry not to go behind the gallows, the cross, and the axe, in estimating the characters of their victims.

But another aspect of the matter is noteworthy: Mr. Field is reported to have said that, if he were granted permission, he would erect a monument to the memory of Nathan Hale, the American spy, who was hanged in the public grounds near Hamilton Park in this city. It would have been especially graceful if Dean Stanley had reciprocated Mr. Field's generosity by taking the initiative as an Englishman in doing honor to the memory of Hale. But that was not necessary. The main thing is the concession that the monument was deserved. No one will deny that the young American who gave his life for his country, and only lamented that he had but one to give, well deserves a monument.

But in thus doing honor to the memory of spies it is important to discriminate between the motives that animate them and the traits of character displayed. The military spy represents his country's side in war, and is justified by the ethics of patriotism. The soldier encounters the chance of an honorable death on the field of battle, but is safe if taken prisoner. The spy, on the other hand, if he fails, is certain of an ignominious death. He takes a deadlier risk than the soldier, and requires a firmer courage to meet it. Let the military spy, therefore, who perils and loses his life, have his posthumous honors, the honors due to courageous, unselfish conduct, on whatever side enlisted.

But there is another class of spies who should be hanged without the benefit of monuments; we mean Sherman's custom-house spies. We have revenue laws so scandalous that the regularly appointed officers are ashamed to enforce them. They shrink from branding all American citizens upon their return home after foreign travel as thieves and swindlers, and so the Government sets spies upon its own officers to see that they carry out our revenue regulations in the full measure of their meanness. These spies, employed by Government in time of peace, from purely sordid considerations on both sides, and who are destitute of every manly impulse, abundantly deserve the ropes they do not get, and the spies that are hanged should not be disgraced by being classed with them.