Mr. Thomas Beach, of Colchester, Essex, whose identity was for so many years and so very successfully concealed under the pseudonym of Major Henri le Caron, and by whose energies the United Kingdom was saved the loss of many millions of money and many thousands of lives, proves, from so far back as the year 1867 and for the twenty-five years following, during which period he was employed in the Secret Service of the British Government and stultifying the popular fiction which associates with such work fabulous payments and frequent rewards, that "there is in this service only ever-present danger and constantly recurring difficulty; but of recompense a particularly scant supply." At the conclusion of his somewhat interesting volume "The Recollections of a Spy," he complains bitterly of the meanness and cheese-paring methods of the British Government: "On this question of Secret Service money I could say much. The miserable pittance doled out for the purpose of fighting such an enemy as the Clan-na-Gael becomes perfectly ludicrous in the light of such facts as I have quoted in connection with the monetary side of the dynamite campaign." After quoting the vast sums used by the enemy he adds: "How on earth can the English police and their assistants in the Secret Service hope to grapple with such heavily-financed plots as these on the miserable sums granted by Parliament for the purpose?... Some day, however, a big thing will happen--and then the affrighted and indignant British citizen will turn. The fault will be the want of a perfect system of Secret Service, properly financed.... Imagine offering men in position a retainer of £20 a month with a very odd cheque for expenses thrown in! The idea is ridiculous. I have heard it urged that the thought of Secret Service is repugnant to the British heart, wherein are instilled the purest principles of freedom. The argument has sounded strange in my ears when I remembered that London, as somebody has said, is the cesspool of Europe, the shelter of the worst ruffians of every country and clime. America is called the Land of the Free, but she could give England points in the working of the Secret Service, for there there is no stinting of men or money." What a contrast were the life and actions of this man to Nathan Hale, one of the heroes of the American War of Independence, who said: "Every kind of service necessary for the public good becomes honourable by being necessary. If one desires to be useful, if the exigencies of his country demand a peculiar service, its claims to the performance of that service are imperious." When caught and sentenced to be shot he exclaimed: "I only regret that I have but one life to sacrifice for my country."