"He was next the traitor spy, who had taken that one fatal step, from which in this life there is no retrogression--that one plunge in infamy from which there is no receding--that one treachery for which there is no earthly forgiveness; and, think you, he hesitated about a prejury more or less to secure present pay and future patronage? Here was one to whom existence offers now no prospect save in making his perfidy a profession, and think you he was deterred by conscience from recommending himself to his patrons? Think you that when at a distance of three thousand miles from the scenes he professed to describe, he could lie with impunity and invent without detection, he was particular to a shade in doing his part of a most filthy bargain? It is needless to describe a wretch of that kind--his own actions speak his character. It were superfluous to curse him, his whole existence will be a living, a continuing curse. No necessity to use the burning words of the poet and say:-- "'May life's unblessed cup for him Be drugged with treacheries to the brim.' "Every sentiment in his regard of the country he has dishonoured, and the people he has humbled, will be one of horror and hate. Every sigh sent up from the hearts he has crushed and the homes he has made desolate, will be mingled with execrations on the name of the informer. Every heart-throb in the prison cells of this land where his victims count time by corroding his thought--every grief that finds utterance from these victims in the quarries of Portland will go up to heaven freighted with curses on the Nagles, the Devanys, the Masseys, the Gillespies, the Corridons, and the whole host of mercenary miscreants, who, faithless to their friends and recreant to their professions, have, paraphrasing the words of Moore, taken their perfidy to heaven seeking to make accomplice of their God--wretches who have embalmed their memories in imperishable infamy, and given their accursed names to an inglorious immortality. Nor will I speculate on their career in the future. We have it on the best existing authority that a distinguished informer of antiquity seized with remorse, threw away his blood-money, 'went forth and hanged himself.' We know that in times within the memory of living men a government actually set the edifying and praiseworthy example of hanging an informer when they had no further use of his valuable services--thus _dropping_ his acquaintance with effect. I have no wish for such a fate to any of the informers who have cropped out so luxuriantly in these latter days--a long life and a troubled conscience would, perhaps, be their correct punishment--though certainly there would be a consistent compensation--a poetic justice--in a termination so exalted to a career so brilliant.