the rest, would have answered the sternest demands of military policy. It seems that the execution of thirty out of the fifty was intrusted to a Colonel Harney. According to the newspapers, he had them brought out with halters around their necks, and arrancred them under one common o-ibbet in sig^ht of the Mexican fortress of Chepultepec, which the American troops were about to storm. He then told them that they should five till they saw the American flag raised upon the battlements. The fortress was carried, the flag at last appeared, and the doomed men expired. This act of Harney's has been characterized by a foreign writer, as ** a refinement of cruelty, and a fiendish prolongation at once of the ecstacies of revenge and the agonies of despair."
Desertion is a crime which, in military ethics, it is lawful for each pai-ty to encourage and reward in the other, but to denounce as atrocious, and to punish with death, when committed against itself. General Scott, in his orders, spoke of the Irish deserters as " deluded wretches —miserable convicts," Says the corresj}ondent of thC; 18* Neiu OrleansPicayune, "The clergy of San Angei .pleaded hard to save the lives of these men, but in vain.