The Daily Dispatch: June 11, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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Spies in Virginia.

We were much struck with the letter in Saturday's Dispatch, from our Fredericksburg correspondent. That there are spies and informers all over Virginia, we cannot doubt.--Our people are too negligent in this matter; too apprehensive of making mistakes. We had better err on the side of individual injustice than jeopard the public interests. It can hurt nobody, even if suspected unjustly, to put them in confinement, and where they can do no harm. One of the merciful rules of Christianity, like many other of its humane precepts, must be reversed in war, for in such a condition it is better that nine innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape.

There is little danger, we apprehend, of innocent men suffering. In times like these, innocent men can easily establish their innocence. We are too credulous, too forbearing. Our enemy is just the reverse. He is hard hearted, unbelieving, inexorable. But, thank Heaven, we are learning wisdom from experience, and we have at our head the great man of action of these times. Since the days of George Washington we have had no such example of the right man in the right man in the right place as Jefferson Davis.