public manner. You, being a stranger and not acquainted with our language, may not have been aware of it, but your associate, Mr. Brown, was, for I see in the copy of correspondence between himself and the collector, which you sent me, that he refers to it, and that it was precisely that order that was the principal cause of the controversy between him and the collector. The collector and the other officers of the Treasury Department implicated in your letter, being under a separate branch of the Government and in no way amenable to my authority, I will not touch on any of the allegations concerning them further than to say that I have had nothing to do with any of them except the collector, and with him, so far as your acts are concerned, only to aid him, on his own application, in enforcing the orders of our common superior the President. I shall refer your letter, together with a copy hereof, to the collector for such answer, to so much as concerns him or his department, as he may consider proper to make to you.

I will also avoid so much of the matter as presented by you as refers to the late surveyor-general, Mr. Edward F. Beale. For as the nature of his office could give him no official cognizance of the matter, his action in the premises was purely personal, and because I never had anything to do with him concerning you. Whilst there seems to be much complication in your affairs from your point of view, the part as military commander I have had in them is quite simple. As I have already said, I knew nothing of your proceedings from you till after the arms were in part seized in Half Moon Bay. After that I received a visit from your lawyer, Mr. Barnes, and one from yourself in this city, and subsequently another from you in Sacramento. Your lawyer admitted the arms were destined for Mexico, and informed me there were other arms and munitions belonging to the same lot, also intended for the same destination. As the ordinary precautions of custom-house regulations, orders, inspectors, and the revenue cutter (a sail vessel) had been inadequate to prevent you getting part of your arms and munitions out of the harbor, I seized the whole of them, and ordered them to be sent to the arsenal at Benicia to make sure that the President's order should not either be disobeyed or evaded. You state that Mr. Barnes informed you that when he called on me about the receipts to be given for the arms by the ordnance officer at Benicia I told him there would be no necessity for any receipts, as the arms were going to be returned. Mr. Barnes wished a different receipt from the one I had ordered. He wished a receipt for the several articles according to the invoices. I had ordered warehouse receipts for boxes and packages only, saying to him, in effect, that as the arms were only detained, and not confiscated, and as they were, as I supposed and still believe, to be eventually returned to you, I did not wish the packages broken; and I take the occasion to repeat that I do not consider the arms, &c., as confiscated by the United States. I only hold them to prevent your taking them out of the country, you having attempted to do so, and such being your present intention. In both the interviews you have had with me, you will do me the justice to say that you did not receive the slightest intimation of any intention of mine to return you your arms without some modification previously made in the orders from Washington, or a permit or orders from my superiors.

If I am at all connected in your mind with any statement that may have been made to you of an intention on the part of the Government to buy your arms and pay you gold for them, I beg to say that you have been misinformed. I never had the question before me, and I never was competent to entertain it. You state that it is solely on my