Henley and Ridge (copies* herewith, marked A and B), and received their answers* (herewith, marked C and D). Soon after I was called on by Mr. Ridge, who said he was desirous of making known the occasion of his being in this country. He said he was an Englishman, a representative of British capitalists; that his object was to make money; that he was utterly foreign to the differences existing in America, and that his plans were in noway connected with those differences. He is a regent man, of fine appearance and good manners, and throughout the interview gave evidence of being entirely straightforward and canding, showing me letters substantiating his statements. He said his business in Mexico was to obtain a concession to light the city of Mexico with gas and one to build a railroad from the city to the Pacific; that he was interested, therefore, in anything which tended to benefit Mexico, and in that way came to a konwledge, both in Paris and Mexico, of Doctor Gwin's position and intentions, and was desirous of correcting what he considered the erroneous opinion with respect to Doctor Gwin which seemed to prevail in this country; that in Paris it was a question how Mexico was to be made to support Maximilian's court, army, and government, and at the same time replay the French Emperor for his expenditures. The latter decided the former must have the revenue from customs and the French would look to the resources of the northern States, whose wealth Doctor Gwin has represented as great. The French Emperor asked Doctor Gwin if those resources could be soon developed. Doctor Gwin told him that by drawing there Anglo-Saxons and Celts from any and every quarter a revenue of milions could be had; I think he said in a year or two; that the wealth of these States was historical and yet untouched. The Emperor asked the doctor if he would undertake the enterprise, which he consented to do, and was now at work carrying it on. Mr. Ridge was strong in the assuarance of his conviction that the doctor was simply engaged in a financial and industrial business, having no reference whatever to the civil war in the United States, &c. I assured Mr. Ridge he would find it much easier to build two railroads from Mexico to the Pacific than to convince the American people that Doctor Gwin was not an enemy to the United States; that we placed him in the same category with Davis, Mason, and Slidell, and that looking on him as an enemy I was disposed to act toward him on the military maxim "not to do what your enemy evidenty wishes you to do" (no matter what it may be) "just because he wishes you to do it. " It seems to me if the French Emperor wanted no one in charge of the interests he seeks to have in Sonora and Sinaloa but a superintending mining engineer, a finincial agent, he would have sent a Frenchman, for the conceit of the French in their superiority as miners and administrators is great, and if the wanted a mere director of Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, or America colonization, and wished and American, he would have been apt to choose some one from that section of the United States which is known to have all the enterprise and the greatest population. These considerations tend to show, it appears to me, that it si precisely Doctor Gwin's connection with the South and the leaders of the Southern rebellion that has caused him to be chosen, as thereby his friends, the rebels and secessionists, will be draw by him to the northern States of Mexico to plant there a government hostile to the United States, and thus aid in carrying out thepolicy announced by the French Emperor in his letter to General Forey. If it be thought these observations are foreign to my sphere of duty, and more properly belong to

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* Omitted.

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