[CINCINNATI, August 12, 1861.]

WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.:

Robert Mure, in Englishman by birth but resident of Charleston, S. C., for the last thirty years, is to take the steamer at New York Wednesday for Europe. He has highly important dispatches from Confederate Congress very carefully concealed. Intercept dispatches and the Confederates will be in your power. Mr Mure is cousin to British consul at New Orleans.

B. T. HENRY.

NEW YORK, August 14, 1861.

Honorable WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State:

I have Mr. Robert Mure with a bag addressed to Lord John Russell in custody. Mr. Bunch's instructions request the bag to be forwarded to the British minister in Washington in case of the detention of Mr. Mure by authority of the United States. What shall I do with him and the papers?

JOHN A. KENNEDY,

Superintendent of Police.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, August 14, 1861.

JOHN A. KENNEDY, Superintendent of Police, New York:

Send the bag mentioned to this Department by special messenger. Deliver Mure to Colonel Martin Burke, Fort Lafayette. Write immediately the particulars of Mure's instructions-by whom given, from whom the papers came, what they relate to, whether political or private; full details.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

OFFICE SUPERINTENDENT OF POLICE,

New York, August 14, 1861.

Honorable WILLIAM H. SEAWRD, Secretary of State.

SIR: Your telegram of 13th was received last night, and this morning a short time before the departure of the steamer Africa Mr. Robert Mure, of Charleston, to whom you referred went on board with his baggage, whereupon the officers to whom I had intrusted the business took him in custody and brought him and his baggage to my office. He immediately presented me with his credentials as bearer of dispatches from Mr. Robert Bunch, consul of Her Britannic Majesty at Charleston, S. C., and an open letter of instructions from Mr. Bunch dated Charleston, August 7, 1861, the original of both of which are herewith inclosed. On examining his baggage the canvas bag alluded to in the instructions addressed to "Lord John Russell" was found and apparently sealed with a genuine consular seal. No other papers or documents were found in his possession except a large number of what appears to be private letters from persons in the South to others in England, but which I have not yet had an opportunity to examine carefully. A portion of these letters are unsealed and the rest are sealed, by which I believe he renders himself subject to treatment under the postal laws.