LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES,

London, September 3, 1861.

Right Honorable Earl RUSSELL, &C.

MY LORD: I have the honor to inform your lordship that I have received by the hands of a special messenger of the Government just arrived in the steamer Europe from the United States a sealed bag marked "Foreign office, 3," with two labels as follows:

On Her Brit. Major 's service. - The Right Honorable the Lord John Russell, M. P., &C., Dispatches in charge of Robert Mure, esq.

ROBERT BUNCH.

On Her Brit. Major 's service. - The Right Honorable the Lord John Russell, M. P., H. B. M's principal secretaryof state for foreign affairs, foreign office, London.

R. BUNCH.

Agreeably to instructions communicated by my Government to me to see that this bag is delivered according to its address in exactly the condition in which I received it, I have the honor to transmit the same by the hands of my assistant secretary, Mr. Benjamin Moran, who is directed to deliver it into your own hands if present, or if absent into those of one of the undersecretaries of state for foreign affairs.

It now becomes my duty to explain the circumstances under which this bag has found its way from the possession of the person to whom it was originally intrusted into that of the authorities of the United States. It appers that the Secretaryof State of the United Staes on the 15th of August last received information deemed worthy of confidence that Mr. Robert Mure, the bearer of this bag, was at the same time acting as abearer of dispatches from the insurrectionary authorities of Richmond to your lordship. Other information came that he was a bearer of dispatches from the same authorities to their agents in London, and still other information from various sources agreed in affirming that he was traveling under a passport issued by Her Majesty's consul to the police of New York to detain Mr. Mure and any papers which might be found in his possession. He was accordingly detained and is now in custody at Fort Lafayette awaiting full disclosure. A large number of papers were found upon him, an examination of which was furnished, and to prove that Mr. Mure was acting as the bearer of a treasonable correspondence between persons acting in open arms against the Government of the United States and their friends and emissaries in Great Britain. He had also with him several copies of a printed pamphlet purporting to be a narrative of the events of the 21st of July at Manassas Junction addressed to persons in England and evidently intended to furtherthe conspirators in south Carolina. Robert Mure, the bearer of these papers, is represented to be a naturalized citizen of the United Staets where he has resided for thirty years and as actually holding a commission of colonel in the insurgent forces of South Carolina.

It turned out to be true that in the hands of this gentleman were found in an open envelope a paper purporting to be a passport, a copy of which I have the honor to append to this note,* and a letter of instructions signed by Robert Bunch, Her Majesty's consul for the United States residing at Charleston, a copy of which is likewise appended. * In the absence of all other evidence against Mr. Bunch to prove his departure from the line of his legitimate duty it is quite enough to call the attention of your lordship to the fact that in issuing

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*Omitted here. See inclosures Kennedy to Seward, August 14, p. 646.

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