searched and thereupon confined," as he states, "first in a dungeon among negroes and malefactors of the vilest kind," and afterward in a dark and unventilated room with forty-eight other prisoners in Fort Lafayette.

As there is nothing in this Department confirmatory of these state ments I will thank you for a copy of or an extract from and a description of the document in which they are contained.

I am, your obedient servant,

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, April 28, 1862.

WILLIAM H. BARSE, Esq., Detroit, Mich.

SIR: It has been represented to this Department that Mr. John G. Shaver who was arrested by you in the month of October last was not domiciled in the United States but was a Canadian subject and habitually a resident of Canada. I will thank you to transmit to this Department as soon as may be practicable any information in the form of affidavits which you may have or can command tending to contradict the representations adverted to.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

WASHINGTON, April 29, 1862.

Honorable WILLIAM H. SEWARD, &c.

SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your unofficial note of yesterday's date relative to the case of Mr. John G. Shaver. I hasten to transmit to you a copy of a letter from Mr. Shaver to Earl Russell from which the passage to wich you refer in my note of the 26th instant was taken. You will not fail to observe that the passage was given in my note as a statement made by Mr. Shaver.

I have the honor to be, with high consideration, sir, your most obedient humble servant,

LYONS.

[Inclosure.]

BELLEVILLE, [CANADA], February 3, 1862.

Earl RUSSELL, &c.

MY LORD: The subject of my arrest and imprisonment by the Government of the United States has already been brought under the notice of Her Majesty's Government. I now beg leave to bring the whole facts under your notice with the view of claiming redress and indemnity for the wrongs done to me.

I am a native of Canada, consequently a born subject of Her Majesty, and as such I seek redress at the hends of the Imperial Government for wrongs and injuries done my by a foreign power.

On a late occasion after the difficulies between the two sections of the United States had broken out I was compelled to enter the United States to attend to my business. In doing so I felt perfectly safe as I traveled as a British subject and as one who had not done anything to induce him to hesitate before he entered a country with which his own was at peace. That my occupation was that of a railroad agent, having for years had the agencies of several railway and steam-boat companies of the United States and Canada, but at the period of the insult offered me and wrong inflicted I was agent for the Grand Trunk Railway of