[Inclosure.]

Statement made to Major-General Butler by Archibald McLaurin.

I have been the agent of J. Schofield, Sons & Goodman since the 1st of July, 1858. My agency has consisted principally in procuring orders for hardware, send them forward, receive the price, and remit the money thus received. I have also been the agent from the same period of time of Sanderson Bros. & Co., of Sheffield, manufacturers of iron and steel ware. Some time in February, 1861, I received from Mr. Goodman a letter giving quotations and terms of Enfield rifles, stating that he or his firm could furnish a large quantity, and desiring me to endeavor to procure orders for them.

In March I received the only order for arms which I ever received from Cavanagh & Miller for ninety Enfield rifles. I sent the money and order to J. Scholefield, Sons & Goodman, but it was not executed because the instructions were to send by a British vessel, and no such vessel could be procured.

Since the first letter of Mr. Goodman above alluded to my correspondence in relation to arms has been with the same gentlemen and was confined almost exclusively to a shipment of 200 Enfield rifles, and expended from February, 1861, to January or February last. In the latter part of June, 1861, I received the last letter from J. Scholefield, Sons & Goodman, dated the 6th of 9th of June, 1861, until the reopening of the mail communications in the latter part of May, when I received a letter from them dated in September last.

On the 2nd July instant I received a package of letters from J. Scholefield, Sons & Goodman and from Sanderson Bros. & Co., which I was sorting for the purpose of reading them, when I was arrested. All these letters are in possession of General Butler, I had never seen before, and I have no knowledge of the transaction referred to in it, except what I learned at hastily glancing at it when it was handed to me.

The 200 rifles above referred to were shipped at Liverpool by J. Schofield, Sons & Goodman, and were consigned to me for sale without order from me; bul arrived the port of New Orleans was closed and she went into Havana in June, 1861. I sold 100 of them to the Confederate Guards, deliverable in Havana, by giving the purchasers an order on the master of the vessel.

I understand that these hundred rifles were afterward captured by the U. S. Navy. The remaining 100 of these rifles were sold be me, but the order for their delivery has not been given-they are still in Havana.

In February or March, 1861, I received a letter from Mr. Goodman, with an invoice of 600 rifles with their accouterments. This invoice was to have been shipped on the ship Hews, sailing under the German flag-the captain had agreed to take them, but afterward changed his mind and refused to take them, in consequence of which the invoice for 600 was superseded by one for 200, to which I have already alluded, and which were shipped on the America ship Bamberg, which entered into Havana in consequence of the blockade.

I have had no other connection with the shipment or sale of arms- another was in my capacity of agent for the firm of J. Scholefield, Sons & Goodman.

Shipped on the Bamberg by J. Scholefield, Sons & Goodman there was also a pattern rifle called Wilson's breech-loading rifle; this rifle