I embrace this opportunity to renew to you, sir, the assurance of my high consideration.

For the ministety:

VTE. JULES TREILHARD,

First Secretary of the Legation.

[Inclosure Numbers 2.-Translation.] LEGATION OF FRANCE IN THE UNITED STATES, Washington, August 29, 1862.

Honorable W. H. SEWARD,

Secretary of State:

SIR: I have had the honor to address to you heretofore verbal remarks in regard to certain acts which have marked the beginning of the administration of General Butler at New Orleans. I cannot leave you without a knowledge of how those acts have been estimated by the Emperor's Government, and I consequently have the honor of communicating herewith to you an extract from a dispatch of mr. Thouvenel on this subject. I doubt not that the Federal Government, which has in a spirit of lofty justice instituted the mission of the Honorable Mr. Reverdy Johnson at New Orleans, will receive in the same spirit observations relative to acts of domestic administration of which the French residents at New Orleans may have justly complained.

I embrace this opportunity to renew to you, sir, the assurances of my high consideration.

For the minister and by authority:

VTE. JULES THREILHARD,

First Secretary of the Legation.

[Sub-inclosure.-Translation.]

Extract of a dispatch from Mr. Thouvenel to Mr. Mercier.

It would be a subject of much regret if the Federal Government were to regard now otherwise than in seemed to do at first the acts of General Butler, and if the sending of Mr. Reverdy Johnson to New Orleans should not have the results which we expected from it. I cannot suppose that the Cabinet at Washington will refuse to admit how just and natural are the remarks which you have already addressed to it in regard to the situation in which General Butler's administration was calculated to place our countrymen and other foreign residents.

It is not a question, in fact, of treating them as privileged, but merely of taking into equitable account the difference of positions.

We assuredly do not intend to investigate whether the Federal Government is right or wrong in subjecting the communities which it places again under its authority to impositions of war or to fines, with a view of punishing them for their previous attitude. What we limit ourselves to asking is that these measures of reprisal may not reach our countrymen, who are only armed for the maintenance of public order, and who have in fact lived to foreign to all the political events which were taking place around them that no kind of resentment should be evinced toward them. It is, therefore, by good right that you have protested and that you must still protest, if necessary, against measures like that, for instance, which sought to compel certain French retail dealers, who had already paid the State of Louisiana the sum established by the law of the land for their licenses, to pay the amount a second time.