rs, together with such stragglers as may now lie found
within the Canadian lines, will be executed without legal trial. It
is believed that these reports are exaggerated. Care has been taken by
Major-Gen. Meade to have them promptly investigated.

In the meantime I am instructed by the President to represent to you,
and through you to the British and Canadian authorities, that this
Government would not look without serious concern upon the practice of
any retaliation or other illegal proceedings upon the persons of such of
the offenders as have fallen, or shall hereafter fall, into the hands
of the Canadian authorities. I respectfully invite your attention to the
subject, with the confident expectation that no proceedings that are not
authorized and in conformity with law, will be taken against persons of
that class, and in the hope that even the customary administration of
the law will be tempered with special forbearance and clemency. In view
of the effective proceedings which this Government has adopted in regard
to the disturbances now so fortunately ended, these representations
would have been made by me without waiting to be moved from any other
quarter. They are now made, however, with the approval of Major-Gen.
Meade, and I believe that they will receive the concurrence of the
Congress and people of the United States.

I have the honor to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

The Hon. Frederick W. A. Bruce.

TRIALS OF THE FENIAN PRISONERS.

The Fall Assizes of the Court of Oyer and Terminer and General Jail
Delivery for the United Counties of York and Peel, opened at Toronto on
October 8th, 1866, His Lordship the Hon. Justice John Wilson being named
in the commission to preside over the Court of Justice which was to
decide the fate of the Fenian prisoners. The indictments were read, and
after an able and exhaustive address to the Grand Jury by Judge Wilson,
in which he went fully into every phase of the case, and explained the
statute under which the prisoners were to be tried, the documents were
handed over to the Grand Jury for their consideration.

When the Court resumed its sitting on October 17th for the trial of the
accused, the Grand Jury presented true bills against three of the
most prominent prisoners in custody, viz., Robert Blosse Lynch, of
Louisville, Ky. (said to be a colonel in the Fenian forces at Fort Erie
and Lime Ridge); David F. Lumsden, who claimed