power of mouth-to-mouth gossip or of the efficacy of Seward’s secret agents.  On this same day, August 16, Lyons reported the arrest in New York, on the fourteenth, of one Robert Mure, just as he was about to take passage for Liverpool carrying a sealed bag from the Charleston consulate to the British Foreign Office, as well as some two hundred private letters.  The letters were examined and among them was one which related Bunch’s recent activities and stated that “Mr. B., on oath of secrecy, communicated to me also that the first step of recognition was taken[355].”  The sealed bag was sent unopened to be handed by Adams to Russell with an enquiry whether in fact it contained any papers on the alleged “negotiation” with the South.

Bunch had issued to Mure a paper which the latter regarded as a passport, as did the United States.  This also was made matter of complaint by Adams, when on September 3 the affair was presented to Russell.  America complained of Bunch on several counts, the three principal ones being (1) that he had apparently conducted a negotiation with the Confederacy, (2) that he had issued a passport, not countersigned by the Secretary of State as required by the United States rules respecting foreign consuls, (3) that he had permitted the person to whom this passport was issued to carry letters from the enemies of the United States to their agents abroad.  On these grounds the British Government was requested to remove Bunch from his office.  On first learning of Mure’s arrest Lyons expressed the firm belief that Bunch’s conduct had been perfectly proper and that the sealed bag would be found to contain nothing supporting the suspicion of the American Government[356].  The language used by Lyons was such as to provide an excellent defence in published despatches, and it was later so used.  But privately neither Lyons nor Russell were wholly convinced of the correctness of Bunch’s actions.  Bunch had heard of Mure’s arrest on August 18, and at once protested that no passport had been given, but merely a “Certificate to the effect that he [Mure] was a British Merchant residing in Charleston” on his way to England, and that he was carrying official despatches to the Foreign Office[357].  In fact Mure had long since taken out American citizenship papers, and the distinction between passport and certificate seems an evasion.  Officially Lyons could report “it is clear that Mr. Robert Mure, in taking charge of the letters which have been seized, abused Mr. Bunch’s confidence, for Mr. Bunch had positive instructions from me not to forward himself any letters alluding to military or political events, excepting letters to or from British officials[358].”  This made good reading when put in the published Parliamentary Papers.  But in reality the sending of private letters by messenger also carrying an official pouch was no novelty.  Bunch had explained to Lyons on June 23 that this was his practice on the ground that “there is really no way left for the merchants