This note was referred by the Marquis of Normanby to Lord Palmerston, Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and on the ;

20th July following an answer was returned to Mr. Stevenson, that Lord Palmerston felt some difficulty in acceding to my application, but that if 1 would send to him a list of any particular documents I wished to obtain, his lordship would have them examined by some competent person, and, if no objection should be found to their being communicated, they should be copied for my use, on the usual terms, at my expense. " 'Upon the receipt of this answer to my application, Mr. Stevenson immediately replied, explaining that no partictilar docuine7its were asked for by the Agent of New-York ; that the object of the State was to have its Colonial history written from authentic documents, many of which were presumed to be in the State Paper Office, but whose particular character could not be known, and that they could not, therefore, be described ; that the limitations and restrictions imposed in former cases were of course expected to be observed in the present, and that the Agent would, in fact, consider himself subject to the control and pleasure of the department.

xxiv GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

"'It was hoped that, on a review of the subject, Her Majesty's government would have looked more auspiciously upon the application, and that, so far from perceiving in it anything objectionable, would rather have viewed the objects of the State as of a purely literary and altogether praiseworthy character, and, as such, commending themselves to the favorableand liberal consideration of an enlightened government. But the then ministry went out of office without having altered or modified their decision, which -- considering the impossibility of my pointing out the particular documents I might wish to have transcribed, without having the opportunity of learning even the date of one of them -- amounted, in fact, to a refusal of the application of the State.