The recent abstraction of records from the executive and other public offices, by persons acting under the authority of the Federal Government, renders it impossible to give as minute an account of an interesting event as I would like to present. As I must relate the circumstances entirely from memory, after the lapse of more than thirty years from the time the records were at my command, allowance must be made for a want of precision, especially as to dates. During Governor Ashe's administration, embracing the years 1796, 1797, and 1798, it was ascertained that numerous frauds had been perpetrated in the office of the Secretary of State and the offices of John and Martin Armstrong, in the entry and survey of western lands, and active exertions were made to discover and arrest the offenders in this State and Tennessee. It was, I think, in 1797, that a confidential messenger was sent by Judges Tatum and McNairy from Nashville to the Governor to warn him of a conspiracy to burn the State-house, in order to destroy the records, the production of which upon the trial was indispensable to the conviction of the offenders. A guard was armed and stationed around the capitol for the next two months. The communication from Nashville requested the Governor, immediately on its receipt, to erase from the despatch the name of the messenger who bore it, as any discovery of his connection with it would lead to assassination. This was done so carefully as to elude every effort on my part to restore and ascertain it, thirty years ago, and I have not at the present moment the slightest suspicion of the agent who overheard the plot of the conspirators in Knoxville and was sent from Nashville to Raleigh on this secret and dangerous mission. The earliest letter I ever saw from General Jackson was in relation to this affair. With his instinctive hatred of fraud, he tendered his service to the Governor in any effort that might be necessary to arrest the offenders who were supposed to have sought refuge in the then Spanish domains in the direction of Mobile. This letter was on file in the executive office in 1835. In 1797, according to my remembrance, on the night when the ball was given at Casso's hotel to the bridal party, very shortly after the second marriage of the Public Treasurer, the festivities were interrupted by the hasty entrance of a servant, with the information that some one was forcing an entrance into the window of the office, where the trunk containing the records in question was deposited. He was caught, was ascertained to be the slave of one of the persons charged with fraud, was convicted of burglary, and executed.