T patch. HE starting of the civil and military authority of the State of Ohio against the expedition that was soon to leave Blennerhassett's Island was done promptly and with systematic dis Governor Tiffin received Jefferson's agent on Friday, the Legislature assembled the next Monday, and on Tuesday he sent the following message to that body: "Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: "A number of concurrent circumstances, received from sources on which the greatest possible reliance may be placed, warrants a belief that some hostile expedition is on foot, inimical to the peace and interest of the United States, as well as calculated to prove ruinous to the peace and prosperity of the western part thereof. As chief magistrate of this state, I have thought it a duty I owe to my fellow-citizens, to this state, and to the general government, to lay the information I have received before the representatives of the people, that their united wisdom might direct to some means of prevention, as far as in their power, towards counteracting the evil designs. "I have it from a gentleman of great respectability, clothed by the United States with a public character, that a person living near Marietta, on the Ohio River, but out of the jurisdiction of this state, has avowed himself an agent of a gentleman late high in office in the United States, and is empowered, and is actually preparing a flotilla, consisting of from ten to fifteen batteaux, forty feet long, on the Muskingum River, and is purchasing up provisions to load them with, and endeavoring to engage active, enterprising young men, to sail therein down the Ohio, who are promised pay and rations from the time of engagement, with promises of future fortunes, etc.; that this agent proposed to two gentlemen of great respectability to join in a plan suggested by his principal, and which he had engaged in, which would procure them ample fortunes; which plan was to attack and seize the City of New Orleans and its dependencies, the money in the bank and treasury (which amounts to upwards of two millions of dollars) the military stores, and a fine park of French brass artillery laying there, and to erect a government independent of the United States, under the protection of a foreign European power, and finally to force, or draw the people of the western country to secede from the Union, by sundry means pointed out. It has also been suggested, that three different small armaments below this on the Ohio are preparing to join the expedition, and if all are permitted to join, will amount to thirteen hundred men, the force designed to commence operations with, and from which, owing to the disaffection of the people of that territory, and the expectation that the American troops will be kept in motion by another power, success is strongly calculated on. It is also strongly suspected that a foreign gentleman, friendly to the enterprise, has pecuniary means equal to the extent and wants thereof, at command. "On Friday last, I received a communication from a general officer in the militia, in the first division, informing me, that two boats loaded with artillery, muskets and bayonets, new, and of French manufac |