MONTREAL, August 12, 1812.

Your letter of the 4th instant, enclosing the proceedings of the executive council of the 3d.; Captain Glegg’s letter of the 5th instant, transmitting copies of letters from Colonel Proctor to you of 26th and 30th July, with the correspondence between Brigadier-General Hull and Lieut.-Colonel St. George, and the intercepted correspondence of the former, together with your letter to Colonel Baynes, of the 4th instant, were all delivered to me on my arrival at this place yesterday.  The information they contain is highly interesting, and I lose no time in dispatching to you Brigade Major Shekleton, as the bearer of this letter, and for the purpose of receiving whatever communication you may have to make in return.  Being fully aware of the necessity of affording you such reinforcements as the exigencies of the service in other parts of the two provinces would permit, I had, previous to the receipt of your letter, made arrangements for that purpose.

Major Ormsby, with three companies of the 49th regiment, protecting a considerable supply of ordnance and ordnance stores, left La Chine on the 6th instant for Kingston and Fort George, taking with him L2,500 for the payment of the regular and militia forces.  Major Heathcote, with one company of the 49th regiment, about 110 men of the Newfoundland regiment, and 50 picked Veterans, are to leave La Chine on the 13th instant.  With this detachment, an additional supply of ordnance stores and camp equipage for 500 men will be forwarded for Upper Canada; and as soon as a sufficiency of bateaux can again be collected at La Chine, Colonel Vincent is under orders to proceed to Kingston with the remainder of the 49th regiment, and a subaltern of the royal artillery and ten gunners, with two 3-pounders.

When these reinforcements reach you, they will, I trust, enable you successfully to resist the internal, as well as external, enemies opposed to you, and materially aid the able measures you have adopted for the defence of Upper Canada.

With regard to the queries you have submitted to me on the subject of martial law, I have to observe, that it has not fallen within my experience to see martial law proclaimed, except in those places where it has been declared under the authority of a provincial legislature, which of course regulated the mode in which it was to be executed.  As the martial law which you purpose declaring is founded on the king’s commission, and upon the extreme case of invasion alluded to in it, I am inclined to think that whatever power is necessary for carrying the measure into effect, must have been intended to be given you by the commission, and consequently, that the power of assembling courts martial and of carrying their sentence into execution, is included in the authority for declaring martial law.  The officers of militia becoming themselves subject to martial law when