ENGLISH INTELLIGENCE.

Auckland Chronicle and New Zealand Colonist, Volume 2, Issue 7, 20 September 1843, Page 3

ENGLISH INTELLIGENCE.

The French at the Marquesas, (From tte London Times.)

King Yotete has submitted to the French Crown, s»> liavp the numerous tribes o-f the A £ I O U ’S, and it is expected that tlie King’ of iTapbu, who lives at Flakahanj lo say nothing of the important island of Nnkuhiva, will shortly follow their example. Kina - Yotete has given his eldest sou —or rather that young gentleman has been taken —as a hostage for his father’s good behaviour. And Temoana, King of the A £ l O U ’ S (we beg our readers pardon, wc see it is T A 1 O A ES) Temoana, we ought to say, King of the Taioats, is already dressed in a Colonel's uniform, and wears shoes. Admiral Dupelit Thouars has given him a red uniform, a pair of Colonel’s epaulets, a shirt, (but one ?) and a pair of trousers ; and the poor matt has exchanged names with M. Collet, the officer who is to be left in command on the shores of the Bay of Kakapehi, A further supply of breeches and petticoats is impatiently expected from the Minister of Commerce; for it seems King Temoana was so much strucK by the sight of the last (pity it was not the fiist) of these commodities—a phenomenon exhibited to him at some private theatricals on board the French trigate—that he could not rest till he had got one made for his wife.

“ We hastened,” says the great Dupetit Thouars, at once politic and poliiico-economtcal—“ we hastened to comply with his wish convinced tlia t this is the best wav of attaching them to us. By creating wants wt become necessary to them.” Admiral Dnpetit Thouars is creating a want of petticoats already, we.shonld hare thought, abso* lutein Polynesia, and thinks that we,” the Admiral and ihe French Government, will thereby be? coaie necessary to the is antlers. And, indeed, he has no Slight claim on Ring Temoana’s individual custom. Having fiist, iccording to their own account, put his Maj sty in po-ses.ion of a wife for ihe petticoat, it would be hard to deny him the privilege of snppl\ing a petticoat for the wile. Yet we cannot abandon the hope that the Royal family mav, af’er all, send their ordma to Manchester, VVecan assure King Temoana that Admiral Dopeiii Thouars is a joke to Vir. Cobdcn in printed calicoes ; and as lor “ devil’s dust,” it is all an invention of the en< my.

But we have forgotten King Yotete, the other new ally of the French Crown. King Temoana acknowledged the French sovereignty on condition that his wife should be recovered for him from the ehie s of tlie Tai- King Yotete, with his island of Tuhuata, was a more curiously managed acquisition, and one which betrays as odd a notion ot international law in the F’rench Admiral as we ever remember to have read of in history. It appears that about four months before his visit to Tahuata, an American vessel had arrived, alter several days’ suffering from want of provisions, at a neighbooring island ; on attempting to land they were received with musket shots, and lost a man. They then proceeded to Tahuata, at which place, says the Admiral, “ the king sctircely received them any better, for he stripped them of their clothes, and took away the boat in which they came ashore.” Soon after they were carried off by a whaler, but not without promising Yotete an ample vengeance on the part of their Government, in what language this was done, does not appear ; but by the labours of some French missionaries, aided by some subsequent captains, Yoteie was at length made alive to the fact that he had got into a very awkward scrape ; and the arrival of the French vessel found him in a state of great disturbance on the subject.

“The Ring,” says Apmiral Dnpetit Thouars, “ being since then enlightened o n ibis point by the missionaries and some captains who had put into the Bay oi Vaitahu, got alarmed as to the conssequ nces of this affair ; and was still ill a state of great anxiet y when he >aw me. lie requested my protection, and besought me to leave, on my depaiture, a portion of the crew, and. some of the cannon of tlie vessel-*’

Tahuatian Royalty, having behaved to the Ameticans like a very thieving rascal as it was, applied to French valour to avert that very well-merited punishment which Jonathan is in no way an unlikely man to inflict. One would think French valour 'would be above playing “ bully” to anybody else’s “ pickpocket.” What, however, does French valour say ?

“I repiiedthat I would do so”— i. e., lend men and cannon to screen this vagabond from a whip? pi, lt j—“ provided he agreed to acknowledge t/ie so'ereignty of His Majesty Louis Phillippe, and hoist the French flag.

“ He eager'y accepted these propositions, and we agreed that the declaration of possession being taken should be made on the Ist of May, His Ma-

jesty’s J'ete day. On that day, at teu in the moraa ing, I landed wi'h the officers of the vessel. A guard of 60 men had preceeded us, aud had drawn p in line near she flag ataff (o pay dne honour to the national colours. When I arrived at the spot, 1 declared that I to ik possession of the island of Tahuata and the rest of the islands in the group in thename of His Majesty Louis Phillippe. The Gag was immediately displayed, and we saluted it with cries of ‘ Vive la Roi l Vive la Roi V which was followed by three rounds of musketry, and by martial music executed by the band. My ship, (he Heine Blanche also fired a salute of 21 guns.* Much to the astonishment of the natives, no doubt, who probably looked upon all this “ marching and countermarching”

as some very singular religious ceremony or national slow dance. Be that how it may—

“ The inhabitants testified the greatest deligh 1 and besought me to land the cannon at oner,” and then “we proceeded to the King’s habitation, where the act recognizing the sovereignty of His Majesty was Signed.”

We would be at the expence of an odd penny or two to see this specimen of Tuahatian conveyancing, and “ Yotete his mark ;” but whatever may be the character of that document, signed it is. The same day a site was fixed upon for barracks. A wooden building for provisions, which Admiral Dnpetit Thouars—in a spirit of prophecy apparently —“had got made in part on board during his passage from Valparaiso,” an oven, and a powder-magazine were shortly set up, and now “ Paws off, Junathan.” Now, there are two admissible hypothesis respecting this, perhaps, most impudent act that ever was avowed in an official despatch. One is that the American part of the story is a simple invention of the Admiral’s—the other, that it is not, I he former is recommended by the analogy of Mazagran, and would relieve us from the somewhat startling supposition of inspiration or second-sight in the Admiral’s carpenter. On the othor side stands the incivility of supposing that a French officer of rank would shamelessly produce to his Government such a long, solemn, deliberate, circumstantial lie as would be contained in this paper. We would rather be anything than discourteous to a French Admiral, and will therefore assume the truth of the officer’s statement, and beg out readers to consider what it amounts to.

It amounts to a practical declaration on the part of that officer, that he thinks himself doing an acceptable service to his Government in receiving under the protection of the French flag any scoundrel or tribe of scoundrels who want impunity for any piece of rascality by which they may have provoked the just vengeance ol a civilized nation, if they will only “ acknowledge the sovereignty of His Majesty Louis Phillippe.” It is a proclamation to all the powerful nations of the two hemispheres, that whatever insult or injury their subjects may have suffered from the semi-piratical inhabitants of an insignificant island in the South Seas, they must put th«ir hand in their pockets and sit down contented if those vagabonds only choose to submit to the protection of the French King.

It is a remarkable theory of international duty, this of the French Admiral’s ; and it is well perhaps that he has tried it first upon the peaceable and long suffering population of the United States. We really are anxious to see what they will think of it.