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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume I, Issue 17, 24 October 1861, Page 6 (Supplement)

The oaths of office were taken by Sir Guey, as Governor of New Zealand, on the 4th instant, at three o’clock, at Government house, The oaths were administered by liis honor Chief Justicc Aeney. There was a large concourcs of spectators, and many ladies present. A guai-d of honor of the 65th regt. was in attendance, commanded by Capt. Teener. After the oaths had been subscribed, a salute was fired from the guns of Fort Britomart, the band of the 65th regt. playing the national anthem. A letter from Mr. Russell, dated Washington, July 8, has just appeared in the Times. Ho writes ; The rail and the river still connect south and north together. With all the hate of the south towards the north, and with all the anmr of the north towards the south, there is yet some lingering aversion to the total disruption of all ties between the belligerents. The trunk is torn from the limbs, but the political surgeons are loth to cut the tendons and seem to act as though they thought conservative surgery would effect some miraculous recovery. Although postmastersgeneral cut off the mails, they wink at the devices of expressing agencies and railways to keep open the communications, and thus a man or a letter may, at risk of certain be sent through. The contingencies are that he or it may be opened if there be aught treasonable in expression inside or out —and treason is determined by both sides as they list. So it is I am here without being opened, and I am bound to say that of all the myths—and they are many and magnificent—which have been hymned and hummed on the lyres of the type, none have been so quaintly fanciful though stupidly mendacious as those winch have been published to the effect that I have complained of my letters having been tampered with. There never was a people which rushed so rapidly to the conclusion that the argument of force was the great solvent and settle# of disputes as our American brethren. See new York now —just recollect what it was towards the close of last March. Sumter cannot have made all these banners, filled all these streets with soldiers, turned the Laodiceaus into phrenzied Unionists, and shut the mouths of the disaffected People who argue philosophically about the right of secession and the impotency of the Federal government to restrain Slatesfrom exercising that right have all of a sudden begun to find out “ We must maintain our glorious Union! We must have a country and then they go off into sophistical arguments on the other side about the Mississippi and unity of peoples and political necessities. Had you always held this language, good gentlemen, you might never have had this present contest. It is not improbable that up to the moment of the fall of Sumter there were in tho cabinet at Washington statesmen who thought they could patch up the quarrel, and unite North and South by running Canada as a drag scent under their noses. Indeed, it would certainly bo an agreeable result if the 250,000 Northern Troops now in tho field could bo united with tho Southern forces in a common raid on British North America and on the Spanish possessions. But North and South will not agree to join. What may come after battle who can say ? At present dismiss entirely from the mind of England the idea, no matter how it may originate, that there will or can be peace, compromise, union, or secession, till war has determined the issues. How gay New York is with fiags ! The Stars and Stripes float, on the fainting air in the warm, highways ; the shopwindows are full of prints of a martial character—soldiers, firemen, or corps of eccentric costume. Ellsworth, Scott, Greble, battles and charges, Lanopkins, and Big Bethel. There are little Zouaves led by nurses and old light infantry men, abdominous and spectacled, on the trottoirs. All the clmfio tribe are in grey or blue glories. There are tcy.s in the public squares, rows of sheds in the “ places”, wherein are soldiery quartered who came hither on their way to the seat of war ; placards about books of tactics, illustrated with staring red and scarlet Zouaves in impossible attitudes. New York is up in arms and eager for the fray, even though there is much loss and great suffering caused by tho war. See, for instance, that assemblage of women, young and old, some with children by their sides or infants in their arms, before that large house. These are wives and mothers of volunteers, reduced by their absence in the wars to dependence on charity and awaiting their turn to come before the distributors of the fund raised in New York for the purpose. The appearance and dress of many of these women would lead to the belief that they did not belong to the class usually exposed to such trials, X could not judge of the justice of the impression on my mind that the ladies are not as busy in cartridge making, lint scraping, and uniform sewing as they arc down South; but I dare say, they are busied with works of charity as much as their fair sisters.