LETTER No. II

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 89, 13 February 1863, Page 3

LETTER No. II

To the Editor of the Hawke's Say Times. 22nd day of the 20,000,000 th Moon. Dear Sir, —As I said in my last that I ■would favor you with the conversation which I had with my friend the Mandarin, upon the interesting subject of the war that is now raging between King Potatae and Queen Victoria, I shall, as becomes a gentleman, fulfil ray promise. Merely premising that it being about the hour of noon by your method of calculating time (which I must «ay in passing is a very absurd one,) when this interesting discussion occurred, my friend, with his accustomed liberality, suggested that we should adjourn to a neighboring cafe, and that I should “ stand” a puppy pie, a delicacy which he assured me was, without any exception, the one most fitting the appetite of a Celestial, —which I, only too delighted with the distinction of “ standing treat” to so great a dignitary, at once complied with, notwithstanding my having vague reminiscences floating in my mind of hearing, in the course of my travels in some parts of your sublunary globe, the accusation of having eaten “ puppy pie” put interrogatively as a reproach to a class of persons plying their trade upon one of your large rivers. Certainly, however great stress was laid upon the fact of the deed having been done under “ Marlow Bridge ,” from which fact, and making allowance for the relative disparity in the taste of different nations, I am inclined to think that the reproach lay not so much in eating “ puppy pie” as in doing so under “ Marlow Bridge,” that edifice, I presume, having a sort of connection with your temples or other minor buildings of a like nature, and by consequence involving upon him who was sacrilegious enough to eat within its precincts, a charge of profanation.

You must, my distinguished friend, excuse this long departure from the original intention of this my letter; but as there was a principle involved in relation to the puppy pie, I was not at liberty to allow that to remain unvindicated, therefore the digression. But to proceed to the discussion of the war which I have heard is still raging with such violence in New Zealand, and which I communicated to my friend the Mandarin, whose name I shall no longer conceal , from you, hut at once announce that hero to be no less a personage than the immortal Fee Foo Fum, of indelible memory. ’ I related to Fee Foo my friend, that by the latest accounts I had received it.appeared' that the invincible arms of King Potatoes

had carried all before them, and that George Grey and Bishop Selwyn had been taken prisoners of war, and were at that moment condemned—the one to translate and interpret to His Majesty the King all the laws which he had dared to make having refer'-’ ence to His Majesty’s subjects, and the other to re-translate into the English language all the writings which he had written in the Maori tongue, both of which punishments are, I need hardly say, more severe than the undeniable delinquencies of either of the prisoners justify. The rest of the English people being completely subjugated and disarmed, and placed under the strictest surveillance, his Majesty having appointed for this purpose sundry officers whom he names Civil Commissioners, —men alike remarkable for their learning, integrity, and wisdom—men of whom it can be said with truth that they never did or said a foolish thing, and who scorn to take advantage of the position which they hold to aggrandize either themselves or their families. Thus you see that King Potatoe, notwithstanding that he is stigmatised by the conquered race as a mere barbarian and savage, has at the very outset of his career shewn unraistakeable signs and symptoms of the most profound wisdom and policy. He moreover by this wise arrangement consolidates his influence over his own subjects, and renders it impossible for even the most censorious of the defeated pai’ty to complain that he is other than a great and good Governor. I told my admired friend the Mandarin that so exasperated was King Potatoes against Sir George and Bishop Selwyn that nothing but the fact of their being countrymen ot Colonel Browne the late Governor prevented his immediately and without the form of trial immolating them upon the altar of his country, as a sacrifice to the outraged feelings of the God of War. His Majesty, however, I believe derives ranch comfort from the reflection that nothing short of death itself could be a more severe penalty than for these two worthies to be obliged to recapitulate, and go over step by step, all the follies which they themselves committed, or caused to be committed, in their relations with his Majesty's subjects. Ihe war was conducted on the part of His Most Gracious Majesty the King with the utmost skill and generalship, so much so indeed that he in one sortie succeeded in capturing and spiking the battery of Electric Telegraphs, and carrying off the wires, stanchions and needles of the Armstrong guns, thereby rendering it alike impossible tor General Cameron to conduct his correspondence by means of the Armstrong guns with Sir George Grey and the Colonial Secretary, or to effect a breach in His Majesty's lawful fortifications with the electric telegraph. Here again showing that King Potatoes is not only a great and wise statesman, but that he is a skilled and invincible warrior.

My friend Fee Foo Fum, upon hearing this recital of the events which were taking place in the land to which he had sent such a large consignment of his teas, was astonished, and confessed that he could hardly believe that the people who had carried so much devastation and misery into his country, and who had seized such enormous sums of money, and had destroyed or stolen such tremendous quantities of valuable property belonging to his countrymen, in restitution, as they said, for the damage done to their trade and commerce, could be thus so readily subjugated and reduced to that state to which they delighted upon a small pretext to reduce other and weaker nations. But upon my explaining to him that King Potatoe, of New Zealand, was a fighting man, and had never turned his back upon his enemies, but on the contrary had reduced those “ infidel rascals,” as he called them, to show him their posteriors by precipitate flight on one or more occasions, then my pious friend lifted up his hands and thanked Allah and the prophets that the unbelievers had received that chastisement at the hands of a foreigner which they richly deserved, and which they would certainly have got from his own countrymen but for the special intervention of Providence and his prophet. Once more and for the present I remain, &c., The Man in the Moon.

P.S.—I have since heard, and have just communicated it to my admired friend, that London is in a state of panic, that Stocks have fallen to 15J, and that the people are in terrible fear in consequence of the receipt of intelligence that King Potatoe’s flotilla of war canoes is on its way to the Thames, with the full intention on the part of that redoubtable monarch to chastise and reduce to submission and tributary vassalage the whole English nation, of whom he enter-

tains an exceedingly small opinion from what he has seen of them in his own country. Palmerston has resigned, and gone to live in France under the protection of Louis Napoleon, and Bright has been called upon by Her Majesty to form a new Ministry, which he immediately did, and requested Queen Victoria to abdicate in favor of King Potatoe, whom, to use his own words, “he considered to be a better man.” M. in the M.