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Anglo-Maori Warder, Volume 1, Issue 8, 13 June 1848, Page 2

A meeting was convened for Tuesday last, at the Exchange Hotel, to consider the feasibility of establishing communication by steam between Auckland and the settlements in its vicinity. It appealed,however, that to summon spirits was one thing, and to make them appear, anuther; for at no time were there more than se\en —witches, but certainly no conjurers—present in the worn. Whereupon the origina- , Or of the scheme, galled by such neglect, or ! apathy* gave vent to his wrath in the following characteristic letter:— To the Editor of the New Zealander. Sir, —In your piper of Saturday fust 1 called upon th 6e wbi were anxious to promote the interests ot tiie colony 10 meet at the Exchange Ho el o > 'nis day, June C, at t*ve ve o'clock, to take into ct/nsi (oration the t-ropriety of establishing a Steam Comuiuu cation between Auckland ami the various settlements in the vicinity. I, tilth a few intimate friends, at ap,o<ned lime, and after remaining for thre-*quarters of au boar we were compelled 10 leave, the only au< dieu e we could muster were seven in number, including myself. Had I called a meeting lo aevise tUc best means to upset the Government, and turn the Governor oat ot lha colony, 1 feel confident that hundred? would have responded lo the call; and more c.-petuily if I bad one of our celebrated demi-gods [q>t. demagogues] in the chair j but when a meeting w«s convened tu promote the interest of the colony, and develop its resources, and, in fact, io put money into the pocktts of the Aucklandites, yet tbrse very men, without an exception, did not atttnd. It appears to me that their cou'iuns-houses and shops are their churches; iheir ledgers—then* bi>Jes; and tUeirpounds, shillings, and pence—then book of common prayer. It is melancholy to imagiie that so much apathy could possibly 1 xist in tbe vicinity of Auckland, th-a out of GO'o inhabi'u >U, only seven, like the witches in Macbeth, appeared. When the Suisse, in Peregrine Pn.kle,pointed out the pictures of the Seven Sacraments m the Palais Royal Gallery to Pallet the painter, and, in a fit of artistic enthusiasm, ejaculated, " unenough from the prints he had seen of them in England, took the cicerone roundly to task for playing tricks upon travellers, telhng him that the picture was none of [hat I.mp\yaule*s at all, but by Nicholas Pouseen. So, were tins epUtle pronounced " unpayable/ 1 we should risk being told in answer, that it is, and only could be, Jerry Nagle's In good English, it is exquisite ; so much so that the columns of the Warder would have been incomplete without it. Thoroughly Shakspprian throughout: the witches speak for themselves ; hut it might escape cursory obsetvation that the sentence winch connects counting houses and churches—ledgers and Bibles—pence and common-prayer —is only a reversed paraphrase of the banished Duke's moralising in the forest of Arden, who found Tonn-ws in trees—books in the running brooks, Scrmn.is in *-tunes, and good in everything. But the cream of the joke U thib—-that the

letter, in the present dearth of more political " matter for excitement," was able to cause a certain sensation in our village—not yet a municipality—that it has been seriously responded to, having been dealt three smashing blows by one of our contemporaries, and tickled up with a home thrust by the other. And even richer than this, perhaps, was the grave reprobation of Captain Jerry's " indelicacy" in thus forcing himself before the public. As to the merits of the scheme itself, even while obliged to confess it premature as yet, we should have taken much pleasure in seeing it realised, were it only for the look of the thing. For it would have advanced us, in reputation of enterprise, a step beyond our southern friends, who are now—witness the Woodstock, so lately freighted home with their own produce—beginning to steal a march upon tts, fast recovering the ground they had once lost. Certainly, we Stave a real play-house here, with real professional actors in it, to throw into the other scale ; but which, it is to be feared, is hardly to ba reckoned in advance against a cargo of bona fide exports. Without laying stress on the failure of this particular scheme which, even if worked out,would probably ha«r done no more than support for a while the doomeU settlement of Howick, it is only too clear that we ate over supine in Auckland; that we may live to see our piesent uncertain sources of prosperity fail us yet.