motions as they please and hardly wait an hour before they send out their painter's men with pots and brushes to enlighten our darkness and remove our ignorance as to where we live; but the fact is that we perfectly knew where we resided before the knight of the brush came round with his ladder to inform us. And if anyone who reads this wishes to know more of the matter, we - that is the people who reside on this side of Verulam place still live in St. Leonards, and here we think we shall continue to live both by our own intentions and what, undoubtedly will prove to the Postmaster-General's decision.
I remain, &c.
R. F. Davis,
22 London Road, St. Leonards,
Dec. 16th, 1857"
"Old Hastings". Under date of Dec. 16th and with the signature of "Civis", a letter also appeared in the News as follows:- In the course of the dispute now raging about our local boundaries, one remark has been made which I cannot allow to pass unchallenged. it is that St. Leonards has been the making of Hastings as a watering place. This is emphatically (excuse the vulgarity) fudge. That there has been a reciprocity of benefit nobody can doubt, but that the new town should claim this superiority over the old is absurd and is answerable by one incontrovertible fact. This fact is the notorious one that it was the rising reputation of Hastings as a fashionable watering place (fishing town though it be) that led to the foundation of a new town being laid in the immediate neighbourhood. I was living here when the first stone of St. Leonards - that is the real St. Leonards westward of their own boundary arch - was laid, and I well know how the old town used then to be crowded by visitors. Every attic and little room that could possibly be let for lodgers was turned to account, for the reputation of the place rose faster than men could build. It was originally the fame of Hastings that gave St. Leonards its birth and early prosperity. And after the very determined manner in which the boundary line was marked by the new town itself no one would then have imagined that any part of Hastings eastward of that line would ever have been claimed by the new settlers; nor would it have been if instead of the splendid mansions built at that part of our town, there had been a line of fishing huts. In that case, the aristocratic exclusiveness that so carefully shut out the east from the west before would have continued. The new name may have a certain charm for a certain class of minds, but I hope most earnestly that the historic and venerable name of Hastings is not to be in any -
