and could not in any way provide for its necessities, would have been contrary to the desire of the owners and occupiers themselves; and therefore an anomalous proceeding. Equally absurd would it have been for the new district to be served by a post-office in George street, a mile and a half distant, when all the necessary machinery for the purpose was close at hand and without additional expense. The Duke of Richmond, who was then Postmaster-General, had nothing to do with the alleged change of name. The people themselves gave the name to the place which they had a perfect right to do, and which was never changed. All that the officials of the Post-office had to do, was to deliver letters that were addressed "St. Leonards to persons who should receive them, whether inside or outside the original boundary. And this was done not "contrary to the wishes of the persons interested" as asserted by "A Native of Hastings", but with their full consent and solicitation. One of the solicitants was Miss Powell, who, in 1832, had a library and stationery business at Adelaide place, now Grand parade. Pigot and Co's Directory for 1832, included Warrior's Gate, East-cliff place, &c. as being in St. Leonards; and, two years later, when the territory became more extensively inhabited, the places included in the thoroughfares of St. Leonards were Adelaide place, Seymour place, London road, Norman road, and Verulam place. Hastings had no power to say ay or nay to the arrangements, nor even to to(sic) supersede the parochial officers for sanitary purposes until the Health of Towns' Act was obtained, by which time the district in question had retained the name a little of twenty, and 27 years before the Town Council attempted to call it by the name of Hastings. This Act endowed the Local Board with power to write up the names of streets, roads, &c., but no authority to change the name of an entire district. This was the second of two Acts which "A Native of Hastings" declared that the Postmaster-General by his action (more than twenty years before it became a law for Hastings) had infringed and thus "broken the laws of England" Could anything be more preposterous?
The Boundary Question. The foregoing remarks were felt to be necessary in consequence of the inverted character of "A Native of Hastings" hypothesis and misleading argument; but under the heading of the Boundary Question "Young St. Leonards", in a communication to the editor of the News, also wrote the following reply:-
"Sir, -
I should not have thrust myself into the present controversy between Hastings and St. Leonards but for the grandiloquent letter of "A Native of Hastings" which is highly instructive, we admit, and would have been highly prized no doubt by the Postmaster-General, who, we could wish, had a copy of it. I must say it puts me in mind of an unsophisticated gardener whose orchard suffered severely from the raids of juvenile trespasses. Warnings of 'Prosecution' were -
