further argued that the disputed district was now the finest frontage in the Kingdom, and St. Leonards wanted to take it away from them. The Council had purchased it and paid their money; they had thoroughly drained it and lighted it; and it was Hastings to all intents and purposes, and all the talking in the world would not alter it. St. Leonards contained a population of about 2,000, and now they wanted to come through the Archway which Mr. Burton himself had put up. What business on earth had St. Leonards on the east side of the Archway? Did they say the Council had treated them scurrilously? They were treating the Council most infamously. It could not be altered without an Act of Parliament and if the St. Leonards people were to bring one in, the town of Hastings must be quite prepared to fight them on that front. The Council has laid out about £4,000 in that district and now St. Leonards came through the Archway and said "You have made a first-rate place of it, and now you must give it up to us" and as your Act of Parliament, we will drag our Act through the Archway and kick yours up to Verulam place Buildings" [St. Leonards, in again joining issue might have used almost the identical words of the irate alderman, but with an inverse application and truer meaning. Mr. Burton's St Leonards - apart from the People's St. Leonards - might say. We are in the Borough of Hastings as is the town of Hastings, but we oppose Hastings on the present occasion because Hastings is trying its utmost to deprive us of the post-office which we have always possessed in a lawful manner; and in this defence of our long-cherished right, we hope to defeat you as we did a few years ago. The boundary question is one which more concerns those whose property or residence is eastwards of the Archway; although we sympathise with them, as they mostly sympathised with us when you endeavoured to force upon us an Act of Parliament which we did not need - one which would have placed us at your mercy, and one under which you now illegally claim to take from our immediate neibours(sic) a name which with our consent and your own impotence to debar, they conveniently appropriated. St. Leonards of the outbound might have said "We are also in the Borough of Hastings, and although we assisted Hastings in procuring an Act of Parliament for sanitary purposes, and were willing to place ourselves under the control of a united Board for the operation of that Act, we did not contemplate a change of name, nor does the Act provide for such. But now an unrighteous attempt is suddenly sprung upon to deprive us of our name and -
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From Historical Hastings
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