Post Office [Oh, no! from Mr. Ross]. Then what about making it a branch office? That, he believed, was intended, which would be both an injury and an insult to the west. He would remind the Council that the rating of the parish in which he lived was equal to the whole of the parishes of Hastings proper, except eight or nine thousand pounds. He said again that it was not only an infringement upon their duties in taking such a subject in hand in opposition to the public, but it was also an insult to those who were perfectly satisfied with the present arrangements. The adoption of the proposal would throw them into such confusion as to make it not only an improper interference with liberty, but also to do a great moral wrong. It would place them in a position where they would be surrounded by complications. Many of the public institutions and buildings were not within the limits of the St. Leonards Act at all. Two of the churches, the two National schools, the Wesleyan Chapel the Railway Station, and the Mechanics’ Institution were not; yet they were in the district known as St. Leonards from the first. No benefit could be gained by the change. It was simply Hastings, the strong in the Council, against St. Leonards, the weak in the Council. It was not likely that the West Ward representatives would be content to sit in that hall as only six against 24. There never had been more than one alderman made from the West Ward. Even in the town of St. Leonards westwards of the Archway there was three quarters of a mile frontage of some of the largest and best houses in the borough which ought not to be placed under merely a branch post office. They would have to go over the same ground in this contention as they had done before, and with the result that the Board would again place itself in the wrong. He would himself do everything in his power, working with the inhabitants of the West Ward, to oppose the proposal. He did not believe there was a Post-Office anywhere better conducted than the one at St. Leonards, and there was high official authority in support of this assertion.
Ald. Ginner said it was quite true so far as he was concerned, that in the past agitation as it was now, his object was to do away with the two Post-offices and to have one united post office for the borough. He had no personal feeling against the West, but he believed the keeping of two separate establishments was one great cause of the ill feeling and the mistakes that were made. They could not find such another case where there were two general post-offices in one borough [and for the reason, probably, that they could not find another case where there were two towns in one borough -
