Page:Item 8 1860.pdf/82

arranged for by the inhabitants of an entire district which would have been seriously inconvenienced by the change. Mr. Gausden’s statistics so demolished Mr. Ginner’s statements, that the latter’s reply was necessarily tame, whilst they served to convince most of the East-Ward representatives and all of the West, that Messrs. Ross, Ginner and Bromley had given utterance to conditions based on error, and had placed themselves still further in the wrong when they plotted to have only one side of the case laid before the Postmaster-General, by shutting the door against the one appointed co-committeeman whose more correct knowledge of the whole affair, they feared would prove fatal to their own design. Some of the unfair methods by which it was sought to influence the postal authorities were exposed by Messrs. Gausden and Putland, but even those gentlemen knew less the extent to which was carried the surreptitious means of increasing the number of misdirected letters than did the proprietor of the St. Leonards Gazette, whose peculiar associations gave him facilities for obtaining information not generally accessible. The credentials for these advantages – if such a term be allowable – were as follows:- He had once been, for three years a post-clerk in the Hastings office, and had afterwards continued friendly with the Hastings Postmaster; he had also many a chat with Henry Tompsett the many years’ Hastings postman (the two having been servants together in the same office), who, when a messenger between the two towns, had brought for the Gazette on more than one occasion a purposely misdirected communication. The proprietor of the Gazette was also on friendly terms with Mr. Southall, the St. Leonards Postmaster, whose senior letter-carrier (Mr. Shaw) lived next door to the said proprietor, whilst the latter’s own brother was another of the St. Leonards postmen. Then, as the owner of a newspaper to which was attached a visitors’ list, and for which to secure as great an accuracy as possible, he personally collected the arrivals and departures from house to house, he was frequently shewn mis-directed circulars, and sometimes letters, as a proof of the adopted means to swell the number of such missives passing through the post-office. But for the pledge not to betray confidence, to the injury it might have been to the informants, some of the authors of these unworthy tricks might have been disclosed. Had, however, the result of Mr. Ginner’s motion at the December Council meeting been other than what it was, the intimation given in two editorials of the Gazette (see pages 20 & 22) would have been acted upon. Mr. Ginner, with great assurance, stated that in the event of the St. Leonards -