Mr. Beck then broached the subject of the Elizabethan Charter, and was answered by the Clerk that the charter of itself would be of very little use if laid before them. There was great difficulty in defining the limits of the places enumerated. He had on previous occasions examined some references to the Charter amongst the Ministers’ rolls kept in the Tower, but it was a work of time, and an expense must be incurred if the Council desired an inquiry. — Coun. Hickes moved and Coun. Ginner seconded that the Clerk obtain such information as might be necessary to determine the rights of the Corporation as affected by the recent claims of the Woods and Forests Commissioners. The motion was carried, but it was destined to prove abortive.
Those who were in favour of the Health of Towns Act, were gratified to find that it had passed the second reading in the House of Lords on the 12th of July, but they were less pleased to find (as has already been shewn) that the petition from St. Leonards, supported by counsel, was successful in getting St. Leonards excluded. From an editorial in the Hastings News, the following sensible remarks are extracted: —
The Council as a Board of Health. — Says the News: —
“The Council as a Board of Health will become the recipient of great powers, and we hope to see those powers employed for good. It will rest with the burgesses to consult their own interests by returning such men at the municipal elections as will really advance the general interest of the place. Rightly wielded the Public Health Act will be a boon to the locality; but in bad hands it will prove — to the joy of its opponents and regret of its friends — an injury instead of a benefit. There is some truth in the couplet of Pope: —
- ‘For forms of government let fools contest;
That which is best administered is best.’
- ‘For forms of government let fools contest;
A Local Improvement Act really well administered would prove a less evil than the Public Health Act in the hands of men determined to pervert it from its designed end. On this ground it is that we are somewhat inclined to share in the rejoicings which are heard within the Archway; because, with the existence of a determined opposition in that quarter, it would have been impossible to have worked the Public Health Act properly through the whole borough. . . . Like two contrary dogs chained together, the two wards would only have effected each other’s misery, while the real object which they should have seized upon would have escaped their grasp. As things now are both parties may shake hands and ‘make it up’. The West Ward did not wish for the Act, and it has not got it; the East Ward wished for the Act, and it has got it. Thus the matter rests at present. Fighting must now give place to working, and the labours of our public men be directed solely to the -
