was greatly benefitted by St. Leonards, and without any corresponding reciprocity. The alleged "early success" was non est in a commercial sense, as proved by the numerous bankruptcies and other failures and more from the absence of reciprocity than any other cause. The houses while in course of erection, employed a good many Hastings mechanics and labourer(sic), who spent their earnings at home. The same houses, when built, were mostly furnished by Hastings tradesmen (as the present writer has given evidence of his own twice or thrice a day journeys with heavy loads of goods from the old town to the new) and then, when the houses were occupied, both west and east of the archway, the visitors, as well as some of the residents, dealt so largely with the Hastings tradesmen, that the St. Leonards shopkeepers, after purchasing their goods of the Hastings wholesale dealers - one or two butchers excepted - were unable to make a living profit. Fish, poultry, fruit vegetables and even meat, were brought from Hastings and hawked from door to door, and all without reciprocity. Mr. Ginner, who became Mayor of Hastings, supplied the public-houses with porter, and called weekly for his money. This practice of the St. Leonards people dealing with those of Hastings, without reciprocity, has continued in a modified form, ever since. Watch the omnibuses, the bicycles, the tricycles and hand-carts, and the number of parcels carried in them or on them by passengers and messengers from the east to the west, without any corresponding returns (even now) will show how erroneous was the statement of "Civic" that it was Hastings that gave St. Leonards its early prosperity! The same writer is also barely logical when he refers to Hastings as being crowded with visitors, even as a fishing town and then asks where St. Leonards (or as he calls it Hastings) "would have been if instead of its splendid mansions, there had been a line of fishing-huts?" From this mode of reasoning, one might deduce that visitors went to Hastings because of its fishing huts, and to St. Leonards because there were no fishing-huts.
"Hastings and St. Leonards" Under this heading, "A Native of Hastings" wrote as follows:- "I cannot refrain from making one or two remarks upon the present controversy between the two towns. That the Local Board of Hastings have a right to call every part of their district Hastings is the claim made by that Board and virtually allowed by its opponents. No greater admission of this right could have been made by the St. Leonards party than that exhibited by their recent course of conduct. Had they a legal claim to the name "St. Leonards", they would not have resorted to such unworthy expedients in order to prevent the affixing of the name of -
