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Thus, it was made clear that as regarded the post-office arrangements the Postmaster-General had delivered his ultimatum and that the Town Council was therefore foiled in what they held to be the trump-card of their game. They had also failed in their attempt to coerce the local Press into a course that was equally essential to the success of their design; and there were not lacking astute thinkers who expressed surprise that there was a want of intelligence not to perceive how unlikely the proprietors of at least the St. Leonards papers were to yield to their wishes. Such want of perception, however, was more apparent than real, as will hereafter be shown. The only appeal directly made was by means of a letter to the Hastings and St. Leonards News, the reply to which was as follows:-

Our attention has been called to the fact that we still arrange many of the visitors to Hastings in our weekly list of arrivals and departures under the head of St. Leonards. This is continued as it was begun for the sake of the visitors themselves, lest the conduct of the Postmaster-General in putting so much of Hastings in the St. Leonards postal district should result in inconvenience to them. We wish it to be understood that the arrangement is not continued out of deference to any claims of St. Leonards of any property within the jurisdiction of the Local Board. But we do not feel at liberty to incommode the visitors by altering the probable address of their letters until the postal arrangements are actually revised. Under this protest, we must, till then, continue in the visitors' list the present anomalous division.

Then, referring to the claims of each party to the disputed territory, the News continued "It is a pity the claim [of Hastings] was not made before the tacit concession to St. Leonards, had given the place a prescriptive right to locality in dispute. The real battle now is for a new postal division. If that be refused any local arrangement will be almost useless. Let the subject be narrowed to this, its legitimate limit, and fought out manfully, with as little vindictiveness as the nature of the case will permit. The Town Clerk has issued official notices of the resolutions of the Local Board to call the whole of the borough Hastings eastward of the St. Arch, and stating the liability of a forty shilling fine of any person who shall deface or alter the Board's inscriptions on property within the disputed territory."

This explanation of the News, together with its protest against altering its arrangements of visitors until by authority the postal arrangements were altered, was made on Dec. 18th, and consequently, before the decision of the Postmaster-General was known; and after that decision was arrived t not to alter the arrangements, the News -