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Then a Mr. Davis seemed to have spoken rather facetiously and was a sort of Merry Andrew to the meeting. He was told it was the same gentleman who wrote the letter in the News which the people at Hastings called the "family letter". He only hoped he would write another letter. Mr. Davis had found a peacock somewhere off by Folkestone and seemed very much pleased with it [Laughter]. Mr. Hume spoke next, and from that gentleman's long residence in Hastings [and untiring exertions for the benefit of Hastings, as will be shewn further on as well as in his memoirs in Historico-Biographies] he (Mr. Ross did think there would have been engendered in his breast a better feeling towards Hastings than he had expressed. But at all times and on all occasions Mr. Hume was the most determined opponent of the borough of Hastings. In 1855, when there was a long struggle about the cemetery, Mr. Hume came forward and opposed the Council in every shape and form. [By a reference to chapter LIV, Vol 5, it will be seen that Mr. Hume was not the great opponent over the cemetery affair, but Mr. Ross and Mr. Vidler, whose opposition tactics in "every shape and form" against such men as Mr. Scrivens, Mr. Mott, Mr. Womersley, Mr. Peerless, Mr. Putland, Mr. How, Mr. Poole and the other members of the original Burial Board, that caused the inevitable dissolution of that Board, and threw the cemetery affair into the hands of the Town Council, notwithstanding that all the parishes, save one, were favourable to a contra-course]. Mr. Hume, continued the speaker, gave out that Mr. Vidler was not acting for the public good, but that he was trying to get a cemetery that he might manufacture the leaden coffins. [If Mr. Hume really said so, it was but a retaliatory insinuation to that of Mr. Vidler's - namely, that Mr. Putland's advocacy of a site in the Magdalen parish was because he wanted to get the work of building a mile and a half of wall; and when Mr. Burchell cried shame! Mr. Vidler said "Oh, perhaps it was Mr. Burchell who wanted to get the job." The same Mr. Vidler also admitted that he had said that his house would be worth £50 a year more if the cemetery should be in his own parish. This would look as though Mr. Hume's remark was not very far from the truth.] Again, said Mr. Ross, Mr. Hume in his speech at St. Leonards, said that the Council had treated them as children, and as very scrubby children too, and their houses as dog-kennels, which they might daub over as they pleased. He thought the Council had never done anything of the kind to Mr. Hume or to anyone -