Page:Item 7 1858.pdf/138

The Surveyor’s Application (see Page 129). At the meeting on the 6th of May, the Roads Committee recommended that the Surveyor should not be allowed to take private practice, but that he should be permitted to accept the surveyorship of the Eversfield Estate on condition that his salary be reduced £60. Coun. Vidler moved as an amendment [no motion having yet been made] that the duties of their present surveyor were not hard and that his was quite a gentleman’s life. Here the speaker ? was reminded of the irregularity, and in order to put him right, Ald. Ticehurst moved the adoption of the report. Then proceeding, Coun. Vidler said it ought not to matter whose house their officer lived in, not who was his butcher or his grocer [thus alluding to certain members of the Council]. They had a duty to perform and ought to do it. [Loud cries of shame]. The Mayor interposed and told Mr. Vidler that he must not use such language. Well, his proposition was that the Surveyor should receive £180 per year and should take no private practice. He also said that there was great dissatisfaction in the town at the Surveyor’s inattention to his duties. [Several members here reprobated the use of personalities]. Coun. Vidler said he had no intention of giving offence. He knew that he was sometimes hasty, and said whatever came uppermost, which was not like some members of the Council, who said nothing while there, but complained a good deal afterwards. Coun. Putland would be sorry for the salary to be so much reduced in consequence of the appointment offered to Mr. Laing. It would, he thought, be years before it came to be of much value to him. The proposed deduction would be too much of a certainty for an uncertainty. He condemned the practice of continual fault-finding with their Surveyor and of the personalities too often indulged. Let them show confidence in Mr. Laing, and remember that it was only a short time since they had passed a unanimous vote of thanks to him. Coun. Winter and Ald. Ross thought it was undesirable to allow their officer to be the servant of another party. They had no wish to reduce the salary, and were sorry Mr. Laing had made the application. – Coun. Bromley could see no valid objection to their Surveyor taking the situation; and if the Council could save £50 by it, they ought to consent. He repeated an expression said to have fallen from Mr. Deudney, and would endorse that opinion of his own, the same having reference to Mr. Picknell’s capabilities. This raised the ire of that Councillor, who retorted that the statement made was an untruth. Both parties bandied expressions of an ungentlemanly character, producing a scene [said the Hastings News] which did not add to the dignity of the assembly, but reminded the unprejudiced spectator of a tap-room brawl rather than the proceedings of the municipal governors of a large and rising fashionable watering -