Humane Society, which position he held until his death. How then, after all the foregoing examples of Mr. Hume’s active good will and benevolence towards the Old Town, Mr. Ross could accuse him of having an animus against the Council and of always doing what he could against Hastings, is only conceivable on the hypothesis that the immense array of intelligent opposition to his designs had made him oblivious to facts.
No reply to articles in the St Leonards Gazette
That the proprietor of the St Leonards Gazette, who vigorously supported the opposition, albeit with reasonable argument and sentiments of amity, should have escaped the invective of Mr. Ross and his party, was a little surprising. True, his newspaper was debased the town’s advertisements, and for ten years Mr. Ross passed him by without the slightest recognition. But this kind of contempt had been going on for some years previously – in fact ever since at Mr. Ross’s solicitation, he had joined the “Hastings Independent Liberal Society”, - and left it after his first attendance, at which the Society’s proceedings were repugnant to his own ideas of fair liberalism. In 1866, however, after the said proprietor of the Gazette had rambled for five or six days with the British Archeological Association and reported their proceedings in detail, he was approached by Ald. Ross in the most friendly spirit. That ten years had helped to soften the asperities between east and west, notwithstanding that during the interval the post-office question had once more come to the front, more to the discomfiture of Ald. Ginner than anyone else; for, although usually an astute man, and a good councillor, on that occasion he was proved to have greatly blundered. This will be shown in later chapters. Also, it is intended to deal with the brighter side of Mr. Ross’s character in a later portion of this History, as manifested in his sayings and doings when freed by experience from certain prejudices, and especially when out of the trammels of the H.I.P.S, which as a political engine had been worn out by the frictional overbearings of its own machinery. The condemnation of this society by both moderate and advanced Liberals was shown on pages 48 and 49 of Local History, vol. 6, a volume which treated of the two years preceding the one now under review. Before even the present year (1858) had come to a close a political change in the Town Council was being effected – a change than cannot better be told than by the Liberal editor of the Hastings News.
Returning Reason
On Nov. 5th, under the heading of “Returning Reason” appeared the following:
Hastings is coming to its senses, and has shewn the first sign for many a year of municipal independence and common sense. Taken as a whole the East Ward contest last -
