tomers in a tea garden as expressed in the waiter’s loud warning when he saw some escaping without settling the bill. ‘Master! Master! there are two teas and a brandy-and-water going over the wall!’ I don’t believe in all this. I should be sorry if I did. I believe the working men of England will value our friendship more than our money when we have taught them that we don’t carry hearts in our pockets. They know the difference between men and the things they possess – between gold and goodness. With them
‘The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gold for a’that.’
If I have any connexion with a Benefit Society, I don’t mean to be a guinea but a man – not a patron, but a friend.
W. W. Hume St. Leonards, April 3rd, 1860”
So much for Mr. Hume’s sensible and temperate letter, and now for
Mr. Richardson’s intemperate communication. This, as occupying 1½ columns of the Hastings News, was found fault with for its length; and here in the columns of Local History only extracts can find a place. The writer begins by complaining of four previous correspondents for not signing their real name, although two of them – Mr. Hume and Mr. Vernon Harcourt did so. He said “they bring charges against our societies which cannot be proved and keep themselves in the background”. He admitted, however, that Mr. Vernon Harcourt’s letter was a fair and open one, “and seems to wish to examine before it condemned; the birthright of every Englishman.” “Your next correspondent ‘M’ (says Mr. Richardson) “evidently knows nothing of the practical working of our societies. He tells us something about a few yearly societies, but what have his arguments against yearly societies to do with the permanent societies of Hastings? .... He finishes off with saying that the ‘permanent fund should not be spent in public-houses at their monthly meetings or at their breakings-up’ If ‘M’ intends that charge to apply to our societies, I hurl it back with the utmost contempt... If the members who are present for three or four hours like to have a glass they pay for it, and the permanent fund of the Old Friendly, which is £3,000, is not touched. Those who had the honour of wording the late circular seem to puff up their own article – a real Brummagem, I suppose - by decrying ours. The game won’t do. Your next correspondent – ‘Essential Weakness’ takes Dr. Crosse to task. I am one who thinks his letter a very sensible one, but of course ‘Essential Weakness’ don’t see or won’t see that the Old Friendly Society was worked or supported in any other way than by the humbler classes. Of course every society accepts donations from honorary mem-
