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now allures, and even dazzles by its splendour would not have come to the surface, but might have remained for ever in the dark corners of the “House that Jack Built.”
- Banter apart, however, the project now in hand for a pier and harbour, though very desirable in some respects, is, we trow, not likely to find favour in influential quarters, nor to meet with that support which if it is to be carried to a successful issue is imperatively required. And for this there are many cogent reasons. In the first place, the scheme does not emanate from the inhabitants themselves, and there is a strong and not unnatural suspicion that a “job” is to be made out of it. Then, there is a very general impression that visitors having a dislike to harbours and their associations will cease to patronize the town as heretofore, giving the preference to Eastbourne or some other place along the coast where foreign and British tars less do congregate. In the third place, the owners of property are for the most part apprehensive of a general deterioration of that property, which, presently, it may be, is their chief or only source of income, and, again, the prospect of a harbour with enormous liabilities and failing revenues one day becoming the property of the borough by some injudicious act of the Town Council, inclines a very large section of the inhabitants to offer no encouragement to the present scheme. These and many other objections have been and will continue to be urged as reasons for opposing the construction of a harbour within the limits of the borough, whether such construction be undertaken by private enterprise or by those in whose hands is the municipal government of the place.
- For our own part, we are neither sanguine of those immense advantages and benefits portrayed by its promotors and advocates as likely to accrue from the institution of a harbour, nor dolefully apprehensive of ruinous detriment to the locality as depicted by some of its opponents. We believe that a good harbour is such can be constructed would confer important benefits on certain classes and certain portions of the borough, and that a corresponding amount of evil would accrue to other portions of the community. The advantages and disadvantages might be pretty evenly balanced, but a great revolution – social, moral and pecuniary – would be wrought thereby. The small property of the old part of Hastings, would, we believe, be enhanced in value, whilst the best property in the same and contiguous districts would be depreciated. On the one hand there would be additional employment for certain kinds of labourers, a greater demand for seamen’s lodgings, a greater consumption of beer and “bacca”, an additional supply of “unfortunates”, and an augmentation of the police force. On the -
