that must have greatly tended to originate the opposition complained of, and to which a brief allusion may not be out of place. It is well known that a numerously signed memorial against the proposed construction of a harbour at Hastings was treated with ridicule by those who convened the Memorial meeting, only a short time previously; and we therefore need not wonder that when the latter took place in a public building the most remote from St. Leonards, and one which could not have contained even a moiety of those who were interested in the question, there should be found absent such as had been the subject of ridicule, and such as would have had a longer journey to take than their inclination led them to care for. Also the meeting was not thoroughly and judiciously advertised, and as a consequence, many, perhaps, who might have taken a part thereat were uninformed of such meeting until it was too late to put off other engagements. We can well understand the animus which still exists in some quarters in reference to this journal and the reason why, out of the great number of advertisements emanating from the Corporate body, not one ever reaches our office. To say that this want of recognition of a journal, which has existed already not fewer than eight years gives us no concern would be to assert what is not true; but this by the way! What we have now to deal with is that if this journal has upwards of a thousand readers and a majority of those readers took to its columns in vain for public announcements which appear elsewhere, merely because they and their favourite newspaper have an existence out of the limits of the old town although still in the borough, let there be no complaint that meetings held in the extreme east are not properly attended by those who are living in the extreme west.
And here, for the information of those who do not know us as we know ourselves, let us observe that we never, on any occasion, advocate a question or a principle upon mere party representation or party influence, albeit that it has been more than once asserted that “we must do as our party tells us” “Free as the air we breathe!” is our motto, and we challenge proof of any deviation from the freedom thus professed. There is no man nor body of men so eloquently persuasive or so wealthily influential as to compel us to swerve from our political, religious and civil independence; and if we write on any theme affecting the interests of our own borough or the country at large, we do so at all times from the conviction that our arguments are supported by facts or that the course we advise is the one in our own unbiased judgement most calculated to effect that which is right. If it be the Boundary question, we treat it as a boundary question, piling up, as we once did, a mass of facts that cannot be demolished; and if it be the harbour question, involving problematic results, we -
