all the mails for both towns were to be received. A vehicle for the conveyance of letter-bags, &c from one office to another. Mr. Woods, the old and faithful servant, was to retire from his duties as postmaster, and Mr. Temple, a younger man, was to succeed him. St. Leonards was to make up its London sack as it always had done, and to retain its money-order office, with some other minor matters, still undisturbed. In all respects St. Leonards was to continue to have its general post-office, except that its London mails would be taken through to Hastings, and then after being sorted, would be delivered by the St. Leonards postmen from the eastern part of the borough instead of from the western. This arrangement gave to the dwellers in Verulam place and Eversfield place the advantage of receiving their letters a little earlier than formerly, but caused considerable disatisfaction(sic) among tradesmen in some other parts of the town whose correspondence reached them at a later time than it had theretofore done. One of the persons who felt the inconvenience of the change was the editor and proprietor of the St. Leonards Gazette, who having been previously for three years a clerk in the Hastings post-office, had no hesitation in predicting that so cumbrous a system as was then adopted had upon the face of it a promise of dissolution rather than of permanency. But the advocates of a change, though greatly disappointed that such change when it came was not of that seeping? character for which they had striven, endeavoured to console themselves with the belief that whilst neither town would be much benefited, neither would suffer much harm.
As proof, however, of some of the inconveniences arising from the change, a letter which appeared in the St. Leonards Gazette of June 22nd, is here reproduced:-
“Postal Dis-arrangements”
“Sir, - In your paper of last week you tell us that a vehicle is provided for the conveyance of letters, &c. from one post-office to the other, and you give us to understand that no inconvenience will result from the alterations. Now, in the first place, I cannot learn from other sources that there is any vehicle provided for the stated purpose, save that of the postman’s back, nor, in the second place, that we have the same convenience now as existed before the present absurd alterations. Two cases affecting myself have occurred, this week, sufficient to show the delay and inconvenience to which the people of St. Leonards are likely to be subjected. On Tuesday morning I left home for London at a quarter past eight, concluding in my own mind that as the postman usually leaves my letters fully a quarter of an hour before that time I had none on that particular morning to come. Judge my vexation when, on my return home at night, a letter of much importance, and one that -
