the Committee have been met by that body in a calm and dignified manner. A plain statement of facts, unaccompanied by any ill-natured remarks, is being sent round to the subscribers and others, shewing, almost at a glance, that, so far from the committee with whom Mr. Hatchard differs having mis-appropriated the funds, they have made the best possible use of them. The following is an extract from the circular alluded to:- “The Committee of the St. Leonards-on-sea National Schools are most reluctantly compelled to place before the subscribers and others generally, the following statement of facts, in consequence of the charges made by the Rev. J. A. Hatchard, in his sermon at St. Leonards Church on Sunday evening last. Mr. Hatchard, amongst some other matters, charged the Managing Committee with having misappropriated of £200 Consols raised by himself and invested in the names of Trustees – himself and three other members of the Committee – for the benefit of the schools.
“With respect to his reiterated claims to having raised the whole of this sum by his own exertions, over and above what was required for the ordinary expenditure for the schools during the three years of his incumbency, it should be observed that that very nearly three fourths of the purchase money of the first £100 bought were not, in fact, obtained by him at all, as a reference to former reports will show, being balances handed over to him by the Rev. G. D. St. Quintin on resigning the incumbency. The remainder was the proceeds of a sermon in St. Leonards Church on the Fast Day, with donations of £1 each from two gentlemen of the Committee and one of £1 5s. 4d. from Mr. Hatchard to make up the total cost of £93 7s. 6d.
“Towards the purchase of the second £100 Consols there was a balance in hand at the end of the year of £86 9s. 1½d. Of this sum, £40 10s. was the amount of a collection in St. Mary Magdalen Church – an additional source of income enjoyed by our schools during the whole time of Mr. Hatchard’s incumbency, but which naturally ceased when the incumbent of St. Mary Magdalen built schools of his own. Further, this balance of £86 9s. 1½d. was the result of a diminution of that year’s expenses which were £25 or £30 Less than ordinarily. There was also an increase of £18 12s. 5d. in the children’s pence in consequence of raising the weekly payment from 1d. to 2d. Indeed, the subscriptions and donations of that year were less by nearly £3 than those of the year 1850, before Mr. Hatchard came. So little justice is there in his claiming to take to himself the sole credit of raising the whole of this money and of asserting that the Committee had no right over it to use it for the good of the schools according to their judgement in opposi-
