but does this as a matter of expediency, then the question arises whether an Act ought to be evaded, and it will at least be granted by all that he is not justified in resorting to any expediency contrary to the wishes of the persons interested. If the St. Leonards party should happen to succeed in obtaining their object it will show that the Municipalities of England are no longer free; it will show that we are all, whether chartered or not, that we are all at the mercy of the Executive to be disposed of as it pleases them. Is that the true liberty of Englishmen? I am afraid the true liberty spirit of English liberty is degenerating. We shall by and bye be the subjects of one great central authority.
I remain &c.,
A Native of Hastings"
If the St. Leonards people at the time had known the name and position of "A Native of Hastings" they probably would have replied to his letter in a manner to prove that he was merely acting the part of a special pleader, while indulging in a travesty of facts. His premmises(sic) were altogether wrong, and his conclusions were inevitably the same. But supposing them to be correct in substance, they had but to be paraphrased and used on behalf of the party against whom thy whom they were directed for the arguments employed to have their due effect. The whole tenour of the letter is based upon the erroneous assumption that the Postmaster-General by the adoption of an expedient had unconstitutionally overridden the provision of two Acts of Parliament, whilst, as a fact, he had done nothing of the sort. What the postal authorities had really done is clearly stated in the preliminary explanation on pages 96 to 97; but a few additional remarks may here be neccessary(sic) to show how unsubstantial is the ground on which a "Native of Hastings" raises his argumentative structure. The two Acts of Parliament to which the writer referred to were not in existence when St. Leonards was built, and Mr. Burton was under no necessity of consulting any authoritative body for their permission. Not till four years later did he obtain an Act of Parliament - a local Act for the town's improvement under a board of Commissioners, and even then quite irrespective of any claim of right to interfere if such had been made by the Hastings Commisioners, whose jurisdiction extended westward only as far as the Priory stream. In the mean time a general post-office had been established in St. Leonards, and when, in 1831, some of its inhabitants build houses immediately outside that town and called the locality also St. Leonards, they asked to be included in the St. Leonards postal district. Their request was very properly complied with. As in Mr. Burton's case, there was no constituted authority that could dictate to the propery holders east of the archway as to the nomenclature of the new district, and to have called it Hastings, when Hastings was fully a mile away, -
