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Monday may be considered a satisfactory evidence that the good people of this part of the borough are shaking off the incubus of club dictation, and are beginning to choose their Councillors for what they are municipally worth, and not at the bidding of the H.I.P.S. The reasons why the elections should be deemed satisfactory are these: - first, because a man chosen by independent suffrages is placed at the head of the poll; and next, because the other successful candidates, all of whom were in before, have been returned in those positions on the poll which correspond with which they have attended to the business of the town. Mr. T. B. Williams, who had attended but two Council meetings during the whole of the past year, is excluded altogether, a fate, which certain infallibles laughed at us for foretelling. In regard to what is called in election slang the ‘proud position of Mr. Wingfield at the top of the list’, we have two things to say. The first is that we believe he is deserving the place which on the first trial for the honour, he has been able to get. He is a man well acquainted with the town; has plenty of leisure time; is well up in public business; and is not likely to be under party control. For these reasons we have supported him, and for these - reasons we rejoice at his success. The other thing we have to say is this – Mr. Wingfield does not owe his position to the fact of his being a Conservative. There are politicians in the town of a different class from the H.I.P.S., who are crowing at this success as a victory over the Liberal Party in the borough. They have loudly censured, as we have done, but on different grounds, the mixing up of politics with municipal contests, and yet they are the first to imitate their opponents by vaunting this event as a Conservative triumph. We can assure them it is no such thing. It is a victory gained by the independency of Hastings over the despotism of an extreme section of the Radicals; a victory which the voting papers will prove has been gained quite as much by the liberal Liberals as by their political antagonists. We know that very many of the Liberal section of politicians, wearied of the long despotism of their noisy and self-elected representatives, to whose unscrupulous dictation they had submitted too tamely, have now resolved on asserting their freedom and maintaining their right to unfettered action. All the while nearly the whole of the Liberals put their necks under the feet of the indomitable H.I.P.S, every isolated freeman -