tropolis, and that no enquiries have been instituted as to what support, if any, they would be likely to afford to an association formed for the establishing of a port at Hastings; nor have any enquiries been made as to how far our neighbours on the opposite side of the Channel would be inclined to help us carry out such a scheme as to make it sufficiently remunerative. Nothing of this kind has been done; there is, consequently, no data on which to ground an appeal to the public, without whose support a plan of the kind now before us must necessarily fail.... Upon further going into the present case as it now stands, I am bound to confess that there is nothing yet before us to lead us to entertain the hope of such support. I feel it right to say this, as I have taken a somewhat prominent part in the discusion(sic) of this question.... Until we can produce a prospectus, as I said, virtually at first, that can satisfy members of the Stock Exchange, we can never expect to make anything of this important scheme. It is not my wish to anticipate the primary question, because my view is that we should again begin at the beginning; yet I cannot help saying that, personally, I cannot see that a harbour can do the two towns anything but good.”
Mr. Hatchard’s Last Fling. Thus far, the avowal of a changed attitude was honourable; but there was no admission that the harbour project was already dying of inanition as suggested by “Let-well-alone” nor any but a tacit acknowledgement that there was any soundness in the arguments which he had himself so strongly denounced with provokingly personal allusions. On the contrary, Mr. Hatchard filled the remainder of his letter with a long string of personalities against a gentleman who whatever else he might have said of his opponent, also publicly asserted “Mr. Hatchard is a good man, and we wish him well.” Equally a good man was he who penned that sentence, as the people of Hastings and St. Leonards had the happiness to know. Continuing his latest letter on the Harbour, Mr. H. wrote – “ I am just now engaged in two or three public matters which tax all my energies of mind and body. I cannot therefore allow myself to be drawn into a war of words with an hypochondriacal patient who probably finds more relief for his malady in the vulgar amusement of persecuting a parson than in the more regular and respectable expedient of calling to his aid one of the able doctors of physic practising in the borough. For the future I shall therefore treat his false and unfair insinuations -
