Page:The Preservation of Places of Interest or Beauty, 1907.djvu/13

 of the common. The Commons Preservation Society stopped this practice. Railway companies now pay regard to the integrity of open spaces. Railways are made as easily and satisfactorily as before, but the country retains the enjoyment of its common land. In the same way, if the nation is vigilant to save what is interesting and beautiful in its lands and buildings, no real check will be given to the industrial progress of the nation, but life will be better worth having for its citizens, not only of to-day, but of centuries to come.

It is satisfactory then to know, that side by side with the commercial eagerness of the day there is a growing desire to preserve the material evidences of the history of each people, and the charms of the country it occupies. In the United Kingdom, the means of preserving places of interest and beauty are still inadequate. But a beginning has been made. In 1882, the first Ancient Monuments Act was passed. It was the ultimate development of a Bill introduced by Lord Avebury (then Sir John Lubbock) in 1873, and most assiduously pressed by him on the attention of Parliament year after year, until at length in a modified form it was adopted by Mr. Gladstone’s Government at the instance of Mr. Shaw Lefevre (now Lord Eversley) when First Commissioner of Works. Ten years afterwards, a second Act of much wider scope was passed in relation to Ireland; and in 1900 the provisions of the Irish Act were with some valuable additions applied to England.

Let us see what this small body of legislation amounts to. In the first place it gives no compulsory power, either to the Imperial Government or to any Local Authority, to