Page:The Preservation of Places of Interest or Beauty, 1907.djvu/16

, and a trifling sum of money was for some years voted by Parliament for his salary. In an evil day General Pitt Rivers, the eminent antiquarian, who filled the post, declined to take his salary, and the Treasury, taking advantage of his unwise generosity, have ceased to ask Parliament for any vote. In 1900 General Pitt Rivers died, and no successor has been appointed, the duties devolving, so far as they are discharged at all, upon a member of the staff of the Commissioner of Works, whose time is no doubt fully occupied by other work. Probably it may be assumed that the only recognition of the Ancient Monument legislation by the Office of Works now consists in some sort of supervision, lax rather than elective, over the forty-two remains already put under their guardianship. It is quite certain, that there is no active endeavour to secure the care of other monuments, even of the megalithic kind, and that no attempt has been made on the part of the Government to make an inventory or classification of monuments either within the narrow limits of the Act of 1882, or within the wider definition of the Act of 1900.

It is not, that the Minister representing the Office of Works in Parliament is unsympathetic. The Earl of Plymouth, the First Commissioner under Mr. Balfour’s Government, is a member of the National Trust, and Mr. Harcourt, the present Commissioner, attended the last Annual Meeting and expressed himself warmly interested in the work of the Trust. But the Office of Works is in all matters of expenditure the servant of the Treasury. The constant endeavour of the Treasury, and in the main a very laudable endeavour, is to keep down the expenditure of the country. Unless the Treasury supply the Office of Works with funds, there will be no expenditure in relation to monuments, and the Treasury is not likely to supply funds unless it is compelled by public opinion to do so.