Page:The Preservation of Places of Interest or Beauty, 1907.djvu/21

 to the nation. Public opinion, however, has been steadily growing and voluntary effort has done something both to save particular spots and to organize and stimulate action, The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty has now been in existence ten years. Its first president was the Duke of Westminster, who was succeeded by Lord Dufferin. Its present president is H.R.H. the Princess Louise. Canon Rawnsley has been its indefatigable honorary secretary throughout. It has acquired twenty-four properties, and an area of land approximating to 1,700 acres. It has seven buildings of interest in its care, and is about to become the possessor of a most beautiful Tudor mansion in the West of England. In the Lake District—the playground of Manchester,—it has done much to preserve the shores of two of the most beautiful lakes from disfigurement, and to ensure freedom of access to the lake shores for the public. Some £24,000 have passed through the hands of the Trust in the acquisition of the places it owns for the nation; its regular income is about £400 a year, a sum barely sufficient to pay office and working expenses. The Trust has hitherto carried on its work as a Limited Company under the Joint Stock Companies Act. It has now applied to Parliament for statutory incorporation and powers of management; and it is hoped that when it has received this express recognition it may be enabled to enlarge the scope of its operations and to make them in some measure commensurate with its aims and objects. Its work is by no means confined to the purchase of Places of Interest and Beauty. It fosters action to protect such Places, to ward off disaster and to stimulate municipal and private opinion. No doubt some persons may say, that the care of interesting and beautiful places is work for the constituted Local Authorities. But their powers are at present limited, and their disposition to exercise such powers but faint.