Page:The Preservation of Places of Interest or Beauty, 1907.djvu/31

 amounted to some £5,000. If there had been a machinery for limiting the right of ownership in relation to Stonehenge, or for expropriating the owner, it would have been used, and Stonehenge would now be national property, while the owner would have received adequate compensation, and have been saved the expense and annoyance of a lawsuit. To the minds of most persons there is something absurd in the idea, that a national possession like Stonehenge should be at the mercy of a private person!

I have taken an extreme case, one in which the right of expropriation, had it existed, would certainly have been exercised. There is no danger that it would be too freely exercised, for the Treasury is nothing if not economical, and Local Authorities have the fear of the ratepayer before their eyes. But as the Finance Minister for Hesse-Darmstadt said, in commenting on the recent law, the very existence of the power of expropriation educates the public mind,-and, we might add, the mind of the private owner. The power to expropriate, without its actual exercise, would save hundreds of interesting places. And in principle, why should private owners be bound to sell their property for the purposes of a Railway—which, after all, is a private speculation, and may be of slight public utility,—and not be bound to part with something which is really national in character and which the nation is interested in preserving?

But short of compulsory limitation of the powers of ownership, what can be done to facilitate the ownership by the nation of its national treasures?

In the first place, something like a classement, a Register, of the more important Historic Monuments should be made. It is extraordinary, that with all the activities of the innumerable archaeological societies which are scattered throughout the country, not even (so far as I am aware) any systematic County Register, of any particular class of monuments, should have been