SKETCH OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, BART, M. P. 109 



terested in the subject that every archaeological society in the kingdom 

 petitioned for its passage. It was, however, strongly opposed by 

 other interests, with arguments of the most puerile character, such, for 

 instance, as that the people who erected the monuments were savages, 

 about whom no one cares or should care ; that the monuments them- 

 selves are ignoble and destitute of all art and of everything that 

 entitles them to preservation ; and that to preserve them was to inter- 

 fere seriously with the rights of property. 



Replying to these objections in 1875, Sir John asked the honorable 

 members of the House of Commons to look at the ancient monuments 

 in their own districts mentioned in his bill, and tell him which of 

 them they would see destroyed without regret. " Was it Silbury Hill, 

 the grandest sepulchral monument, perhaps, in Europe ? Was it Ave- 

 bury, the most remarkable of the so-called Druidical structures ? Was 

 it Stonehenge, enigmatical and unique ? Was it Arthur's Round Table, 

 or the Rollrich Stones, Kitscoty House, or Wayland Smith's Forge, 

 dear to all readers of Sir W T alter Scott ? " Then, after referring to 

 similar monuments in Scotland and Ireland, he concluded : " Those 

 monuments have passed through great dangers. They have been 

 spared by Roman soldiers, by Britons, Saxons, Danes, and Xormans ; 

 they were respected in days of comparative poverty and barbarism ; 

 in these days of enlightenment and civilization, of wealth almost be- 

 yond the dreams of avarice, they were in danger of being broken up 

 for a profit of a few pounds, or removed because they cumbered the 

 ground. If the House allowed them to be destroyed, they could never 

 be replaced. It was said that the bill would interfere with the rights 

 of property. What rights ? The right of destroying interesting na- 

 tional monument-. That was the only right that would be interfered 

 with. It was not incidental to the bill, it was no drawback in the bill, it 

 was the very object of the measure. It was really, however, the rights 

 of destruction, not the rights of possession, which it touched. It was 

 now for the House to determine whether it would exercise on behalf 

 of the nation the right to preserve those monuments ; whether it 

 would maintain the ri^ht of individuals to destrov, or the risrht of the 

 nation to preserve."' Sir John himself bought two of the sites men- 

 tioned in his speech, to save them from threatened destruction : Ave- 

 bury, whose temple was nearly perfect in the time of Charles n, who 

 visited it, but which was now about to be sold for building-lots after 

 most of its stones had been broken up or carried off ; and Silbury 

 Hill, said by "Xature " to be "the grandest tumulus in Great Britain, 

 if not in Europe." 



Sir John Lubbock's political career may be said to have begun in 

 1865, when he stood for a seat in the House of Commons for West 

 Kent, at the request of the Liberal Committee, and was defeated by 

 only fifty votes. In 1868 he was nominated as a Liberal candidate for 

 the representation of the L^niversity of London, backed by a committee 



