CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES. 491 
districts of natural beauty, preserved for public enjoyment; and places of scientific 
interest, necessarily also often picturesque, such as haunts of wild life, or 
instructive geological sections. 
Public opinion has moved at different pace in regard to each of these 
categories. 
Ancient Monuments.—In regard to this class of objects, France took action earliest, 
partly because the Revolution, occurring as late as it did, prolonged a period of wilful 
revengeful destruction of buildings associated with the ‘ancien régime’ into the years 
of a romantic reaction, and of a new conception of the continuity of national history— 
of Montalembert’s longs souvenirs. As early as 1810, there was passed a statute for 
expropriating what were described already as ‘ national monuments’; by 1830 there 
was an official inspector-general of such monuments; and in 1837 came Guizot’s 
edict for a ‘classement des monuments,’ to be carried out by a Commission des Monu- 
ments Historiques. Proceeding thus by administrative methods, France had little 
need of legislative sanction, and her Ancient Monuments Act was not introduced 
till 1887. In the new kingdom of Greece, on the other hand, what was essential 
at the outset was a code, on the provisions of which administrative action might be 
taken ; and Greek legislation accordingly begins as early as 1834. 
In our own country, no less appropriately, the foundation of voluntary associa- 
tions for the study and conservation of ancient remains begins early, with the Oxford 
Architectural and Historical Society and the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, both 
in 1839. A generation later, in 1869, comes the establishment of the Historical 
Manuscripts Commission, to facilitate the preservation of the most perishable class 
of antiquities, and very shortly after comes Sir John Lubbock’s Ancient Monuments 
Bill, introduced for the first time in 1873, and carried by a second reading in 1875, 
but not placed on the Statute Book till 1882, and ranking therefore in point of date 
between the Hungarian Act of 1881 and the Turkish Law of Antiquities, enacted in 
1884. Inthe British Act of 1882 provision was made (1) for a schedule of monuments, 
but it was to be compiled by voluntary advice; (2) for voluntary transfer of a 
monument by its owner to the guardianship of the Commissioners of Works, with 
right of access; and for voluntary contributions through the Commissioners, for its 
upkeep ; (3) for purchase of monuments already scheduled, but the Commissioners 
were given no public funds for the purpose; (4) for an inspector of ancient monuments, 
but without salary or allowances. The last provision gave official recognition to the 
devoted labours of Lt.-Gen. A. L. F. Pitt Rivers, who held the office of inspector till 
1900. All that this first Act really did was to recognise in principle the national 
duty of custody and supervision, while safeguarding the vested interests of the owners 
of monuments whether scheduled or not. 
In 1884 the Chester Improvement Act, empowering the city council to veto private 
encroachments on the city walls, introduced a no less important principle, of local 
responsibility for the conservators of ancient remains; and in 1887 the formation 
of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings by William Morris and his 
friends initiated a phase of outspoken public criticism of some of the worst, because 
most well-meaning, devastators of ancient handiwork, the ecclesiastical ‘ restorers 2 
of churches. On the other hand, it was the omission of elementary precautions by 
the disestablished Church of Ireland for the repair of its buildings—in spite of the 
liberal grant of £50,000 for this purpose, in the Disestablishment Act—that was the 
precedent for the Irish Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1892, which extended 
the authority of the Commissioners of Works to monuments other than churches, and 
assigned an annual grant of £1,000 for upkeep. What would have been intolerable 
extravagance on one side of the Irish Sea was prudent policy on the other. 
The Irish precedent, however, had its influence in Great Britain as well. The 
establishment of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty 
in 1895, and the publication of Dr. David Murray’s essay on the ‘ Preservation and 
Protection of our Ancient Monuments’ in 1896, were quickly followed in 1897 by a 
formal Conference between the London County Council and representatives of 
archzological societies, with a view to an inventory of local buildings and monuments ; 
in 1898, by the antiquarian clauses in the L.C.C. General Purposes Act, mainly the 
work of that distinguished administrator and antiquary, Sir Laurence Gomme; in 
1899 by the Edinburgh Corporation Act empowering the city council to prohibit the 
disfigurement of important sites by advertisements; and in 1900 by the first 
acquisition of an ancient building—a Jacobean house in Fleet Street—under the 
London County Council’s Act already mentioned; by the publication of the first 
