The Conservancy is also
able indirectly to exercise some control over riverside building
operations, and very recently compelled an alteration of design in the use
of a building site on a reach of the Upper Thames.
[Illustration: FISHING BOATS AT LEIGH. _From photographs by R. B. Lodge_.]
It may be asked why, if so much has already been done, we should not rest
contented with the present control of the river, trusting that a gradual
increase of powers will be granted to the Conservancy, so that little by
little they may be able to meet all requirements for the preservation of
the Thames as our national river, just as the New Forest is preserved on
the grounds that it was "of unique beauty and historic interest."
The answer is that, in the first place, this is not the proper business of
the Conservancy, but only an incidental duty; and, in the next, that with
the best of goodwill, as is shown by what they have done, the Conservators
have only been able to mitigate, not to control, a vast amount of
disfigurement and abuse of the river in the past. They were not created
_ad hoc_, and the body has not the position which would enable them
to take a strong line, or powers for expenditure on purely
non-remunerative business, such as might be necessary if a millowner had
to be bought out if about to sell his property for conversion into a
gasworks, like the factory of the Brentford Gas Company just opposite the
palace at Kew, or the foul soapworks which for years disfigured the banks
and polluted the air at Barnes.
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