246
THE STATE AND LOCAL CONTROL
to recommend that there is any case for going further and for making grants from public funds in aid of sea defence. . . . We cannot see that there is any ground for the contention that sea defence is a national service; it is true that there is serious erosion in places, but this erosion does not affect the nation at large.”
   If statutory effect is given to this last recommendation it will afford but poor comfort to many harassed sea frontagers. They have in effect asked for the bread of material assistance, and will be offered the stone of departmental supervision. In the main the recommendations of the Commission amount to little beyond a delegation of authority.
   It is obvious that any organized system of administration must, in the interest of the State, be under the control of a State Department, the head of which is responsible to Parliament, and the Board of Trade is pre-eminently the most appropriate public authority in this connection. There is probably no department of the State which is administered with greater efficiency and absence of red-tape restrictions. All those brought into contact with the Harbour Department of that Board recognize the efficiency of its control. At the same time, the Board has at present no organized administration for dealing with the extremely varied functions which would attach to the detailed supervision of the national coast-line. In the management of every façade of seashore knowledge of local conditions is essential, in combination with special expert experience.
   The following sequence of events has some bearing on this point. At Hallsands (Slapton Sands), Start Bay, the cliffs and houses were fronted by a beach 150 feet wide, a width of 60 feet of which was from 9 to 14 feet above high-water level. Seawalls were constructed in 1841, and the beach afforded an effective barrier against inroads of the sea. It is readily demonstrable—
   (1)	That local conditions of coastal stability had been long-
          continued ;
   (2)	That any depletion of the protecting medium of defence
         could not be made good by natural agencies ;
   (3)	That the balance of littoral drift was circumscribed by
        the Bay, and did not pass either horn of the same.