Note 91 — Chapter V · THE PADDINGTON ESTATE.

These articles of agreement contained a clause to exempt the buildings, houses, &c. on this land, from “the operations or regulations contained or to be contained in any Act or Acts of Parliament respecting buildings;” and they were not to be subject “to the control, management, or interference” of any surveyor, or any other person, claiming to exercise authority under such Acts. This was asking a little too much even of a Parliament in which Grattan and Old Sarum were represented; and the articles were saved from the disgrace of receiving Parliamentary sanction, so far as this clause was concerned. Yet such influence did this clause in the agreement, though unsanctioned by the Legislature, have on the District Surveyor, that in his return to the House of Commons, in 1843, he states that “eighty one acres in this district, the property of the Grand Junction Canal Company, and eighty-eight and a-half acres, the property of the Great Western Railway Company, are exempt from the operation of the Building Act, except as to all houses erected on the latter property.