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by section 143, since repealed and re-enacted with some modifications
by 20 and 26 Victoria, chapter 102, it was enacted *" that
no building shall, without the consent in writing of the Metropolitan
Board of "Works, be erected beyond the regular line of
buildings in the street in which the same is situate, in case the
distance of such line of buildings from the highway do not exceed
thirty feet or within thirty feet of tho highway, when tho distance
of the lino of buildings therefrom amounts to or exceeds thirty
feet, notwithstanding there being gardens or vacant spaces between
the line of buildings and the highway" Now this section
certainly imposes a restraint upon the building owner in the use
of his own land, and forbids projections within specified limits,
without the consent of the Metropolitan Board, beyond the general
building line; and in the Islington case the majority of the Court
considered that section 26 of 18 and 19 Victoria, chapter 122, did
no more than relieve him from this restriction, so far as his own
land was concerned. But it is to be observed that there is not—
either in the Metropolis Local Management Act, 1855, or in the
amending Act of 1862, which gives authority to the Architect of
the Board to fix the general building line—anything to prevent
that building lino from being brought up to the line of the
highway of the street itself, and in many instances the building
lino does actually adjoin the highway. In all such cases the
permission granted by section 26 of 18 and 19 Victoria, chapter
122, for projecting shop-fronts, seems to carry with it the necessity
of right to build to the extent mentioned in the section on the site
of the street itself, which belongs not to the building owner but to
the Vestry or District Board, and with the sincerest respeot for the
judgment of the majority of the Court in the Islington case, we
think that this is the true construction of the words. They
are perfectly general and unqualified, and appear to us to
have a universal application and to authorise these trifling
projections as well in the house, where, if built at all, they are
*Section 75.