Conifers 



estate with many acres of " rough mountain pasture." 

 After he has paid succession-duty and other very heavy 

 expenses, will he start planting several thousand acres ? 

 There will be a huge profit in 1979 or 1989, but will 

 he live till he is ninety-one years old and be able to 

 enjoy it ? Moreover, if he marries and dies, say, at sixty, 

 that is, in 1948, his son will have to pay a far heavier 

 succession duty because of his father's plantations, and 

 will not get his money back till forty years afterwards ! 



But that same land is always bringing in a small but 

 sure and safe return as sheep pasture or possibly as a 

 grouse moor. In order to plant it with conifers, all 

 this profit must be lost. When one reflects upon these 

 obvious facts, the wonder is not that so little planting is 

 done, but that any proprietors at all should be public- 

 spirited enough to start new plantations ! 



The recommendations of the Commission are magni- 

 ficent, and if carried out would produce a clear profit of 

 some -£107,000,000 at the end of eighty years (that is, 

 allowing compound interest on the money invested). 

 But to obtain this profit, the State must buy outright 

 9,000,000 acres and spend .£450,000,000 sterling. (An 

 annual outlay of .£2,000,000, and deficits which will rise 

 to about ^3,131,250 in the fortieth year, account for 

 this substantial sum.) One can only hope that any 

 Government will be found bold enough to undertake a 

 scheme of this gigantic nature. Unfortunately the ex- 

 perience of Government undertakings in this country 

 does not lead us to expect economy in management. 



Quite apart from the money question is the fact that, 

 on such land, one shepherd and a gamekeeper are em- 

 ployed on some 1000 acres. Under trees, on the other 

 hand, at least ten foresters and two gamekeepers would be 

 necessary. So that a very large number of countrymen of 

 thebest class would find employment in these State forests. 



But surely some method could be devised of subsi- 



247 



