386 LEGISLATION ON THE FOREST. 
say it is probable that ten years hence those fires will be thought 
to have diminished the national wealth by a larger amount than 
even the terrible conflagration at Chicago. 
There is no good reason why insurance companies should 
not guarantee the proprietor of a wood as well as the owner of 
a house against damage by fire. In Europe there is no con- 
ceivable liability to pecuniary loss which may not be insured 
against. The American companies might at first be embar- 
rassed in estimating the risk, but the experience of a few years 
would suggest safe principles, and all parties would find adyan- 
tage in this extension of security. 
Forest Legislation. 
I have alleged sufficient reasons for believing that a desola- 
tion, like that which has overwhelmed many once beautiful and 
fertile regions of Europe, awaits an important part of the terri- 
tory of the United States, and of other comparatively new coun- 
tries over which European civilization is now extending its 
sway, unless prompt measures are taken to check the action of 
destructive causes already in operation. It is almost in vain to 
expect that mere restrictive legislation can do anything effect- 
ual to arrest the progress of the evil in those countries, except 
so far as the state is still the proprietor of extensive forests. 
Woodlands which have passed into private hands will every- 
where be managed, in spite of legal restrictions, upon the same 
economical principles as other possessions, and every proprietor 
will, as a general rule, fell his woods, unless he believes that it 
will be for his pecuniary interest to preserve them. Tew of 
the new provinces which the last three centuries have brought 
under the control of the European race, would tolerate any 
interference by the law-making power with what they regard as 
the most sacred of civil rights—the right, namely, of every man 
to do what he will with his own. In the Old World, even in 
France, whose people, of all European nations, love best to be 
governed and are least annoyed by bureaucratic supervision, 
