344 EFFECTS OF FREISTCH REVOLUTION. 



from tlie legislation wliicli protected botli it and the game it 

 Bheltered, blinded them to the stiU. greater physical mischiefs 

 which its destruction was to entail upon them. No longer under 

 the safeguard of the law, the crown forests and those of the great 

 lords were attacked with relentless fury, unscrupulously plun- 

 dered and wantonly laid waste, and even the rights of property 

 in small private woods ceased to be respected.* Various absurd 

 theories, some of which are not even yet exploded, were propa- 

 gated with regard to the economical advantages of converting 

 the forest into pasture and ploughland, the injurious effects of 

 the woods upon climate, health, facihty of internal communica- 

 tion, and the like. Thus resentful memory of the wrongs asso- 

 ciated with the forest, popular ignorance, and the cupidity of 

 speculators cunning enough to turn these circmnstances to prof- 

 itable account, combined to hasten the sacrifice of the remaining 

 woods, and a waste was produced which hundreds of yeai's and 

 millions of treasure will hardly repair. 



In the era of savage anarchy which followed the beneficent 

 reforms of 1Y89, economical science was neglected, and statistical 

 details upon the amount of the destmction of woods during that 

 period are wanting. But it is known to have been almost incal- 

 culably rapid, and the climatic and financial evils, which else- 

 where have been a more gradual effect of this cause, began to 

 make themselves felt in France within three or four years after 

 that memorable epoch. f 



* " Whole trees were sacrificed for the most insignificant purposes ; the 

 peasants would cut down two firs to make a single pair of wooden shoes." — 

 MiCHELET, as quoted by Clave, Etudes, p. 24. 



A similar wastefulness formerly prevailed in Russia, though not from the 

 same cause. In St. Pierre's time, the planks brought to St. Petersburg were 

 not sawn, but hewn with the axe, and a tree furnished but a single plank. 



f See BECQTTEREii, Memoire sur les Forets, in the Mem. de I'Academie des 

 Sciences, t. xxxv., p. 411 et seq. 



Similar circumstances produced a like result, though on a far smaller scale, 

 in Italy, at a very recent period. Gallenga says : " The destruction of the 

 majestic timber [between the Vals Sesia and Sessera] dates no farther back 

 than 1848, when, on the first proclamation of the Constitution, the ignorant 

 boor had taken it for granted that aU the old social ties would be loosened,, 

 and therefore the old forest-laws should be at once set at naught." — Country 

 Life in Piedmont, p. 136. 



