66 History of the English Landed Interest. 



Happily the same careful foresight has been applied to the 

 case of the royal forests, whose area and cultivation, up to as late 

 a period as the time of Queen Anne, depended upon the whims 

 and necessities of the reigning sovereign. Their boundaries 

 were largely augmented by the confiscated manors of Henry 

 Vni., and almost as largely diminished by the State necessities 

 of Elizabeth. In Stuartine days large portions of them were 

 sold outright or divested of their timber in order to provide 

 the necessaries of war or the extravagances of royal pleasures. 

 Then the constitutional lawyers of Queen Anne imposed a 

 check upon their alienation,^ and those of George III. placed 

 their administration under a Board of Commissioners. Finally 

 the latter institution came under the control of the Treasury, 

 and was obliged to submit its receipts and expenditure to the 

 auditors of the public accounts. Out of the wreck of centuries 

 there survive some 125,000 acres, which, with the Scottish 

 Crown Lands, produce an annual revenue of £430,000.^ 



Let us now glance at the modern sources of profit to which 

 the owners of some 2| millions of woodlands in the British 

 Isles have to look for remuneration. 



In 1869 Mr. Brown estimated that there were some 4,000 

 mining operations, requiring annually 40,000,000 cubic feet 

 of timber.^ To meet these mining necessities of to-day we 

 should probably have to add half as much again to Mr. Brown's 

 estimate ; since the value of the minerals raised in the United 

 Kingdom has risen from about £40,000,000, when he wrote, 

 to close on £60,000,000 at the present moment."* The same 

 author sets the requirements of 14,000 miles of railway, for 

 sleepers only, at 20,000,000 cubic feet annually. Now that 

 there are over 20,000 miles, this estimate cannot be less than 

 30,000,000 cubic feet. 



It is of course true that the introduction of steam, though it 

 has facilitated locomotion in these islands, has far more favoured 

 the competition of timber merchants in distant lands. But on 



* 1 Anne, c. 1. 



* Chambers'' Encifcl., .sm6 voc. "Woods and Forests." 



* The Forester, 3. Brown, p. 7, 1871. 



* Vide Final Eeportof the Royal Commission on Mining Royalties, 1893. 



