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Commissioner of Crown Lands, and to be delivered and kept by him until the 

 claim was released or paid. Every person availing himself of any false 

 statement or oath to evade the payment of Crown dues forfeited the timber on 

 which dues were attempted to be evaded. 



The malicious cutting 01 loosening of a boom, or the cutting loose or 

 breaking up of a raft or crib, was made punishable by fine and imprisonment of 

 not less than six months. 



Such in brief was the system formerly in force. That it did not insure the 

 forests upon the Crown lands from pillage and waste by lumbermen is sufficiently 

 proved by the following statement made by the Commissioner of Crown Lands 

 of the Province of Ontario, in 1877 in describing the system of supervision then 

 in use and the abuses that had been formerly practiced. 



"Previous to confederation, the guardianship of the forests as regards 

 surveillance over the cutting of timber under license or in trespass on lands of 

 the Crown was so ineffective or attended to with such laxity as to be in fact no 

 guardianship at all, and pillage to a large extent was carried on almost with 

 impunity ; the seat of government was peripatetic,* and the agents of the Crown 

 Lands Department for the collection of timber dues were located at certain 

 points where returns were brought to them of such operations as parties chose 

 to make, on which dues were paid, and the amount received with statement of 

 timber, etc., on which it was paid, transmitted monthly to the department 

 without any actual knowledge of or check on the extent of cutting ; these 

 returns and moneys were received at headquarters without comment or inquiry, 

 and the one debited to the agent and the other placed to his credit." 



AMOUNTS ACCRUED AND COLLECTED FOR TIMBER DUES, GROUND RENTS, 

 AND BONUSES IN UPPER AND LOWER CANADA, DURING THE YEARS 

 PRECEDING THE FORMATION OF THE DOMINION GOVERNMENT. 



* For some years before the union of 1867 the seat of government of Canada alternated betweem 

 Toronti and Quebec. It had previously been located at Montreal, and at a still earlier period at 

 Kingston. 



