The Lumbei^ Trade in New England. Ill 



size of the tree destroyed, and the burden of proof whether the 

 tree had been cut within or without the township was made to 

 He with the owner. 



The removal of duties from timber and lumber was intended 

 to attract importation to England, but, as Bridger pointed out, 

 it certainly offered a temptation to the lumbermen to poach on 

 the king's preserves; and, as experience proved, it encouraged 

 the formation of new townships in the -pine-growing regions. 

 Deputy Armstrong, in his report of September i, 1724,^ stated 

 that there were many good trees outside the townships, but 

 these were, for the most part, difficult to reach and to transport, 

 and that the government of New Hampshire had within the last 

 five or six years, and especially since the last act of Parliament, 

 granted four or five townships, each ten miles square, where the 

 best timber grew, without even sending home to have their 

 grants confirmed by the king, as they had been accustomed to 

 do in times past. There were within the towns, he said, vast 

 tracts belonging to the Crown, which the inhabitants claimed 

 only by right of possession, and which might be recovered, if 

 the Crown would examine into the original grants. The 

 Board of Trade wrote to the Treasury that something must be 

 done by Parliament, since the people insisted on their own in- 

 terpretation of the township clause.^ 



The Council stated, in their instructions to David Dunbar, 

 who was made surveyor in 1728, that nothing in that act was to 

 be construed to take away the right reserved to the Crown, by 

 the charter of William and Mary, to trees less than 24 inches 

 in diameter, whether within or without townships.^ But Slade, 

 one of the deputy surveyors, wrote that unless there were an act 

 forbidding the cutting of any white pines whatever, in or out of 

 the towns, there would be few masts left in the province.* Arni- 



1 Report from Mr. Armstrong, B. T. New Eng., Y: 24. 



2The Board of Trade to the Treasury, B. T. New Eng., Entry 

 Bk. I, Feb. 6, 1726. 



^Order in Council, June 13, 172S, B. T. Plants. Gen. L: 100. 



^Jeremiah Dunbar to David Dunbar, B. T. America and West 

 Indies i: 146. 



