NEW BRUNSWICK FORESTRY CONVENTION 113 



everything upon which his hand has rested ; and the first thing that he 

 sought to destroy was himself. When the gift of reason was given to man, 

 there was a great responsibility resting upon him, and he was required, if he 

 wished to become a success, to go along the lines of reason, and so carry on 

 the work, but he thought he knew better than that with which Nature had 

 provided him, and he managed the whole thing himself and you know 

 what a mess he made of it. And when the lumbermen go into the woods 

 and take out more lumber than they want, and hack the trees three feet up 

 when they should cut them down close, and do all the other things that all 

 my lifetime I had heard the lumbermen charged with doing, we find they 

 have only carried on the work of their forefathers, and done the work as 

 badly as they could. Now, this Convention is called for the purpose of 

 setting those gentlemen right, and to say to them, " The work has got to go 

 on a little differently from what it has been in the past." This is not said in 

 an offensive sense, but said only because this is one of the reasons that this- 

 Convention was called, because the lumber business has been too engrossing" 

 upon the materials which they operate, and the Legislature and the people 

 have to step in, to ask a consideration, which I know the lumbermen will 

 give, in order that we may do better in the future. 



Now, when the work was taken up by man and as I say, he sought to 

 destroy himself the world did not advance very much, and all persons who 

 operated, not only the lumbermen, but every person else, seemed not to have 

 done as wisely as they might have done. Ladies and gentlemen, the world 

 would not have been finished, it would not have been fit for man to have 

 inhabited, nor for man to operate upon its face, if the trees had not been 

 produced; it was not a finished creation anyway, until the trees were there. 

 A world without trees would be uninhabitable men could not have lived 

 without trees, it would have been a bare, barren waste. It is the trees of 

 the country that stand between the world and desolation, and therefore if 

 man destroys the trees, he is doing away with the great inheritance that was 

 given to him. Nature bequeathed to him everything, all the raw material 

 of the world ; all the natural resources of the world were given to man, and 

 the trees were required to do their part in carrying on the work. Well, we 

 know he did not carry it on properly, because, as I said before, he first 

 destroyed himself as far as he could. Let me say this, I believe, as many of 

 you do, that if man had not by improper courses of conduct shortened the 

 days of his life, we here tonight would have the glorious heritage of proba- 

 bly 300 years to live upon this green earth upon which we now stand. 

 These natural resources of creation that were given to man to operate, you 



