50 THE FORESTS OF FRANCE. 



We are familiar with the fact of private property being 

 taken without hesitation when required for public use, 

 compensation, such as may be deemed adequate by the 

 government as representing the nation, being given, which 

 compensation may possibly be far from satisfying the pro- 

 prietor for his loss. Again, entails can be broken by 

 legislation when the interests of the nation seem to the 

 legislature to require that this should be done. And our 

 legacy duties seem to speak the whole property left by an 

 individual unused by him being no longer his when he is 

 dead, but property of the nation of which he only had the 

 usufruct during life, and which the nation, in the exercise 

 of its right, will transfer to such persons as he may desire 

 to have it, if he leave an expression of his will in the 

 matter in such form as the nation, through its representa- 

 tive the government, may have prescribed ; but even this is 

 subjected to a specified deduction, varying with circum- 

 stances, such as the relation in which the legatees stood to 

 the departed, the whole being indicative of the claim of 

 the nation to the whole if they had chosen to enforce their 

 claim. And all such legislation as this is only a carrying out 

 of the general principle involved in the aphorism of the 

 Apostle, " We brought nothing into this world, and it is 

 certain we can carry nothing out;" and in a still more ancient 

 saying, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked 

 shall I return thither : the Lord gave, and the Lord has 

 taken away ;" a principle again recognised in the trumpet- 

 note, " The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof! " 



It is in view of the importance of the native-grown 

 firewood and timber, in some countries, to the existence and 

 welfare of the inhabitants of them, and of the effects of 

 woods and forests in warding off calamities to which they 

 are exposed, that it has been deemed expedient to recog- 

 nise in legislating in regard to them the principle in 

 question. In Britain a holder of property may be inter* 

 dieted from so disposing of it as to injure the property of 

 another. And it having been ascertained that the destruc- 



