Forestry for Canada. 367 
ture, it is a cruelty to decoy settlers there. How many hard 
working men have wasted the best part of their lives in try- 
ing to get a living out of such poor soil, and are tied down 
to it, for want of means to move away with their families ; 
the only result af their work being the ruin of a fine forest 
and their own ruin. The Quebec Legislature had enacted 
a wise law in 1883, the Timber Reserve Act, which, I regret 
to see, is on the point of being repealed. As to the rela- 
tions between the settler and the lumberman, where there 
is good faith on both sides, those relations ought to be of 
the most friendly nature. 
SEconDLY.—The Government ought not to force, every 
year, thousands of square miles of timber limits on the 
market in advance of the legitimate requirements of the 
trade, and with the unavoidable result of glutting the Kuro- 
pean market. The Province is interested in the successful 
carrying on of the timber trade, as it provides the whole of 
the raw material which keeps the trade going and ought to 
get returns for the value of that raw material, pro- 
portionate to the earnings of the trade. It will not come 
amiss here, to quote John Stuart Mill’s opinion of the 
status of our timber trade, from his Principles of Political 
Keonomy : “ The timber trade of Canada is one example of 
“an employment of capital, partaking so much of the 
“ nature of a lottery, as to make it an accredited opinion 
“ that, taking the adventurers in the aggregate, there is 
“more money lost by the trade than gained by it, in other 
“ words, that the average rate of profits is less than noth- 
“ing.” ven supposing the timber trade firmer now than 
when John Stuart Mill wrote, the Government is not justifi- 
able in encouraging over production, as it does, and it would 
appear wiser, not only for the sake of the forest, but for 
that of the Exchequer, if the Government kept the limits 
not actually required for the reasonable wants of the trade, 
so that the Province might hereafter benefit by the un- 
avoidable rise in the price of those limits. 
THiRpLy.—Strict regulations as to the minimum size of logs 
allowed to beycut, and encouragement to convert trees into 
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