Conifers 
estate with many acres of ‘rough mountain pasture.” 
After he has paid succession-duty and other very heavy 
expenses, will he start planting several thousand acres ? 
There will be a huge profit in 1979 or 1989, but will 
he live till he is ninety-one years old and be able to 
enjoy it? Moreover, if he marries and dies, say, at sixty, 
that is, in 1948, his son will have to pay a far heavier 
succession duty because of his father’s plantations, and 
will not get his money back till forty years afterwards |! 
But that same land is always bringing in a small but 
sure and safe return as sheep pasture or possibly as a 
grouse moor. In order to plant it with conifers, all 
this profit must be lost. When one reflects upon these 
obvious facts, the wonder is not that so little planting is 
done, but that any proprietors at all should be public- 
spirited enough to start new plantations ! 
The recommendations of the Commission are magni- 
ficent, and if carried out would produce a clear profit of 
some £107,000,000 at the end of eighty years (that is, 
allowing compound interest on the money invested). 
But to obtain this profit, the State must buy outright 
9,000,000 acres and spend {450,000,000 sterling. (An 
annual outlay of £2,000,000, and deficits which will rise 
to about £3,131,250 in the fortieth year, account for 
this substantial sum.) One can only hope that any 
Government will be found bold enough to undertake a 
scheme of this gigantic nature. Unfortunately the ex- 
perience of Government undertakings in this country 
does not lead us to expect economy in management. 
Quite apart from the money question is the fact that, 
on such land, one shepherd and a gamekeeper are em- 
ployed on some 1000 acres. Under trees, on the other 
hand, at least ten foresters and two gamekeepers would be 
necessary. So that a very large number of countrymen of 
thebest class would find employment in these State forests, 
But surely some method could be devised of subsi- 
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