384 
Codling Beech Woods. 
estate on which the cutting complained of had taken place is situ- 
ated — because the waste for which he is liable or impeachable is 
cutting timber, and as beech is not timber in Oxfordshire, he could 
not be doing wrong in cutting it when it grew in that county. But 
can he cut beech trees of twenty years’ growth and upwards when 
they grow in Bucks, where they are timber 1 Before stating the case 
and the judgments it may not be out of place, as most of the readers 
of the Journal are not lawyers, to clear the ground by shortly ex- 
plaining what is meant by “ waste,” and what is the meaning of the 
expression “ a tenant for life impeachable for or of waste.” 
“ Waste ” means the destruction of the inheritance, and when 
the lawyers talk about a person “committing waste ” they mean a 
person who commits some act which is injurious to the inheritance 
or which destroys a part of it ; for example, if the estate has fine 
old oaks growing upon it, those oaks form parts of the estate — of 
the inheritance — they are fixed and rooted in the soil, and the estate 
is more valuable with them growing upon it than without them. If 
then they are cut down, the inheritance is injured and a part of it 
is in fact destroyed. Now an owner who is a tenant for life of an 
estate does not own it absolutely but in a limited sense only. He 
is entitled to it for his life ; he cannot dispose of it after his death, 
but when that happens it will belong to some one else not nomi- 
nated by him. In such a case good sense as well as law renders it 
incumbent upon him that he should not, while he is such limited 
owner, commit any act whereby the estate, of which he has such 
limited enjoyment only, should be injured or a part of it destroyed 
to the prejudice of the person who is to succeed him in such enjoy- 
ment ; and if he commits such an act it is but right and fair that he 
should be liable for the consequences of it, and make restitution to 
his successor so far as is possible. He is in short liable or impeachable 
for the act which he has committed — or to use the ordinary phrase 
he is “ impeachable for waste.” As a rule, when an estate is settled 
and tenancies for life in it are created, care is taken to insert apt 
words in the will or deed by which the settlement is effected to 
prevent the persons who are made tenants for life from being im- 
peachable for waste, but in the absence of any such words all such 
persons are impeachable in that respect. 
The facts in Dashwood v. Magniac were briefly these : — In 1848 
Sir George Henry Dashwood, Bart., became, on the death of his 
predecessor. Sir John Dashwood King (who himself had possession 
of the estate from 1798 to 1848), absolutely entitled in fee simple in 
possession to a landed estate, known as the West Wycombe estate, 
consisting of about 5,000 acres, the much greater part of which is 
situated in the county of Buckingham, but a small part in that of 
Oxford. Sir George continued in possession of the estate from 
1848 till his death in 1862. Thereupon his will, which he had made 
in 1855, took effect. By this will Sir George devised the estate to 
trustees upon trust, in effect, for his widow. Lady Dashwood, for 
her life, and after her death to his children, and in default of 
children to a nephew for life, with remainder to the nephew’s son, 
