LEGISLATION ON THE FOREST. 
233 
namely, of every man to do what he will with his own. In the 
Old World, even in France, whose people, of all European 
nations, love best to be governed and are least annoyed by 
bureaucratic supervision, law has been found impotent to pre¬ 
vent the destruction, or wasteful economy, of private forests; 
and in many of the mountainous departments of that country, 
man is at this moment so fast laying waste the face of the 
earth, that the most serious fears are entertained, not only of 
the depopulation of those districts, but of enormous mischiefs 
to the provinces contiguous to them.* The only legal pro¬ 
visions from which anything is to be hoped, are such as shall 
make it a matter of private advantage to the landholder to 
spare the trees upon his grounds, and promote the growth of 
the young wood. Something may be done by exempting 
standing forests from taxation, and by imposing taxes on wood 
felled for fuel or for timber, something by premiums or hon¬ 
orary distinctions for judicious management of the woods. It 
* u The laws against clearing have never been able to prevent these oper¬ 
ations when the proprietor found his advantage in them, and the long 
series of royal ordinances and decrees of parliaments, proclaimed from 
the days of Charlemagne to our own, with a view of securing forest prop¬ 
erty, have served only to show the impotence of legislative action on this 
subject.”— Clave, Etudes sur VEconomie Forestiere, p. 32. 
“ A proprietor can always contrive to clear his woods, whatever may 
be done to prevent him; it is a mere question of time, and a few impru¬ 
dent cuttings, a few abuses of the right of pasturage, suffice to destroy a 
forest in spite of all regulations to the contrary.”— Dunoyeb, De la Liberte 
du Travail, ii, p. 452, as quoted by Clav6, p. 353. 
Both authors agree that the preservation of the forests in France is 
practicable only by their transfer to the state, which alone can protect 
them and secure their proper treatment. It is much to be feared that 
even this measure would be inadequate to save the forests of the American 
UnioD. There is little respect for public property in America, and the 
Federal Government, certainly, would not be the proper agent of the 
nation for this purpose. It proved itself unable to protect the live-oak 
woods of Florida, which were intended to be preserved for the use of the 
navy, and it more than once paid contractors a high price for timber stolen 
from its own forests. The authorities of the individual States might be 
more efficient. 
