Des lois destinées à prévenir le déboisement des montagnes.

CHAP. 15: On the laws intended to prevent the deforestation of mountains.

WHENEVER one observes, with a little care, the effects that result from the changes undergone by the various parts of the territory of a people, one does not delay in perceiving that the modifications experienced by some exert upon others an influence that is sometimes advantageous to them, and sometimes fatal, according to the nature of these modifications; a marshy land whose waters are drained, and upon which a pleasant village rises, gives value to all the surrounding lands, and this value increases if the village is transformed into a city; countrysides that the long-prolonged abuses of a bad administration transform into unhealthy swamps, like the countrysides around Rome, degrade and depreciate, on the contrary, all the properties in the midst of which they are placed; the works that render a river navigable, and that facilitate communications between the various parts of the territory it waters, increase the value of all the lands to which they open outlets; the degradations experienced by the highest parts of the basin of a river exert, on the contrary, on all the watercourses that furrow this basin, a more or less fatal influence, and thus harm all the other parts of the territory.

A people can therefore attain the degree of well-being and power that its nature allows only insofar as each of the parts of the soil that nourishes it receives the destination most conformable to the general interest. To give its riches a great development, it would be necessary, if it were possible, for a single, and above all enlightened, will to preside over the disposition of each of the parts of its territory, and make it contribute to the prosperity of all the others. But the existence of such a will, supposing it possible, cannot be reconciled with the division of the soil into private, communal, provincial, and national properties, and with the faculty guaranteed to each of disposing of his goods in a nearly absolute manner. One can well give to the part that remains common to the entire body of the nation the destination most favorable to public prosperity; but one cannot compel each of the fractions among which the population is divided to dispose of the part that has devolved to it in the interest of all the others. If the possessors of lands were all enlightened men, and if they could not be carried away by any vicious passion, one could count, for directing them well, on the power of private interest, in all cases where this interest would be in accord with the general interest; but, besides the fact that it is not permissible to count on a nation of enlightened men exempt from vices, this concordance between all private interests and the general interest does not always exist, although it takes place in the greatest number of cases.

When the agronomist Arthur Young visited France to study its resources, he was struck at once by the devastations being committed in the forests, by the complaints that arose on all sides about the dearness of wood, and by the low price at which it was sold compared to other products of the soil. In comparing the revenues that a certain extent of land in the nature of woods gave, with the revenues that an equal extent of land of the same quality, devoted to producing cereals or to fattening animals, gave, he found that there were still far too many forests in France. He asserted that, if he possessed woods in that country, he would have them cut down and put the land into cultivation, certain of making a good speculation.

“The rent of arable lands, abstracting from the parts that remain uncultivated,” he said, “is 15 shillings six pence per acre [^86]; the rent of woods is only 12 shillings [^87]. How can common sense then permit complaints about the high price of wood, since this price, instead of being, at the current rate, a damage to the consumers, is, on the contrary, a very real one for the proprietors, who do not draw from their lands the revenues they would give them if they had them cleared and put into cultivation. I am so persuaded of this, that if I were a possessor of woods in France, I would have every last acre that was practicable for the plow grubbed up, and I would put it into cultivation, and I have the firm conviction that this speculation would be profitable to me. If agriculture makes progress, and it certainly will, provided it is freed from tithes and from the inequality of taxes, the price of wood will have to increase considerably, to prevent proprietors who understand their interests from converting their forests into arable lands.”

“There is another proof, no less incontestable, that the price of wood is too low in France; it is that the coal mines found in almost all parts of the territory are not exploited, and that the people burn wood in the immediate vicinity of these mines; I have experienced this myself in all the inns, where I have always been given wood for my heating, even near the mines that were in a state of exploitation, such as those of Valenciennes, Mont-Cenis, Lyon, Auvergne, Languedoc, Normandy, Brittany, and Anjou. Is it possible to believe that this would happen, if the price of wood had risen to the level of the price of all other productions?”

“The conclusion to be drawn from these facts,” added Arthur Young, “is clear enough: it is that the legislature must take no measure whatsoever to encourage the production of wood; that it must let its price rise to the point where demand will naturally carry it, and that the societies and academies of agriculture, generally composed of consumers not interested in production, must put an end to their unjust and impertinent clamors against the price of a product that is much too low [^88].”

These observations would be just, if one were to consider woods only like most other productions; that is to say, in the immediate interest of the producers and consumers. Considering it only from this point of view, it is clear that the proprietor must be left master to draw from his holding the kind of products that ensure him the largest revenue. If the public consents to pay more for the wheat that a certain extent of land gives than it would wish to pay for the wood that would be produced by an equal extent of land of the same quality, it is evident that the need for wood is felt less keenly than the need for wheat. In employing his land to produce cereals, the proprietor follows the counsel that his interests dictate, at the same time that he conforms to the wishes of the consumers [^89].But forests are not useful only for the wood they furnish every year to landowners, and which the latter deliver to consumers; they are useful above all for the waters they distribute to the populations spread throughout the valleys above which they are situated. By destroying them and converting them into arable lands, the proprietors will perhaps increase their revenues by something; the extent of land that gave them only fifteen francs may give them eighteen or nineteen. But the effects of this change will not be felt only by those who produced them; they will not be limited to increasing or diminishing their revenues, according to whether the enterprise was well or poorly conceived; they will extend to numerous populations, and may affect them, in a regrettable manner, in their properties and in all branches of their industry. The clearing will probably have for its result to dry up the springs that carried fertility into the plains, to transform the rivers into torrents, to render communications difficult or impossible, because the rivers will be too low in times of drought, and they will overflow in the rainy season.

The proprietors cannot be paid for the services that their forests render to the populations spread throughout the basins of the rivers by the influence they exert on the distribution of waters; they have no profits to expect but from the sale of the wood, and it is natural that they constantly compare the revenue they draw from it to that which the same lands would give them if they were cleared and employed to produce cereals or to raise flocks. For their part, the populations that have developed in the basins of the rivers, and whose prosperity is founded on the waters that fertilize their agriculture and give life to their industry or their commerce, can pay nothing for the services that the forests render them. The wood that comes to market is valued by the services it can render to him who buys it to consume it, and not by those it rendered to the public before being felled.

Forests or woods, especially in certain positions, therefore render to a nation services that produce no particular advantage for those who are their proprietors, services that everyone enjoys, without anyone having the will or the power to pay for them, in order to perpetuate their duration. The interests of the proprietors not being a guarantee for the interests of the public, since these two kinds of interests, far from always being in accord, are often opposed; it has been thought that the legislative power ought to intervene to prevent the general interest from being sacrificed to private interest. It must even be said that when governments have interposed their authority for the conservation of woods and forests, they have generally been led, less by an enlightened reason than by a sort of instinct, and sometimes even by bad passions.

From the beginning of the fourteenth century until toward the end of the seventeenth, the kings of France were much occupied with the conservation of forests: if one were to rely on the titles of their ordinances, one would even be tempted to believe that they considered properties of this kind in their true relations with public prosperity; all these titles, in effect, announce that they are going to treat of waters at the same time as of forests, as if, by the conservation of the latter, they had principally had in view to watch over the conservation of the former; but this is only a deceptive appearance; the connection that is in the words is found neither in the ideas nor in the measures [^90].

It would have been necessary, to subject woods and forests to a good administration, that the causes which recommended their conservation were well known, and that the power of the government was uncontested over all parts of the national territory; but it was not in the darkness of the Middle Ages, and in the midst of the anarchy produced by the feudal regime, that it was possible to conceive and to take general measures to make each of the parts of the territory contribute to the prosperity of the whole; all that it was possible to do then was to watch, as much as possible, over the conservation or the good administration of each part, without occupying oneself with the relations it might have with the others.

The ordinances rendered from the beginning of the fourteenth century until 1669, on waters and forests, had generally had for their object only the conservation of the revenues of the crown. One had seen, in the forests, only the immediate products they gave annually, and the game to which they offered refuge; one had seen, in the rivers and streams, only the fish that could be taken there. Hunting and fishing were in those times more important affairs for the monarch and his house than agriculture and commerce.

Louis XIV and his counselors were dominated by the same ideas and by the same passions; however, they carried their views a little further. After having taken the measures that the enlightenment or the needs of the time could suggest to them, to conserve the forests of the state and ensure the service of the navy, they occupied themselves with the woods of private individuals. The ordinance of the month of August 1669 enjoined all persons, without exception or difference, to regulate the cutting of their coppice woods to at least ten years, with a reservation of sixteen standards of which they could dispose after the age of forty years. It ordered them to reserve ten of them in the ordinary sales of high forest, leaving them however the faculty of disposing of them for their profit, after the age of one hundred and twenty years. They were enjoined moreover to observe, in the exploitation of their woods or forests, what was prescribed for the usage of the forests of the crown, under the penalties carried by the ordinances.

The Grand Masters and other officers of the Waters and Forests were authorized to visit or inspect the woods of private individuals, to ensure the observation of these dispositions and to repress contraventions [^91].

Private individuals being held to conform, in the exploitation of their woods, to the rules prescribed for the forests of the state, it followed that it was forbidden to them to grub them up to convert them into arable lands. This is, in effect, what was decided by two decrees of the council, one of 9 December 1705, the other of 16 May 1724. The woods were subject to the rules of public law, as to exploitation, and to the rules of private law, as to transmission.

The same motives that had led the government to forbid private individuals the destruction of their woods, and to impose rules on them for exploitation, determined it to forbid them from establishing there, without a particular authorization, forges, furnaces, and glassworks [^92]; it was feared that the consumption of wood that would be made by these factories, however profitable it might be for the proprietors, would be harmful to the public interest.

The ordinance of 1669 had not sufficed to protect the woods from devastations; it results, on the contrary, from the testimony of Arthur Young, cited in the preceding chapter, that even before the revolution, they were ravaged with impunity, at least in some parts of France. When the revolution broke out, the old laws on waters and forests were not immediately abolished, but they had even less force than they had had before. This weakness of the laws had consequences all the more extensive as the alienation of the national domains gave the purchasers the means to dispose, without control, of the woods they had acquired. The National Assembly, by its instruction of 12 August 1790, tried to have the old rules respected by the local administrations and by the citizens; but, as in the eyes of many persons, liberty was only the emancipation from all rule and all duty, its exhortations produced but little effect.

“The National Assembly,” it is said in this instruction, “has not yet been able to occupy itself with the reforms that the administration of the domains and woods may require; it has decreed only the sale of the national goods. Thus, with regard to the management of these goods and the collection of their revenues, things must remain, for the present, on the old footing, and the municipalities, as well as the administrations, cannot take part in them.

» It is the same with the jurisdiction of the waters and forests, which still subsists, and which having as yet lost only the single attribution of hunting offenses, must continue to take cognizance, as in the past, of all the other matters that the old laws have submitted to its competence, until a formal decree of the National Assembly has pronounced its suppression.

“A number of municipalities, however, misled by a false interpretation of the decrees of last 11 December and 18 March, have permitted themselves undertakings whose duration and multiplication would have the most fatal consequences. The National Assembly has placed under the safeguard of the administrative and municipal assemblies the forests, the woods, and the trees, and it has recommended their conservation to them. From this several municipalities have concluded that the administration of the woods was attributed to them.......

“This error has already produced much evil. The guards of the masterships have, in several places, been expelled from the forests and exposed to violence. The officers of the masterships themselves have not been respected; they are, in certain provinces, reduced to the powerlessness of performing their functions..... Considerable damage has been committed in the woods, under the eyes of the municipalities that ought to have prevented and forestalled it, and which have not had the strength to oppose it......

“It is up to the administrative assemblies and especially to their directories to stop the course of a truly frightening disorder; it is to them that it is reserved to supervise the conduct of the municipalities, to contain them within the precise bounds of their power.... They themselves are charged with watching over the conservation of the woods, and it is not only against the offenses of private individuals, it is also against the errors and the undertakings of the municipalities, that they must defend this precious property [^93].”

The law of 14 August 1791 suppressed the old forestry administration and organized a new one; it subjected to this administration and to the regime established by the ordinance of 1669, 1° the forests and woods that belonged to the State; 2° the woods held from the former domain of the crown, by title of concession, pledge and usufruct or other revocable title; 3° the woods possessed in gruerie, grairie, segrairie, tiers et dangers, or undivided between the nation and communities; 4° the woods belonging to communities of inhabitants; 5° finally, those that were possessed by houses of education and charity; but the woods belonging to private individuals were freed from the forestry regime and from the rules to which the ordinance of 1669 and the decrees of the council had subjected them: each therefore had the liberty to administer his own and to dispose of them as of any other kind of property.

The numerous clearings that followed the promulgation of this law gave rise to the fear that France would lack wood. On 9 Floréal year XI (29 April 1803), a new law declared that, for twenty-five years, no wood could be grubbed up and cleared until six months after the declaration thereof had been made by the proprietor before the forestry conservatorship of the arrondissement where the wood was situated. The forestry administration was authorized to have an objection placed, within this period, to the clearing, on the condition of referring it, before the expiration of six months, to the minister of finance, upon whose report the government would rule within the same period. In case of contravention of these dispositions, the proprietor was to be condemned to restore an equal quantity of land to the nature of woods, and to a fine that could not be below one-fiftieth, nor above one-twentieth of the value of the grubbed-up wood. If the proprietor did not effect the planting or the sowing within the period fixed by the judgment of condemnation, it was to be provided for at his expense by the forestry administration.

The same law declared that the marking for the service of the navy would take place in the woods of private individuals, coppice woods, high forests, avenues, borders, parks, and even on scattered trees, and subjected the cutting of the marked trees to the rules observed for the national woods. The proprietors of high forests were held, except in cases of urgent necessity, to make, six months in advance, before the forestry conservator of the arrondissement, the declaration of the cuttings they intended to make, and of the places where their woods were situated. The conservator was to inform the maritime prefect in whose arrondissement his conservatorship was situated, so that he could proceed with the marking, in the accustomed form.

The law of 15 August 1791 and that of 9 Floréal year XI (29 April 1803) have been replaced by the Forestry Code of 21 May 1827. The first article of this code subjected to the forestry regime, 1° the woods and forests that are part of the domain of the State; 2° those that are part of the domain of the crown; 3° those that are possessed by title of appanage and majorats, reversible to the State; 4° those of the communes and sections of communes; 5° those of public establishments; 6° finally, those in which the State, the crown, the communes or public establishments have rights of undivided property with private individuals.

Article 2 restored to private individuals, with regard to their woods, the exercise of all the rights resulting from property, save for the restrictions specified in the other articles of the same law. It appears thus to abrogate the dispositions of the law of 9 Floréal year XI, which forbade private individuals, for twenty-five years, from grubbing up and clearing their woods; but this abrogation is only apparent, since the prohibitions made by this latter law are reproduced in the last title of the Forestry Code.

The woods of private individuals are therefore subject, with respect to property rights, to two transitory exceptions: one has for its object to ensure the service of the navy; the other the conservation of existing woods. The latter consists in the prohibition made to any person, for twenty years, from grubbing up or clearing his woods without having previously made the declaration to the sub-prefecture, at least six months in advance, and in the faculty given to the administration to oppose the clearing. The proprietor who, notwithstanding this opposition, proceeds with the clearing of his woods, incurs a fine of five hundred francs at least and fifteen hundred francs at most per hectare of cleared wood. He must be, in addition, condemned to restore the places to the nature of woods, within a period determined by the judgment of condemnation; and if he does not obey the judgment, the sowing or planting is effected at his expense.

These dispositions are not, however, applicable to young woods, during the first twenty years after their sowing or planting; to parks or enclosed gardens adjoining dwellings; to unenclosed woods, of an extent below four hectares, when they do not form part of another wood that would complete this area, or when they are not situated on the summit or on the slope of a mountain.

The exception established in the interest of navigation consists in the faculty given for ten years, counting from the promulgation of the law, to the department of the navy, of choice and marking on the woods of private individuals, high forests, reserve trees, avenues, borders and scattered trees. This right can however be exercised only on trees of the oak species, which are destined to be cut, and whose circumference, measured at one meter from the ground, is fifteen decimeters at least. It cannot be exercised, in any case, on the trees that exist in the enclosed places adjoining dwellings, and which are not managed in regular cuttings.

In order to facilitate for the department of the navy the exercise of this right, the law subjects all proprietors, except in the case of personal needs, for repairs and constructions, to the obligation of making, six months in advance, at the sub-prefecture, the declaration of the trees they intend to fell, and of the places where they are situated, under penalty of a fine of eighteen francs per meter of circumference for each declared tree; if, within six months, counting from the day of the registration of this declaration, the navy has not had marked, for its service, the declared trees, the proprietors may dispose of them freely [^94].

The successful bidders for woods subject to the forestry regime, the mayors of communes, private individuals, as well as public establishments, for exploitations made without adjudication, treat by mutual agreement with the navy, for the price of the woods it has marked for its service; if they cannot come to an understanding with it, this price is settled by appraisers, at common expense. If, within three months of the notification of the felling, made at the sub-prefecture, the navy has not taken delivery of the totality of the marked trees belonging to the same proprietor, and if it has not paid the price for them, the persons to whom they belong may dispose of them freely. Until the felling, the navy has the faculty of annulling the markings operated for its service; but it cannot annul it for only a part of the marked trees.

The obligations imposed on the proprietors of woods, in the interest of the navy, being to have only ten years of duration, counting from the promulgation of the Forestry Code, will cease on 31 July 1837. The interdiction against grubbing up and clearing woods having been limited to twenty years, proprietors will be able to dispose of them in the most absolute manner, counting from 31 July 1847. From this epoch, the woods that are situated on the summit or on the slope of the mountains will be able to be grubbed up and cleared, like those that will be found situated at the bottom of the deepest valleys. The proprietors will then enjoy the liberty they had under the empire of the law of 15 August 1791.It is not difficult to see the motives that must have led to the prohibition of the destruction and clearing of woods, especially those situated on the plateaus and on the slopes of mountains; but it would be difficult to find the reasons that led to placing a limit on the duration of the prohibition. In 1847, no revolution will doubtless have occurred, either in the nature of our globe or in human nature. The waters that fall on steep mountains, whose wood has been destroyed and soil disturbed, will form into torrents and carry gravel into the valleys, just as in our time. Those that fall on soil stripped of vegetation, heated by the sun's rays, or swept by the winds, will dissipate into vapors, as in our day, and will consequently be unable to infiltrate into the earth to reappear in the form of springs. The inhabitants of the mountains will not then believe themselves any more interested than in our day in leaving the soil in a state that is more profitable for the inhabitants of the valleys than for themselves.

If, in the interval of time that must elapse between the day the prohibition was pronounced and the day it is to cease, measures were to be taken to change the destination of a part of the soil, or the mores of the inhabitants; if the plateaus and the slopes of the mountains were to be converted into national or communal properties, and covered with woods, or if the populations spread throughout the basins of the rivers and streams were to acquire them, to give them the destination most favorable to their interests, one would understand that, from a certain epoch, no limit would have been placed on the right of private individuals to convert their woods into pastures or arable lands; but no measure being prescribed by the laws, it is impossible to see what new facts will, in fifteen years, render innocent the clearings that are judged damaging today.

The last article of the forestry code declares, it is true, that the sowing and planting of woods, on the summit and slope of mountains and on dunes, will be exempt from all tax for twenty years; but, if the proprietors have judged it to be in their interest to destroy the woods situated on these lands, it is doubtful that the exemption granted to them will be sufficient to determine them to re-establish them. At the expiration of the twenty years of exemption, they will find themselves, moreover, in the position they were in before these woods were torn up; the motives that determined them may still act upon them to make them take the same resolution. What then will be the cause that can oblige them to preserve a kind of property that they found it suitable to destroy, or which at least did not have enough value in their eyes to pay the costs that its conservation would have required?

If the woods situated on the summits, the plateaus, and the slopes of the mountains are no less useful to the populations spread throughout the basins of the rivers and streams than to the private individuals or communes to which they belong; if the interest of these populations is that they be preserved, while the interest of the proprietors pushes them, on the contrary, to destroy them, there is no other means of ensuring their conservation than to bring all interests into harmony, or to employ force to prevent their destruction. The simplest means of interesting the populations to which the plateaus or the slopes of the mountains belong, to leave or to put their lands in the nature of woods, would be to grant to those who would make such a use of their properties, a tax exemption considerable enough to compensate them for the losses that might result for them. It would not suffice to grant them a temporary exemption to act effectively on their minds; a perpetual exemption would be needed, and one proportional to the sacrifices that would be required of them.

As for the use of force, which is the habitual means of despotic governments, it is rare that it produces the effect one promises oneself from it, and that it does not produce many others that were not expected. Louis XIV had recourse to it, and we have seen, by the examples cited by Arthur Young, that this means did not prevent the devastation of the most beautiful forests. Napoleon, by the law of 9 Floréal year XI, and the authors of the forestry code of 1827, have sought to prevent the destruction of woods by the temporary use of the same means; but one can predict, without fear of being contradicted by the results, that it will be neither by prohibitions, nor by the fear of fines, that the prosperity of France will be ensured. It is not enough, to make a nation prosper, to place obstacles in the way of bad measures; one must know how to determine wills to take good ones: a people does not progress through inaction.

The regime to which the forestry code subjects the woods and forests of the State, those of the domain of the crown, of the communes, and of public establishments, has principally for its object to ensure their good administration, and to prevent their destruction and clearing. The motives for which their conservation has been watched over have perhaps not always been those that ought to have been consulted in the general interest; but these motives, whatever their nature may have been, have influenced the result of the measures they have caused to be taken. It does not enter into the plan of this book to examine the means of administration that have been established at various epochs to watch over the conservation of woods; it is sufficient to point out their tendency.

One conceives that all forests do not have the same importance for a nation; the conservation of woods situated at the bottom of valleys matters less than that of woods situated on the plateaus and on the slopes of mountains. Woods placed near the mouth of a river are, in general, less precious for the country than those that are situated in the upper parts of the basin of this same river. All the rules that can be established on this matter are therefore subordinate to the physical circumstances in the midst of which each population is placed.

The ordinances or laws that have been made for the conservation of forests have almost never taken into consideration the situation occupied by the woods whose destruction one proposed to prevent. One might have feared that serious inconveniences would result from this apparent lack of foresight, and yet no unfortunate inconsistency seems to have been the consequence. The reason is that, in all countries, the best lands have almost always been the first to be put into cultivation. The woods that private interest led to be destroyed last were those whose conservation the general interest particularly solicited.

Whenever it is a question of subjecting properties of this kind to particular rules, there are three sorts of interests that must never be lost from view, and which it is important to reconcile as much as possible: the interest of the entire population, the interest of the proprietors of woods or of lands that ought to be consecrated to this kind of product, and the interest of the consumers.

I have not spoken, in these considerations, of the interests or the needs of the navy; and yet it is principally in view of these interests that woods have been subjected to a particular regime. The legitimacy of this interest has been called into question, even in England, where economists have been found who have maintained that a powerful navy was a good thing neither for the people who possessed it, nor for humanity in general, and that it was better, moreover, to buy wood in the countries where it was produced cheaply, than to produce it oneself at great expense. A writer whose knowledge and patriotism have not been questioned has published on this subject an opinion that I believe I should report here.

“I should be sorry,” he says, “to add to my reasons two words on the most common argument, on that which is founded on the pretended necessity of a royal navy; for I consider any idea of a great naval force as being founded on very doubtful theories. A powerful navy is damaging to other nations by its object, which is to carry, even to the most distant parts of the globe, the fatal effects of ambition, and all the horrors that follow the spirit of conquest, when it derives from a still more maleficent spirit, that of foreign commerce. And yet whatever be the commercial necessity founded on the worst principles that is alleged to support it, the expense of it is so considerable, that no nation can be formidable at the same time on sea and on land, without making efforts which, by means of loans, cause our burdens to fall upon our innocent posterity. Mr. Hume has observed that the English fleet, at the height of the war of 1740, cost the nation more than the entire military establishment of the Roman empire under Augustus, when all that was then worthy of being called the world was placed under the scepter of that prince. In our last war, the expense of our fleet was double that which had attracted the attention of that able and profound writer; for the naval expense of 1781 rose to 8,603,884 pounds sterling.

“The ambition of statesmen is always disposed to found, on the existence of a great commerce, the necessity of a great navy to protect it; and one then supposes the necessity of a great commerce to support a great navy: very fine systems of political economy have been the consequence of this maleficent combination. The deceitful dream of colonies has been a branch of this curious policy, which has cost the English nation, as Sir John Sinclair has demonstrated, two hundred and eighty million sterling [^95]. Rather than place itself in the necessity of making this enormous expenditure, to which our powerful navy has obliged us, would it not have been better for the nation to be without commerce, without colonies, and without a navy? The same folly has infected the cabinet of France: there, a great navy is necessary, because they have, in Saint-Domingue, a great colony! Thus, one cause of damage always engenders another. This century has been the epoch of maritime power; this power will cease in the next century, and then it will be considered as a system founded on the spirit of commercial rapine.

“But whatever may be the necessity of navies, there is none for cultivating oaks to build them; it costs infinitely less to buy them than to cultivate them. One cannot foresee the epoch when the oak of the North, of Bohemia, of Siberia, of Poland, of Hungary, and of the lands that border the Adriatic will be exhausted. The price will rise as the transport becomes more costly, but these countries will furnish it for centuries. Until the beginning of the last century, the scarcity of oak constrained us to make use of pine; and yet, despite the great consumption that has been made of it, the countries from which we have drawn it could still furnish us with it for five hundred years” [^96].

The necessity of watching over the conservation of woods is not the same for all nations; a multitude of physical circumstances, such as the elevation and extent of the mountains, the heat or coolness of the climate, the nature and disposition of the soil, can cause the needs of men to vary. The deforestation of an island situated under a humid and cold climate cannot have for the inhabitants the same effects as the deforestation of a country such as Persia.

However wise, moreover, the measures of a government may be, they can never produce great results if they are not seconded by the mores of the population. It is therefore upon minds that one must above all act; one must show men their true interests. When they clearly see the goal toward which it is important for them to direct themselves, they will tend toward it without needing to be pressed.

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Notes

[^86]: FN1: About 19 fr. 35 cent. [^87]: FN2: About 15 fr. [^88]: Travels during the years, 1787, 1788 and 1789, vol. 11, ch. XIV, p. 101–102. [^89]: It is possible, however, that a spendthrift sacrifices the future to the present, and that he dries up the source of his revenues to indulge in foolish expenses. The low price of wood, in certain regions, could well prove only the improvidence, hardship, or prodigality of the proprietors. [^90]: See the ordinances of Philip V, of the Tuesday before Easter 1318; of Philip VI, of May 29, 1346; of Charles VI, of March 1 and 8, 1388, of the month of September 1402, of May 25, 1413, and of the month of February 1415; of Charles VII, of June 8, 1456; of Henry IV, of the month of June 1601 and of September 27, 1607; and of Louis XIV, of the month of August 1669. [^91]: Ordinance of 1669, tit. XXVI, art. 1 and 2. [^92]: Decree of the council of August 9, 1723. [^93]: At all times, the government has had great difficulty in having the forests respected: the large number of ordinances made on this subject provide proof of this. One sees, by the preamble of the ordinance of Charles VI, of the month of September 1402, that at the moment this prince ascended the throne, that is to say in 1388, the waters and forests were much trampled, destroyed and diminished in value, by the default and negligence of some of his officers on the matter of the said waters and forests. [^94]: The ordinance on waters and forests, of the month of August 1669, imposed on the proprietors of high forest the obligation to declare in advance the cuts they proposed to make, only when these woods were situated within ten leagues of the sea, or within two leagues of a navigable river. Tit. 26, art. 3. [^95]: About seven billion forty million francs. [^96]: Arthur Young, vol. 2, p. 115-116.