It was the work of Maria Theresa to reform the administration of the various branches of government, and wholesome legislation was also extended to the forest branch by her forest ordinance of 1754, which remained in force until 1852. It relieved the private owners, who held most of the forest area, from the restrictions hitherto imposed, except in the frontier forests. These, for strategic reasons, were to be managed according to special working plans prepared by the “patriotic economic society.” The management of communal forests also was specially regulated. Otherwise the ordinance merely recommended in general terms orderly system and the stopping of abuses. In 1771, another forest ordinance proposed to extend the same policy of private unrestricted ownership to the Karst forests, with the idea that thereby better conditions would most likely be secured; but, since here the property was not as in Bohemia in large estates but in small farmers’ hands, the result was disastrous, as we shall see later: it merely led to increased devastation. The same result followed the increase of private peasant ownership which came with the abolishment of serfdom in 1781. In 1782, an ordinance full of wise prescriptions against wasteful practice intended for the Northwest territory sought to check the improvident forest destruction. A further wholesome influence on private forest management was exercised by the tax assessment reform in 1788, when not only a more reasonable assessment but for the first time a difference was made in taxation of managed as opposed to unmanaged woods and the epoch-making fertile idea of the normal forest was announced (see p. 115). At the same time the hunting privileges and other burdens, hampering forest properties were abolished, and measures for the extinguishment of the rights of user enacted. 3. _Development of Forest Policy._ As appears from the foregoing sketch of early attempts at forest control, no uniformity existed in the empire, each province being treated differently and the regal rights being applied differently in each case.