Now as to the rise in the price of wood for burning, I say, it proceeds not from the rise of the price of timber growing in forests, so much as from the increase of the price of labour, and principally of the price of transportation. This is not peculiar to France alone, but is common to all Europe almost, for the reasons I shall presently give. But in the first place, as to the matter of fact, that the rise in the price proceeds from the cause assigned, may be seen, by comparing the low price of an acre of standing forest, with the great value of the timber when brought to market: the first is the neat value of the wood; the last includes that of the labour. Next as to the price of labour; the rise here is universal in all industrious nations, from a very plain reason, easily deducible from the principles above laid down. While the land remained loaded with a number of superfluous mouths, while numbers were found in every province employed in agriculture, for the sake of subsistence, merely, such people were always ready to employ their idle hours and days, for a very small consideration from those who employed them. They did not then depend upon this employment for their subsistence; and a penny in their pocket purchased some superfluity for them. But when modern policy has by degrees drawn numbers from the country, the few that remain for the service of the public must now labour for their subsistence; and he who employs them, must feed them, clothe them, and provide for all their other wants. No wonder then, if labour be dearer: there is a palpable reason for the augmentation. The price of all necessaries has risen, no doubt, partly for the same reason, and this circumstance certainly enters into the combination: but work, in the country especially, has risen far beyond the proportion of the price of necessaries, and will rise still more as the lands become better purged of superfluous mouths. Notwithstanding what I have said, I readily allow, that the great consumption of wood for burning, but more particularly for forges, has considerably raised the intrinsic value of forest lands; but the consequence has not been, to extend the forests, as we have shewn, but to produce a general revenue from them all over the kingdom; whereas formerly, in many provinces, they produced almost nothing. When they were cut, cattle were turned in, and by eating up the tender shoots from year to year, the forest ran into a wild, neither producing timber, nor pasture. This practice was established upon the ruling principle of private interest. The land was not worth the expence of grubbing up the timber; the timber when grown, did not compensate the loss of a few years pasture. No jurisdiction, however well administred, can check the operation of that principle; and a statesman who would attempt it, would be called a tyrant: he would distress the husbandman, and do no service to the state.