“Not any. There are twelve hundred larches on each acre. I shall remove one-third in ten years; and it will be strange if the bark and timber of four hundred do not pay all the expenses we have mentioned, with compound interest. Then I shall have eight hundred trees on every acre, the very lowest value of which will be ten pounds; and the ground will be worth four times what it is at present. It will be pasturage worth letting by that time.” “Then,” said my father, “after having paid yourself, these fifty acres, which were a month ago worth a rental of only fifty shillings, will bring in ten or twelve pounds a year, and have five hundred pounds’ worth of larches upon them. Upon my word, this is a pretty profit!” “Consider, too,” said Sir Henry, “that without costing me a farthing more, the thinnings of the plantation will add to my income at a continually increasing rate. I shall be able to employ more and more labourers every year:—not that I need tell you so; but I put in this observation for your daughter’s sake. She looks quite disappointed in me—disappointed to find that I look for any profit from the measures which will benefit my family and society at large. Have I guessed your thoughts rightly, Miss Lucy?” So rightly, that I blushed and my father laughed, while he assured Sir Henry that we none of us doubted his disinterestedness. “What different ways there are of benefiting one’s country and posterity, in different parts of the world!” I exclaimed. “In Canada, a landed proprietor would clear away as many trees as possible, I suppose, if he wished to do a patriotic thing.” “It is one of the most interesting employments I know of,” said my father, “to trace how the same principles lead men to directly opposite or widely different modes of conduct, according to circumstances; and if men studied this fact a little more carefully than they do, the world would be incalculably happier than it seems likely to be for some time to come. If statesmen and legislators saw that usages and laws must be varied with lapse of time and change of circumstances, we should be freed from many useless institutions. If our men of power saw that what is beneficial to a country in one age may be hurtful in another, we should have a better economy and a wiser distribution of our wealth. If our people discerned the same thing, they would leave off complaining of new measures because they are not old, and railing against their best friends because the advice they offer would not have suited the condition of our grandfathers.”