In the New Forest, in the Forest of Dean, and in Marlborough Forest, there is a great deal of beautiful forest scenery, where the practice of reducing the trees to pollards is not permitted; but, in much the greater part of Waltham Forest, the beauty is totally destroyed by this practice; and, therefore, it must be a most desirable measure, as regards the appearance of the country, to have the rights of cutting fire-wood totally abolished. I have not entered into any wild speculations, but have confined myself to a plain and, I hope, intelligible statement of a plan that I now see reason to hope will be carried into effect, and, I have no doubt, will prove of real advantage to the proprietors of houses and lands within this district. As many of my readers may not have seen the last Circular Letter, of the Surveyor of Woods and Forests, on the subject of the inclosure, and the Heads of the intended Bill, in which the plan submitted in the preceding pages is meant to be adopted, I have added copies, by way of Appendix. I cannot easily imagine on what grounds any serious opposition can be attempted to the measure now proposed, unless the Commissioners of Woods and Forests are to be told that they shall keep and preserve Royal Forests and extensive and useless Wastes, with all the severity and arbitrary spirit of the barbarous days of William Rufus, on the one hand; or that, on the other, if they do adopt any species of inclosure, it shall be in rood {17} allotments, for the accommodation of cottagers and paupers,—the inevitable consequence of which would be that every parish in the Forest would be inundated with persons dependent on daily labour for subsistence, where employment for such numbers could not possibly be found, and they must, of necessity, become burthens to the several parishes in which they might thus be domiciled. Viewing the subject, then, calmly and deliberately, with a mind wholly unbiassed either by local prejudices or party-spirit, I cannot conceive a more desirable medium than the plan intended to be carried into effect by the Bill now proposed, as it seems not easy to devise one that can more effectually meet the wishes, and bring to the very door of the proprietors of houses and land within the Forests a degree of accommodation and convenience—the want of which has been so long lamented, owing to the insuperable difficulties of obtaining any small inclosures or grants of land, under the existing system.