The
wilderness is an immense dormant capital in ready cash, possessing which
as a basis the North Americans may, for a long time to come, risk the
most daring social and political stock-jobbing. But woe to them should
they consume the capital itself!
The German forest and the privileges and compulsory service connected
with it are a last surviving fragment of the Middle Ages. Nowhere are
the ruins of the feudal elements more plainly visible than in the forest
regulations; the forest alone assures the rural population--in true
medieval style--a subsidy for its existence, untouched by the fury of
competition and small-farming.
Therefore do the demagogues so often try to change the war "about" the
forest into a war "against" the forest; they know that the forest must
first be hewn down before the Middle Ages can be wiped out of Germany,
and, on that account, the forest always fares worse than anything else
in every popular uprising. For though in our rapidly moving century
there is an average interval of fifteen years allowed between one
revolution and another, yet a good forest tree requires a much longer
time to reach full growth. At least the incalculable loss suffered by
our forest property in the year 1848, through lavish waste, plundering,
and wanton ruination, has certainly, up to the present time, not been
made good by natural means.
In Anhalt-Dessau it was decided, in an ordinance of the year 1852, that
all oak-trees standing on private ground should, in accordance with
ancient custom, remain the property of the sovereign.
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