The forest rights which extend over the lands and possessions of others, being of no profit to the crown, and a grievance, as far as it goes, to the subject,—­these I propose to extinguish without charge to the proprietors.  The several commons are to be allotted and compensated for, upon ideas which I shall hereafter explain.  They are nearly the same with the principles upon which you have acted in private inclosures.  I shall never quit precedents, where I find them applicable.  For those regulations and compensations, and for every other part of the detail, you will be so indulgent as to give me credit for the present.

The revenue to be obtained from the sale of the forest lands and rights will not be so considerable, I believe, as many people have imagined; and I conceive it would be unwise to screw it up to the utmost, or even to suffer bidders to enhance, according to their eagerness, the purchase of objects wherein the expense of that purchase may weaken the capital to be employed in their cultivation.  This, I am well aware, might give room for partiality in the disposal.  In my opinion it would be the lesser evil of the two.  But I really conceive that a rule of fair preference might be established, which would take away all sort of unjust and corrupt partiality.  The principal revenue which I propose to draw from these uncultivated wastes is to spring from the improvement and population of the kingdom,—­which never can happen without producing an improvement more advantageous to the revenues of the crown than the rents of the best landed estate which it can hold.  I believe, Sir, it will hardly be necessary for me to add, that in this sale I naturally except all the houses, gardens, and parks belonging to the crown, and such one forest as shall be chosen by his Majesty as best accommodated to his pleasures.

By means of this part of the reform will fall the expensive office of surveyor-general, with all the influence that attends it.  By this will fall two chief-justices in Eyre, with all their train of dependants.  You need be under no apprehension, Sir, that your office is to be touched in its emoluments.  They are yours by law; and they are but a moderate part of the compensation which is given to you for the ability with which you execute an office of quite another sort of importance:  it is far from overpaying your diligence, or more than sufficient for sustaining the high rank you stand in as the first gentleman of England.  As to the duties of your chief-justiceship, they are very different from those for which you have received the office.  Your dignity is too high for a jurisdiction over wild beasts, and your learning and talents too valuable to be wasted as chief-justice of a desert.  I cannot reconcile it to myself, that you, Sir, should be stuck up as a useless piece of antiquity.

I have now disposed of the unprofitable landed estates of the crown, and thrown them into the mass of private property; by which they will come, through the course of circulation, and through the political secretions of the state, into our better understood and better ordered revenues.