fit for
tillage, and improved the pasturage, no proprietor would be at the
expense of grubbing up the wood to spoil the pasture, as he could make
no other use of the land on which it was produced. This wood must be
always worth something, especially in counties where there is not plenty
of coal, and the timber trees would produce considerable advantage;
therefore, if there was not one iron mine in Great Britain, no coppice
would be grubbed up, unless it grew on a rich soil, which would produce
corn instead of cord-wood; consequently, the tanners have nothing to
fear, especially as planting hath become a prevailing taste among the
landholders of the island. The committee appointed to prepare the bill,
seriously weighed and canvassed these arguments, examined disputed
facts, and inspected papers and accounts relating to the produce,
importation, and manufactory of iron. At length Mr. John Pitt reported
to the house their opinion, implying that the liberty granted by an act
passed in the twenty-third year of his majesty's reign, of importing
bar-iron from the British colonies in America into the port of London,
should be extended to all the other ports of Great Britain; and that so
much of that act as related to this clause should be repealed. The
house having agreed to these resolutions, and the bill being-brought
in accordingly, another petition was presented by several noblemen,
gentlemen, freeholders, and other proprietors, owners, and possessors of
coppices and woodlands, in the West Biding of Yorkshire, alleging, that
a permission to import American bar-iron, duty-free, would be attended
with numberless ill consequences both of a public and private nature;
specifying certain hardships to which they in particular would be
exposed; and praying, that, if the bill should pass, they might be
relieved from the pressure of an act passed in the reign of Henry VIII.
obliging the owners of coppice woods to preserve them, under severe
penalties; and be permitted to fell and grub up their coppice woods, in
order to a more proper cultivation of the soil, without being restrained
by the fear of malicious and interested prosecutions. In consequence of
this remonstrance, a clause was added to the bill, repealing so much
of the act of Henry VIII. as prohibited the conversion of coppice or
under-woods into pasture or tillage; then it passed through both houses,
and received the royal sanction. As there was not time, after this
affair c