It is against the Duke's laws to take birds' nests; even those of birds of prey cannot be taken without the permission of the keeper of the forests.
For a nest taken of common singing-birds, 5 florins.
Should the nest be taken out of a pleasure-ground, the fine then becomes doubled.
It may appear to many people quite impossible that these penalties can be enforced in desolate districts so nearly uninhabited: nevertheless, by a sort of diamond-cut-diamond system, the Duke's forest officers have various cunning ways of detecting those who infringe them, and the fact is that fuel and wild grass are very often wanting in a solitary hovel absolutely environed by both. I myself was one day told that I had become liable to be fined eighteen kreuzers, because in a reverie I had allowed a rough pony I was riding to bend his head down and eat a few mouthfuls of grass; and another day, seeing a man who was driving the ass I was riding rub with mud the end of a switch he had just cut, I was told by him, in answer to my inquiry, that he did so in order that it might not be proved he had _cut_ it. However, lest these trifling data should not be deemed sufficient proof, I will at once add, that I have myself seen the peasants lying in the Duke's prison for having offended against these petty laws.
I took some pains to inquire what possible objection there could be to the poor people collecting a few dead leaves, or the rank wild grass which grows here and there all over the forest, and I was told that both of these by rotting are supposed to manure the trees, yet, as I have already stated, quantities of the largest timber are to be seen decaying in every direction.
In a crowded, populous country, all descriptions of property must be clearly distinguished and most sternly protected; but in a state of nature, or in districts so nearly approaching to it as many parts of Nassau, the same rule is not applicable--the same necessity does not exist; and under such circumstances, the punishment inflicted upon a child for tearing up wild grass with his hands most certainly is (and who can deny it?) greater than the offence.
It is with no hostile or bad feeling towards the Duke of Nassau that I mention these details: he is a personage much beloved in his duchy, and I believe with great reason is he respected there; yet his forest laws no one surely can admire; and though custom certainly has sanctioned them,--though the humble voice of those who have suffered under them has hitherto been too feeble to reach his ears,--and though those about his court and person are but little disposed to awaken his attention to such mean complaints,--yet no one can calmly see and foresee the state of political feeling in Germany without admitting that the most humble traveller (and why not an English one?) may render the Duke of Nassau a friendly service, by bringing into daylight, unveiled by flattery, an act of oppression in his government, which, while it has most probably escaped his attention, is seditiously hoarded up by his political enemies to form part of that fulcrum which they are secretly working at, in order to effect by it, if possible, his downfall. A grievance, like a wound, often only requires to be laid open to be cured; whereas if, deeply seated, it be concealed from view, like gunpowder imbedded in a rock, when once the spark _does_ reach it, it explodes with a violence proportionate to the power which would vainly have attempted to smother it in the earth.