FOREST ADMINISTRATION. 29 



ground to take the remainder as burned by accident. I 

 have only succeeded in the last year to prevent the evil 

 augmenting by prohibiting that any sale should be made 

 until I had ordered it otherwise. This year I have applied 

 two prompt remedies : the one has reduced the officers to 

 a small number, whose salaries can be paid without incon- 

 venience, and upon whom it is easy to keep an eye ; the 

 other has instituted inquiry into past malversations, which 

 may not only serve as a warning for the future, but which 

 by the considerable restitutions which will be enforced will 

 contribute in part to the reimbursement of the expense of 

 the officers suppressed." 



'As may have been anticipated, the Commissioners 

 entrusted with the reformation did not fail to encounter 

 great resistance on the part of all those foresters, merchants, 

 and border proprietors, who had derived profit from the 

 deplorable regime to which Louis XIV. and his ministers 

 had determined to put an end. Thus in the administra- 

 tion of Alengon it was, according to a letter from Colbert 

 to M. Flavier du Beulay, of 4th June 1666, cited by P. 

 Cle'mont as necessary to break up " the monopolies of the 

 officers, and the merchants" to give up for many years 

 having any sales. But prompted, encouraged, and ener- 

 getically sustained by the king and by Colbert, and armed 

 with the most extensive powers, the Commissioners were 

 able to show themselves equal to the accomplishment of 

 the task which had been entrusted to them. They did not 

 recoil before either toilsome hours of inspection, and long 

 and troublesome researches, or before high influences and 

 lively oppositions; they neither hesitated to prosecute 

 great and small, nor to pronounce the most serious sen- 

 tences.* 



' The names of some of these good and eminent men, 

 associated with one of the most useful works of the reign 

 of Louis XIV., have come down to our day; thus have 



* Even capital punishment, for the Master des Eaux et Forets of Epernay was con- 

 demned to death. 



