320 POSITION AND PEOBPE0T8 OF THE ENTBRPBISE. 



lands, to submit, after previous formal inquiry, to General Conseils for 

 approval the fixing of p^rimfetres. 



" 5. To raise the amount of subventions, and to transform them in part 

 into reductions on the entire amount of imposts in favour of proprietors of 

 wooded lands. 



" 6. To insure the direct payment of indemnities for pasturage to the 

 dispossessed parties using these, by payments made to each of these according 

 to the return of personal estate prepared by the Forest Administration and 

 approved by the General Conseils. 



" Second Peoposition, Modification of the Budget submitted. 



" To maintain in the budget a credit of 3,500,000 francs, allotted for 

 works of forest roads, boisement, and gazonnement. 



" Third Pboposition, Modification of the Ministerial Organisation. 



" To transfer the general direction of the forests from the Ministry of 

 Finance to the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. 



" To transfer in consequence to the Ministry of Agriculture the credits 

 connected with the General Direction of Forests relating to them. 



" Such are the reforms which a careful study of the legislation, combined 

 with an equal solicitude for the general interest of the country and respect 

 for private property, have determined the Commission on Public Works to 

 submit to the National Assembly, 



" The first proposition will be presented as a parliamentary initiation. 

 We express the desire that ere long it will take tho form of a law which will 

 give legitimate satisfaction to the protests of the populations interested. 



" With regard to the two other propositions, we ask at present that 

 they be transmitted to the special commissions on the organisation of the 

 public service and on budgets." And it was ordered accordingly. 



Such proceedings in General Conseils and in the National Assembly may 

 be considered a fair indication of public opinion in regard to the enterprise, 

 and indicative of its being in accordance with the conclusions to which 

 those more immediately affected by these operations, which were being carried 

 on or had been completed, had been brought by what they had seen and 

 experienced of the results. 



Chap. VII. — Pbbsent Position and Prospects of the Enterprise. 



It has been intimated above that a chapter of the history of this enter- 

 prise was closed with the commencement of the war in 1870. By the 

 present position and prospects of the enterprise I understand the state of 

 the enterprise in which operations have been resumed after the interruption 

 thereby occasioned. 



The monographs in regard to different p^rimfetres in difierent depart- 

 ments of each of the three regions in which the more important of the 

 operations have been carried on, which have been given, may sufl&ce to give 

 a definite idea of the state of the works. The proceedings of General Con- 

 seils and of the National Assembly, and the statement by M. C6zanne which 

 have been cited in the latter part of the preceding chapter, show the spirit 

 in which the work has been resumed. 



The enterprise is groat, and it has been resumed with crippled means, but 

 not with less sanguine expectations of success. Of the magnitude of the 



