This relative proficiency in home industry accounts in part for
the tardy progress of the colony in the matter of large industrial
establishments. But there were other handicaps. For one thing,
the Paris authorities were not anxious to see the colony become
industrially self-sustaining. Colbert in his earliest instructions
to Talon wrote as though this were the royal policy, but no other
minister ever hinted at such a desire. Rather it was thought best that
the colony should confine itself to the production of raw materials,
leaving it to France to supply manufactured wares in return. The
mercantilist doctrine that a colony existed for the benefit of the
mother country was gospel at Fontainebleau. Even Montcalm, a man of
liberal inclinations, expressed this idea with undiminished vigor in
a day when its evil results must have been apparent to the naked
eye. "Let us beware," he wrote, "how we allow the establishment of
industries in Canada or she will become proud and mutinous like the
English colonies. So long as France is a nursery to Canada, let not
the Canadians be allowed to trade but kept to their laborious life and
military services."

The exclusion of the Huguenots from Canada was another industrial
misfortune. A few Huguenot artisans came to Quebec from Rochelle at an
early date, and had they been welcomed, more would soon have followed.
But they were promptly deported. From an economic standpoint this was
an unfortunate policy. The Huguenots were resourceful workmen, skilled
in many trades. They would have supplied the colony with a vigorous
and enterprising stock. But the interests of orthodoxy in religion
were paramount with the authorities, and they kept from Canada the
one class of settlers which most desired to come. Many of those same
Huguenots went to England, and every student of economic history knows
how greatly they contributed to the upbuilding of England's later