had served with Richelieu and had drunk in fully his ideas and policy.
He pursued his aims in a spirit thoroughly French. Everything was to
be organized, the spring of everything was in the minister's cabinet.
"To organize producers and merchants as a powerful army, subjected to
an active and intelligent guidance, so as to secure an industrial
victory for France by order and unity of efforts, and to obtain the
best products by imposing on all workmen the processes recognized as
best by competent men... To organize seamen and distant commerce in
large bodies like the manufactures and internal commerce, and to give
as a support to the commercial power of France a navy established on a
firm basis and of dimensions hitherto unknown,"--such, we are told,
were the aims of Colbert as regards two of the three links in the
chain of sea power. For the third, the colonies at the far end of the
line, the same governmental direction and organization were evidently
purposed; for the government began by buying back Canada, Newfoundland
Nova Scotia, and the French West India Islands from the parties who
then owned them. Here, then, is seen pure, absolute, uncontrolled
power gathering up into its hands all the reins for the guidance of a
nation's course, and proposing so to direct it as to make, among other
things, a great sea power.

To enter into the details of Colbert's action is beyond our purpose.
It is enough to note the chief part played by the government in
building up the sea power of the State, and that this very great man
looked not to any one of the bases on which it rests to the exclusion
of the others, but embraced them all in his wise and provident
administration. Agriculture, which increases the products of the
earth, and manufactures, which multiply the products of man's
industry; internal trade routes and regulations, by which the exchange
of products from the interior to the exterior is made easier; shipping