creation of a strong and prosperous nation on the shores
of the St Lawrence. The addition of five hundred immigrants
annually during the whole period of Louis XIV's reign
would have given Canada in 1700 a population of five
hundred thousand. It was thought that the mother country
could not spare so many; and yet the cost in men to France
of a single battle, the bloody victory of Senef in 1674,
was eight thousand French soldiers. The wars of Louis
XIV killed ten times more men than the systematic
colonization of Canada would have taken from the mother
country. The second objection raised by Colbert was no
better founded than the first. Talon did not ask for the
immigration of more colonists than the country could
feed. But he rightly thought that with peace assured the
colony could produce food enough for a very numerous
population, and that increase in production would speedily
follow increase in numbers.

It must not be supposed that Colbert was indifferent to
the development of New France. No other minister of the
French king did more for Canada. It was under his
administration that the strength which enabled the colony
so long to survive its subsequent trials was acquired.
But Colbert was entangled in the intricacies of European
politics. Obliged to co-operate in ventures which in his
heart he condemned, and which disturbed him in his work
of financial and administrative reform, he yielded
sometimes to the fear of weakening the trunk of the old
tree by encouraging the growth of the young shoots.