suggested, and we confess inability to offer one here.

While reviewing the great intendant's activities, we must
not fail to mention the brewing industry in which he took
the lead. In 1668 he erected a brewery near the river St
Charles, on the spot at the foot of the hill where stood
in later years the intendant's palace. He meant in this
way to help the grain-growers by taking part of their
surplus product, and also to do something to check the
increasing importation of spirits which caused so much
trouble and disorder. However questionable the efficacy
of beer in promoting temperance, Talon's object is worthy
of applause. Three years later the intendant wrote that
his brewery was capable of turning out two thousand
hogsheads of beer for exportation to the West Indies and
two thousand more for home consumption. To do this it
would require over twelve thousand bushels of grain
annually, and would be a great support to the farmers.
In the mean-time he had planted hops on his farm and was
raising good crops.

Talon's buoyant reports and his incessant entreaties for
a strong and active colonial policy could not fail to
enlist the sympathy of two such statesmen as Louis XIV
and Colbert. This is perhaps the only period in earlier
Canadian history during which the home government steadily
followed a wise and energetic policy of developing and
strengthening the colony. We have seen that Colbert
hesitated at first to encourage emigration, but he had
yielded somewhat before Talon's urgent representations,