home; and England kept alive the traditional hostility toward France because the trade with that country showed regularly an unfavorable balance. =196. Colonial policy.=—Based on considerations like the preceding, the colonial policy of this period was marked by restrictions entirely opposed to modern ideas of commercial freedom. A government which permitted or encouraged the establishment of colonies in distant lands, considered it a duty to itself to see that other governments or the colonists themselves did not rob it of the rewards of success. The colonial policy of the period has sometimes been pictured as purely one-sided, selfishly sacrificing the colonists to the interests of the people at home. This view leaves out of account not only the generous help given by European governments to their dependencies, but also a great mass of legislation aiming to benefit the colonists by assuring them a market in the home country, and imposing sometimes serious restrictions on the inhabitants there. A government did no more than hold resolutely to the idea that emigrants, wherever they might be, were still citizens of their native state and bound to help maintain its power. The government tried ordinarily to frame its regulations so that mother country and dependency would devote themselves to different lines of production, and so supplement rather than compete with each other. It considered it only natural and proper that the colony should trade mainly or entirely with the mother country. As said above, this was a period of bitter conflict among the European states, and a country’s commerce was thought to be one of the mainstays of its military and naval power; it seemed, therefore, to be the plain duty of colonists to contribute by their commerce to the resources on which the independent existence of the whole nation was thought to depend. QUESTIONS AND TOPICS The student will do best, probably, to study carefully one of the references to manuals in the bibliography as a means to an understanding of the topics of this chapter. 1. An exercise requiring considerable time, and supposing some acquaintance with narrative history, but promising valuable results, is the following. Select one of the European states: England, France, Spain, the Netherlands. Make a chronological summary of its wars during the period 1500-1789, classifying the wars under one of the heads suggested, and aiming to get the total years spent in each kind of war and at peace. Estimate the gains and losses by war, and so reach a position to judge of the merits of the policy pursued. 2. Sections 181-2 cover, to some extent, the ground of chap. 15. Review that chapter, and, if possible, review the history of some state like France, to appreciate the significance of the political development. [Adams, French nation.]