that the regulations on manufactures filled eight volumes in quarto. =287. Burden of these restrictions on manufactures.=—There can be no question, either of the honesty of Colbert’s intentions or of the energy he showed in carrying them out. He sent out agents everywhere to study industries and to talk with the manufacturers, that he might legislate to the best advantage. One man, however, cannot know a hundred businesses better than the men who are carrying them on. Colbert and his successors were ignorant of many points, were deceived in many others. The result was a mass of regulations of which many were utterly bad, injuring both producer and consumer. The regulation prescribing a minimum breadth for cloth would have killed an industry in one part of France that wove strips for flags, an industry in another part that could sell cloth cheaper by weaving so narrow a breadth that one man could tend the loom. These industries, after a tedious and expensive delay, secured exemption from the law; others, less fortunate, were destroyed. A manufacturer ran always the risk of having his wares confiscated, not because they were bad and people did not want them, but because they failed to conform in some point to hide-bound regulations. An official inspector, shortly before the French Revolution, said that in every week of years past he had seen 80 or 100 pieces of cloth, good except from the government standpoint, cut in pieces or burned because they were irregular. Even the French revolted at some of the regulations, and half of the laws were evaded with the connivance of officials.