the almost Tacitean utterance: "The punishments are easing off: by dint of vigorous hanging, there will be no more hanging to do." "They make a desert," says Tacitus, "and they call it peace." Such was the industrial stagnation prevalent about this time throughout the kingdom that very often vessels arriving at certain ports could not find return freights; there was nothing to export. Colbert's efforts to build up great industries by means of bounties and restrictive tariffs had, after a temporary flash of success, resulted in dismal failure; and when peace was made with Holland in 1678, one of the conditions agreed upon was that "reciprocal liberty of trade between France and the United Provinces was not to be forbidden, limited, or restrained by any privilege, customs duty, or concession, and that neither country should give any immunities, benefits, premiums, or other advantages not conceded equally to subjects of the other." Thus was Colbert's leading principle of commercial policy completely overthrown, and that after a war which had brought him to the verge of despair to provide the means for carrying it on. Those were the days, however, of "imperialism" in a very real sense. Whatever the state of commerce might be in the Mother Country, Canada still had to trade with her alone; and, even so, all mercantile operations were hampered by an arbitrary fixing of prices. This was so under the sway of the company, and continued to be so to a large extent after its privileges had been swept away. Very imperial was the rule of Louis XIV. In his youth he had seen an attempt by the parliament of Paris to assert its prerogatives. In January 1649, just about the time when the scaffold was being prepared for Charles I of England, he and the court hardly knew where to turn for shelter; and he never forgot one night which they had to spend in fireless rooms without any attendance. The royal power, astutely guided by Mazarin, asserted itself eventually over parliaments and princes alike; and Louis XIV, arrived at manhood, determined that no such trouble should occur again in his time. Gaillardin, in his history of the reign of Louis XIV, fixes upon the year 1672--the year in which Frontenac was sent to Canada--as the epoch of the most complete enslavement of the parliaments. The historic function which those bodies were supposed to exercise, apart from their judicial powers, was that of registering the royal edicts; and in theory such registration was necessary in order to give any edict the full force of law. Manifestly this privilege might, like the control over money votes exercised by the English House of Commons, have developed into an effective check upon monarchical absolutism. The possibility was not overlooked, and marvellously clear and precise is the declaration by which Louis XIV, in the year 1673, put all the parliaments of his kingdom into the precise position he meant them to occupy. "First of