Following out these principles Colbert set before himself two great objects, to promote within the limits of France itself the production of wealth by all the means in the power of the government, and to prevent the foreigner by the imposition of hostile tariffs from underselling the home producer in any of the commodities necessary to the national well-being. He endeavoured to abolish the provincial customs and local dues which impeded the free circulation of trade from French province to province, and actually succeeded in abolishing them over three-fourths of the country, in spite of the most strenuous local opposition. He improved roads and developed the canals which had been begun by Sully into a great system of water communication. Of this system the celebrated canal of Languedoc, between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, which has done so much to promote the prosperity of France, was the most striking example. For more than a century it remained without a rival. When at last other nations began to realise the importance of quick and easy communication, French roads and canals became the models upon which they worked, French engineering talent the authority to which they appealed, and the Suez Canal in the present day derives its ancestry from the canal of Languedoc and the genius of Colbert. He encouraged manufactures of all sorts. Under his care French lace, glass, tapestries, silks, and brocades, became the most celebrated in the world. He introduced a more scientific system of dealing with the state forests, promoted large breeding establishments for horses, encouraged the formation of industrial and commercial companies, assisted the founding of colonies, and protected the infant colonial trade by the formation of an efficient navy. At the same time he relieved the peasantry from the heaviest of the fiscal burdens which oppressed them by reducing the _taille_ nearly a half, and recouping the treasury by imposing indirect taxes, principally upon articles of luxury which were paid by the consumer. He helped the manufacturer by removing the export duties on articles manufactured at home, while he imposed heavy import duties on similar articles imported from abroad. [Sidenote: =Prohibition of corn exportation.=] There was, however, one serious exception to this policy. So fearful was he lest France should ever become dependent on other nations for her bread, that he absolutely refused to allow corn to be exported under any circumstances. The surplus corn produced by the rich corn fields of France over and above the wants of the nation would if freely exported have formed one of the most lucrative sources of the national wealth, for France in the seventeenth century was the corn-growing country of Europe, but Colbert deliberately deprived himself of this source of revenue, and kept the French agriculturist poor, in order to make food cheap and ensure a large surplus of corn in the country.