The effect of this theory upon the questions of colonization and colonial policy was profound. “I conceive, no forein Plantation should be undertaken or prosecuted,” wrote Samuel Fortrey, “but in such countreys that may increase the wealth and trade of this nation, either in furnishing us, with what we are otherwise forced to purchase from strangers, or else by increasing such commodities, as are vendible abroad; which may both increase our shipping, and profitably employ our people; but otherwise, it is always carefully to be avoided, especially where the charge is greater than the profit, for we want not already a countrey sufficient for double our people, were they rightly employed; and a Prince is more powerfull that hath his strength and force united, then he that is weakly scattered in many places.”[721] Granted the assumptions that real wealth consists only of the precious metals, and that, in a country without mines, these can be acquired only as a result of a favorable trade with strangers, the colonial theory of the European nations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was as logical as it was patriotic. The assumptions may have been wrong, but in this, as in so many other cases, we must remember that delusions are “as effective in social evolution as are unassailable facts.”[722] Footnote 721: _England's Interest and Improvement_, 1663; reprint, Johns Hopkins University, 1907, p. 35. Footnote 722: G. L. Beer, _The Old Colonial System_ (New York, 1912), vol. I, p. 37. The _pacte coloniale_, therefore, was, in some of its aspects, similar to the ideal of the modern “trust,” which would combine in one enormous organization the sources of its raw materials, its means of transportation, manufacturing plants, and selling agencies. The ideal empire, according to the Mercantile Theory, would embrace the home country, which, aside from the production of certain raw materials, was, in the main, the source of credit, the seat of manufactures, the selling agency to the world for the whole empire, the centre of administration, and the protective power to guard the system. The colonies in the temperate zone were to supply the typical products of their regions, the East and West Indies materials found in the tropics, and the African stations the supply of negro labor. It must be distinctly remembered that this was not merely an English ideal. It was the end toward which the most advanced European nations were striving in building up their empires according to what was then considered as unquestionably the soundest economic doctrine. France, under Colbert, was endeavoring, with a logical rigor that was not equaled by the English, to erect just such a completely balanced system. She, too, had her North American temperate-zone colony in Canada, her fishing fleets off Newfoundland, her West Indian possessions, her African supply in Senegal, and her factories in the East Indies.[723] Footnote 723: