The history of Quebec as a province since Confederation has not received the attention it merits. This is the more surprising when one considers the study which has been devoted to the history of Lower Canada, to the old province of Quebec, and to New France. Political disputes at once violent and petty are supposed to constitute the history of Quebec since Confederation. It is unfortunate that this view is so widely held, because along with factional struggles went important and interesting economic, social, and political experiments all more or less closely connected with French-Canadian nationalist aspirations. While many of these experiments were local in origin, their growth had an influence far beyond the boundaries of the province. In this paper I propose to consider only one of these developments: some early French-Canadian views on protection.