INTERNATIONAL  TRADE

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may  get  what  it  could  never  procure  otherwise.
Disraeli  wrote  in  1844  :—“  Every  one  at  a
French  dinner  is  served  on  a  cold  plate.  The
reason  of  a  custom,  or  rather  a  necessity,
which  one  would  think  a  nation  so  celebrated
for  their  gastronomical  taste  would  recoil
from,  is  really,  it  is  believed,  that  the  ordinary
French  porcelain  is  so  very  inferior,  that  it
cannot  endure  the  preparatory  heat  for
dinner.  The  common  white  pottery,  for
example,  which  is  in  general  use,  and  always
found  at  the  cafés,  will  not  bear  vicinage  to  a
brisk  kitchen  fire  for  half  an  hour.  Now,  if
we  only  had  that  treaty  of  commerce  with
France,  which  has  been  so  often  on  the  point
of  completion,  the  fabrics  of  our  unrivalled
potteries,  in  exchange  for  their  capital  wines,
would  be  found  throughout  France.  The
dinners  of  both  nations  would  be  improved  ;
the  English  would  gain  a  delightful  beverage,
and  the  French  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives
would  dine  off  hot  plates.  An  unanswerable
instance  of  the  advantages  of  commercial
reciprocity  !  ”  More  extreme  examples  of  a
gain  of  this  sort  are  to  be  found  in  the
natural  products,  foreign  to  its  own  climes,
which  a  country  imports.  England  would
have  to  go  without  tea,  coffee,  spices,
cotton,  bananas,  and  scores  of  other