INTERNATIONAL TRADE 
161 
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