45 8 ON THE PRICE OF FOREIGN PRODUCE. 



by unflinching sacrifice and by stubborn energy. It kept the 

 peace at home, and I fear broke it abroad, while other nations, 

 in the interest of aristocracies, invariably brutal but generally 

 polished, permitted havoc to be made of true law and real 

 order. It has welcomed foreigners hither, men who have 

 taught it what it did not know, and would never, I believe, 

 have found out but for their teaching. It owes to these 

 immigrants its manufactures, its trade, and not a little of 

 such political wisdom as it possesses. It owes its agriculture 

 to Holland, its textile fabrics to Flanders, its silk manufactures 

 (rendered abortive by inbred stupidity) to France. Its financiers 

 came from Antwerp and Amsterdam. In science, in art, in 

 learning, it has accepted the results of foreign intelligence, and 

 has placidly assumed that what they have given is autoch- 

 thonous. It never had a school of painters till the eighteenth 

 century, five centuries after the art had been developed and 

 nearly perfected over the Channel, or as the French call it, 

 over the Sleeve, though two centuries before Reynolds, English 

 gentlefolks paid prodigally for what foreigners produced. 



English cookery was detestable. I am disposed to think 

 that the solitary service which the Stuart exiles did to the 

 country which they robbed and demoralised was to teach 

 them the better handling of their food, for it cannot be denied 

 that the kitchen garden made great progress after the Restor- 

 ation. Now when this change took place, the spicing of food 

 by Eastern produce became less and less a necessity or a 

 fashion, and the Dutch policy was neutralised by comparative 

 abstinence. At the same time it should be remembered that 

 the use of these articles was plainly occasional, and was con- 

 fined to a comparatively few establishments. The peasant, 

 the farmer, and the small trader had I conceive no spice box, 

 or at best, bought a pinch or two for Christmas fare. 



FOREIGN FRUIT. In so far as accounts have been pre- 

 served or discovered, there are three kinds of foreign fruit 

 which are regularly in demand currants, raisins, and prunes ; 

 the second being constantly spoken of as raisins of the sun, or 



