Gourmandise also comprehends, friandise (passion for light delicacies) for pastry, comfitures, etc.  This is a modification introduced for the special benefit of women, and men like the other sex.

Look at gourmandise under any aspect you please, and it deserves praise.

Physically, it is a demonstration of the healthy state of the organs of nutrition.

Morally, it is implicit resignation to the orders of God, who made us eat to live, invites us to do so by appetite, sustains us by flavor, and rewards us by pleasure.

Advantages of gourmandise.

Considered from the points of view of political economy, gourmandise is the common bond which unites the people in reciprocal exchanges of the articles needed for daily consumption.

This is the cause of voyages from one pole to the other, for brandy, spices, sugars, seasonings and provisions of every kind, even eggs and melons.

This it is which gives a proportional price to things, either mediocres, good or excellent, whether the articles derive them out of, or from nature.

This it is that sustains the emulation of the crowd of fishermen, huntsmen, gardeners and others, who every day fill the wealthiest kitchens with the result of their labours.

This it is which supports the multitude of cooks, pastry-cooks, confectioners, etc., who employ workmen of every kind, and who perpetually put in circulation, an amount of money which the shrewdest calculator cannot imagine.

Let us observe that the trades and occupations dependent on gourmandise have this great advantage, that on one hand it is sustained by great misfortunes and on the other by accidents which happen from day to day.

In the state of society we now have reached, it is difficult to conceive of a people subsisting merely on bread and vegetables.  Such a nation if it existed would certainly be subjected by carnivorous enemies, as the Hindoos were, to all who ever chose to attack them.  If not it would be converted by the cooks of its neighbors as the Beotiens were, after the battle of Leuctres.

Sequel.

Gourmandise offers great resources to fiscality, for it increases customs, imports, etc.  All we consume pays tribute in one degree or another, and there is no source of public revenue to which gourmands do not contribute.

Let us speak for a moment of that crowd of preparers who every year leave France, to instruct foreign nations in gourmandise.  The majority succeed and obedient to the unfasting instinct of a Frenchman’s fever, return to their country with the fruits of their economy.  This return is greater than one would think.

Were nations grateful, to what rather than to gourmandise should France erect a monument.

Power of gourmandise.

In 1815, the treaty of the month of November, imposed on France the necessity of paying the allies in three years, 750,000,000 francs.