»Such a case has never occurred, and could not without doing the refusing
party vastly more harm than the others,« replied Dr. Leete. »In the first place,
no favoritism could be legally shown. The law requires that each nation shall
deal with the others, in all respects, on exactly the same footing. Such a
course as you suggest would cut off the nation adopting it from the remainder of
the earth for all purposes whatever. The contingency is one that need not give
us much anxiety.«
    »But,« said I, »supposing a nation, having a natural monopoly in some
product of which it exports more than it consumes, should put the price away up,
and thus, without cutting off the supply, make a profit out of its neighbors'
necessities? Its own citizens would of course have to pay the higher price on
that commodity, but as a body would make more out of foreigners than they would
be out of pocket themselves.«
    »When you come to know how prices of all commodities are determined
nowadays, you will perceive how impossible it is that they could be altered,
except with reference to the amount or arduousness of the work required
respectively to produce them,« was Dr. Leete's reply. »This principle is an
international as well as a national guarantee; but even without it the sense of
community of interest, international as well as national, and the conviction of
the folly of selfishness, are too deep nowadays to render possible such a piece
of sharp practice as you apprehend. You must understand that we all look forward
to an eventual unification of the world as one nation. That, no doubt, will be
the ultimate form of society, and will realize certain economic advantages over
the present federal system of autonomous nations. Meanwhile, however, the
present system works so nearly perfectly that we are quite content to leave to
posterity the completion of the scheme. There are, indeed, some who hold that it
never will be completed, on the ground that the federal plan is not merely a
provisional solution of the problem of human society, but the best ultimate
solution.«
    »How do you manage,« I asked, »when the books of any two nations do not
balance? Supposing we import more from France than we export to her.«
    »At the end of each year,« replied the doctor, »the books of every nation
are examined. If France is found in our debt, probably we are in the debt of
some nation which owes France, and so on with all the