=250. (4) Analysis of English imports in the modern period.=—After this survey of one side of English trade we have to consider the other, the imports which England purchased with her surplus wares. In round millions of pounds the imports at the end of the eighteenth century were as follows, in the order of their values: sugar 7.1, tea 3.1, grain 2.7, Irish linen 2.6, cotton 2.3, coffee 2.2, wood 1.5, butter 1.0, tobacco 1.0, hemp 1.0. These wares amounted to more than half of a total import of 42.6. If the list were extended to less important wares a number of manufactured goods would be found on it, but these evidently could in general be produced to better advantage in England than anywhere else. England had already made herself the “workshop of the world,” and drew from other countries mainly raw materials and foods which could not be produced at home. Some of the colonial imports were shipped again, as will be shown later, but a large proportion of them was consumed at home by a population which was not only growing in size, but was enabled by means of commerce to gratify its taste for products comparatively new (sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco). =251. (5) Sources of the imports.=—At the period when these figures were compiled war had interrupted the trade of England with France and the Netherlands, but an active commerce still continued with other parts of the Continent. The imports from European countries were largely minor manufactures, which do not appear in the list above, but raw materials also were furnished by the less advanced European states. Wool came from Spain; hemp, flax, and tallow from Russia; wood, iron, and copper from Scandinavia. For some of the most important imports we must look to countries outside of Europe. The trade with Asia supplied all of the tea, and part at least of the other commodities (coffee, cotton, sugar) which we now associate with America, as well as a considerable amount of Indian manufactures, especially textiles. This trade still rested in the control of the East India Company, which had grown to be a great political power in Asia, with a government and army of its own. At home it had had a checkered career. As the result of bitter attacks in the seventeenth century it widened its membership, but it still maintained the monopoly of trade with Asia till 1793, when it conceded to private merchants a certain share in the trade with India.