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Tea, for example, was a drug very little used in Europe, before

the middle of the last century. At present, the value of the tea

annually imported by the English East India company, for the use

of their own countrymen, amounts to more than a million and a

half a year; and even this is not enough; a great deal more being

constantly smuggled into the country from the ports of Holland,

from Gottenburgh in Sweden, and from the coast of France, too, as

long as the French East India company was in prosperity. The

consumption of the porcelain of China, of the spiceries of the

Moluccas, of the piece goods of Bengal, and of innumerable other

articles, has increased very nearly in a like proportion. The

tonnage, accordingly, of all the European shipping employed in

the East India trade, at any one time during the last century,

was not, perhaps, much greater than that of the English East

India company before the late reduction of their shipping.