I M P 
I M P 
tics. It is therefore an excess of such im- 
portations alone, as are either for mere 
luxury, or mere necessity, or for both toge- 
ther, which is disadvantageous to the coun- 
try, and not such importations as, like 
many of ours, consist of raw silk, Spanish 
wool, cotton wool, and yarn, mohair, flax 
and hemp, oils, potash, dyeing stuffs, naval 
stores, &c. either used in our ship-building, 
or worked up in our manufactures, a princi- 
pal part of which are for exportation : nei- 
ther can our importations of East India 
goods and colonial produce, which are 
chiefly designed to be afterwards exported, 
be deemed unprofitable, but are, on the 
contrary, some of the most lucrative 
branches of our foreign trade. The follow- 
ing statement of the total value of the im- 
ports of England, in the year 1354, fur- 
nishes a good comparison with their present 
magnitude. 
<£. s. d. 
1831 Fine cloths, at 61. per cjotli, which, with the customs, 
come to 11,083 12 0 
397| Hundred weight of wax, at 40s. per hundred weight, 
which, with the customs, come to 815 7 5 
18291 Tons of wine, at 40*. per ton, which, with the cus- 
toms, come to 3,841 19 0 
Linen cloth, mercery, grocery, and all other wares 22,943 6 10 
On which the customs were 2Sb 18 3 
Total 38,970 3 6 
At this period, and for a long time after, 
foreigners were the principal importers of 
goods in this country ; and as it was thought 
that many of them, after disposing of their 
merchandize here, returned with the value 
in money X° their own country, which was 
deemed a serious injury, many laws were 
made against carrying out of the realm any 
gold or silver, either in coin, plate, or bul- 
lion ; and merchant strangers were com- 
pelled to give security that they would lay 
out all the money they received for the 
wares they imported, in English merchan- 
dize to be exported. These injudicious 
restrictions have been long since done 
away, and, ^excepting the prohibition of 
some foreign manufactures, the import 
trade of this country is probably as free as 
the regulations necessary to secure the pay- 
ment of heavy duties on almost every arti- 
cle of trade will admit. Total official va- 
lue of the imports of Great Britain in the 
year 1800. 
£. 
s. 
d. 
Port of London . 
.. 18,843,172 
2 
10 
The Out Ports 
.. 9,514,642 
11 
10 
England 
,. 28,357,814 
14 
8 
Scotland 
.. 2,212,790 
11 
8 
30,570,605 
6 
4 
1801 
c£ 32,795,556 
1802 ..... 
31,441,318 
1803 
, 27,992,464 
1801 
1805 
1806 
1807 
These sums are the official value of goods 
imported, which is very different from the 
real value ; as an instance which may serve 
for every case, the official value of the im- 
ports for 1807, 29,556,3301. ; but the real 
value, according to the average of the last 
three years, is 53,500,990/. 
IMPOSTHUME, a collection of matter 
or pus in any part of the body, either owing 
to previous inflammation of the part, or a 
translation of it from some other part. 
IMPOSSIBLE roots, in algebra. To 
discover how many impossible roots are 
contained in any proposed equation, Sir 
I. Newton gave this rule in his algebra, viz. 
Constitute a series of fractions, whose deno- 
minators are the series of natural numbers, 
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c. continued to the number 
showing the index or exponent of the high- 
est term of the equations, and their nume- 
rators the same series of numbers in the 
contrary order ; and divide eacli of these 
fractions by that next before it, and place 
the resulting quotients over the inter- 
mediate terms of the equation ; then 
under each of the intermediate terms, 
if its square multiplied by the fraction 
over it, be greater than the product of the 
terms on each side of it, place the sign -(- ; 
but if not, the sign — ; and under the first 
and last term place the sign +. Then will 
tne equation have as many imaginary roots 
as there are changes of the underwritten 
signs from -f- to — , and from — to +. So 
for the equation a;’ — 4 a 2 + 4 x 6 = 0, 
the series of fractions is 1, §, } : then the 
second, divided by the first, gives f or f, and 
