... ... imports, 9,347,867 ib.

It is necessary, however, to travel more backwards in order to a right
appreciation of the progress of the foreign trade of Russia. This
comparison is here instituted with earlier years, premising that the
exports to Poland and Finland, amounting to some ten or twelve millions
of rubles assignation, and imports from, amounting to about three
millions, are included, and therefore swell the amount of the imports
and exports of the following years. However, to facilitate the
comparison, the silver ruble values of 1841 are multiplied into
corresponding ruble assignation values:

Exportations. Importations. Balance in favour of
Russia.
In 1830 268,887,342 197,115,340 71,772,002 rb. as.
1836 283,748,233 237,251,204 13,733,196
1837 264,485,160 251,757,177 12,727,983
1841 302,337,626 378,003,215 24,334,411

Add 11,808,743 rubles assignation for exports to, and 4,792,346 imports
from, Poland and Finland in 1841, and the real comparison would be, for
1841, exports 314,146,349, imports 282,795,561; balance in favour of
1841, 31,350,688 rubles assignation.

The bulk of Russian exportations consists of raw or first materials,
such as flax, hemp, flax-seed, oil, tallow, leather, woad, metals, and
of which to the aggregate value in 1841, of 59,773,354 silver rubles was
exported; an amount nearly stationary as compared with the three
previous years. But the export of Russian manufactures, viz. woollens,
cottons, linens, candles, cordage, and cloths for China, had improved in
aggregate amount from,--

Silver Rubles.
In 1838, 6,527,222
To, in 1841, 10,259,209

It was the trade with China by Kiachta, and latterly also by the line of
Siberia, which, however, had perhaps taken the most remarkable
extension, and was held to be most promising of future progress and
profit. The imports, and therefore the consumption, of tea in Russia,
are growing annually larger; and the exports of Russian products and
manufactures to China, equally in proportion. For by mutual convention,
as dictated by China, for regulating the commercial intercourse between
the two countries strictly limited to that frontier river port, although
now indirectly countenanced by Siberia, the trade is exclusively one of
barter; tea