Mr. Childers made a very lucid and able financial speech
to his constituents at Knottingley on Thursday, to prove that though the total expenditure of the Government does not seem to have diminished, it has really diminished very considerably, and this in spite of a great increase in special votes, like the vote for Education and for the redemption of Army purchase, in the last few years. The reason the accounts do not show the diminution of expenditure is that new paying departments, like the Telegraphs, have their expenditure returned on the one side of the accounts, while the revenue earned is set against it on the other, and this of course appears to swell the expenditure without really doing so. He showed that the real expenditure of the country, paid out of taxes, had been reduced by nearly three-quarters of a million since the Liberal Govern- ment came into office, in spite of all the great and neces- sary increase in particular votes. On the other hand, the Conservative Government, between 1866 and 1868, had increased the real expenditure, without taking the Abyssinian war expenses into account, by four and a half millions in three years. This analysis is satisfactory enough, but why doesn't the Government issue an account of the comparative net expenditure from year to year? In these days of spurious economical cries, it is almost as great a misfortune to seem to be extravagant as really to b e so.
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