The Duke of Cambridge on Thursday delivered a speech to
Company of Haberdashers, at Gresham Street, which must sound ominous to Sir Stafford Northcote. He maintained that as England would not submit to be anything but a great nation, she must keep up the efficiency.,of her Army, and it could not be kept up in face of " a damaging economy." Undue economy in ordinary times must lead to large and exceptional expenditure in times of danger, which he evidently thought might be near at hand. There is, perhaps, another hint of the same kind in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech at Birmingham on finance. He intimated that if the taxes of 1856 were reimposed, the revenue would be increased by £25,000,000 a year. Has anybody, perchance, been suggesting to him that heavy war loans would not hurt the people, as even an expenditure of £500,000,000 at 5 per cent. would only replace us in the position of 1856 ? That is not his own view, of course—he is a sound financier at heart—but there are counsels of perfection as to national expenditure which attract Imperialist minds.
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