Mr. Childers, in one of his speeches at Pontefract, brought
out a point in the Conservative finance which has been hitherto -quite unobserved :—" I have been told," he said," that we made no allowance for the bad times on which the present Govern- ment have fallen, and that Mr. Gladstone's Government always
had the good-luck to be in power in good times The other night, I gave the gross amount of the figures in relation to spirits. Some one said that the English people were drunk under Mr. Gladstone and sober under Lord Beaconsfield,—drank themselves out of their financial difficulties in Mr. Glad- stone's time, but now-a-days did not spend so much on drink, .and so the Exchequer became empty ; and I showed that in the first five years of Lord Beaconsfield's Administration, sixteen -and a half millions more were collected in the shape of spirit duty than in the five years of Mr. Gladstone's: I am told I have only estimated the spirit duty, but if I look at the others it would be different. I have done so, and I find that in the first five years of Lord Beaconsfield's Administration, £3,800,000 were collected on tea more than in the five years of Mr. Glad- stone's. In the first five years of Lord Beaconsfield's Adminis- tration, £4,500,000 were collected upon tobacco more than in the five years of Mr. Gladstone's. In the first five years of Lord Beaconsfield's Administration, £3,500,000 more were collected on malt than in the five years of Mr. Gladstone's ; so that, instead of satisfying myself with the £16,500,000 more in respect of the spirit duty, I might have added £12,000,000 more duty on tea, tobacco, and malt, giving in all £28,500,000 more col- lected on these articles of produce, or nearly three times the whole expenses of those affairs which are made the excuse for the financial difficulties of the Government." In other words, the luckier of the two Governments, financially, has been Lord Beaconsfield's Government, if it had not had the greatest of all ill-luck,—the ill-luck of wanting the sagacity to use good-luck when it gets it.
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