Sir Michael Hicks Beach was entertained by the Lord Mayor
on Friday week, and made a speech of much interest to the merchants and bankers who were the other guests of the evening. He began by complaining humorously that while a customer who was refused assistance by his banker always kept the secret, a Department in the customer's position denounced the Chancellor of the Exchequer all over the country. He complained also, in a later division of his speech, more seriously of the new tendency to expenditure, and declared that although the country was wealthy, it was quits possible to impose such burdens on the taxpayer that even Hi vast resources would be fatally impaired. The rest of his speech, however, was cheerful. He thought that next year there should be remissions of taxation, and named the Income-tax as the first to be reduced, and pointed out with a, certain exultation the improvement in the national credit, We had issued in the Crimean War 229,000,000 of Consols at a price which made the interest equal to 23 6s. 11d, per cent., while for the African War we had borrowed 292,000,000 of Consols at 22 13s. 2d. per cent. That was a great improve- ment, and he hoped that next year arrangements would be made for the total extinction of the new debt. We have pointed out elsewhere one drawback to the advantages of reduced interest on National Debts, and need only remark here that the willing submission to taxation which certainly marks our time is, in part at least, produced by the fact that the class which demands expenditure only pays for part of it. When it pays almost the whole, as in rates, it is by no means' so lavish.
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