Mr. G. P. Fuller, M.P. for the Westbury Division of
Wilt- shire, has given the Chancellor of the Exchequer the oppor- tunity he wanted for exposing the attacks made upon his finance by Sir W. Harcourt and a fair number of Sir W. Harcourt's supporters who have outstripped him in assertion, and magnified his blunders. This gentleman accused Mr. Goschen of " a very great attempt, if not an actual determina- tion, to defraud the taxpayers of the country," "to deceive his hearers," and so forth. This was very foolish credulity on the part of Mr. Fuller, who ought to know that with the first- rate permanent staff at the Treasury, this sort of thing is simply impossible, even if he had known so little of our public men as to conceive Mr. Goschen capable of such conduct. But Mr. Goschen really owes Mr. Faller a debt of gratitude for giving him the opportunity to refute these foolish calumnies so triumphantly as he does. Mr. Goschen asks him to explain his charges,—that Mr. Goschen had borrowed £20,000,000 for strengthening the Navy ; that in 1890 he borrowed £3,500,000 in order to make a surplus of £1,500,000; and that in 1891 Mr. Goschen had stated that the total revenue of the country was £91,000,000, but that the actual amount collected was £94,000,000. Further, he asked Mr. Fuller how he made out that Mr. Gladstone had extinguished more debt during four- years of his last Administration, than he (Mr. Goschen) had extinguished between 1887 and 1891, though Mr. Goschen had misled the country into an opposite conclusion.
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