SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE AS CYNIC. [To THE EDITOR OF THE
"SPEOTATOR."J
SIR,—Lord Beaconsfield has never been at much pains to conceal his estimate of the average intellect of the party whose support has raised him to his present position, but one hardly expected to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer adopting the same method. Yet if he is correctly reported in the papers of this morning (August 7th), he has managed to rival his chief in cynical assump- tion of the absence of reasoning power among his followers.
According to the Daily News (and the Times' report is practically the same) he said :—
"He could not help being amused the other day in noticing an ex- tract from tho Manchester Examiner and Times whore the writer was denouncing the extravagance of a Tory Government, and comparing with it the economy of their predecessors. It said that tho proportion of Government receipts per head of the population wore £2 89. 2d. in 1873-4, and fell to £2 7s. 8d. in the fourth year of Tory rule ; while the proportion of the expenditure per head, which was reduced to £2 4s. 5d. in Mr. Gladstone's last year of of113e, was now .£2 9s. 3d. It struck him that this was a very roundabout way of saying that the Tory Government took less of the people and spent snore for their benefit than its predecessors. (' Hear, hoar,' and laughter.)"
Among the Tory squires who cheered and laughed, was there not one capable of seeing that if he were to put his affairs into the hands of an agent, and to find after four years that the agent had so arranged his income and expenditure that the latter exceeded the former by ten per cent., he would hardly be inclined to give that agent much credit for" taking less of him, and spending more for his benefit?" Sir Stafford Northcote, of course, knows better, but it is hardly fair of him thus to advertise to all the world how accurately he has measured the reflective powers of his faithful
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