The House of Commons virtually debated Mr. Rylande resolutions over
again last Monday night, and the rgchartig was better than the prepared feast. Mr. Gladstone was unable on the previous Thursday to point out the blunders of the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer, who spoke last, with respect to the financial history of 1860. But he took his revenge on Monday,. by giving chapter and verse for his charge that Sir Stafford Northcote had misstated important facts connected with the Budget of that year. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had told the House that Mr. Gladstone's financial policy in that year justified what he had done; that Mr. Gladstone had then borrowed largely; and that he had shown equal reluctance to meet the heavy expenditure, necessitated b y the Chinese expedition and fiscal changes, by means of fresh tax- ation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer admitted on Monday that he had misinformed the House about the for- tification loan, and had confounded the figures of 1860 with those of 1861. But he did not acknowledge, what Mr. Gladstone's lucid explanation made very clear, that the latter, in 1868, boldly grappled with a deficit of £9,400,000; that he kept np. the Crimean-War scale of Excise and Customs duties; and that he raised the Income-tax from fivepence to tenpence, and col- lected three-quarters within the half-year. And yet the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer coolly says that he is doing much the- same as Mr. Gladstone then did, because, forsooth, the latter did defer the payment of a million of Exchequer Bonds.
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