No doubt by reducing the Sinking Fund by £6,000,000 or
so, and by staving off payments rightly due next year to the year after, it is just possible that it may be made to appear that only £6,000,000 is required to be raised by new taxation next spring. We cannot, however, admit this to be honest finance. It means that in 1910-11 things will be worse than ever, and a better opportunity be given to the Tariff Reformers for fastening their ruinous policy on the nation. Note that it is already being said in America that the deficit of £30,000,000 renders a revision of the tariff " impossible." So true is it that bloated expenditure is the deadly enemy of Free-trade. If Free-trade were given a monument in America, a suitable inscription would be : "Strangled at birth by Pensions." Dare we still hope that the epitaph on Free- trade's monument here will not have to record its destruction by a similar agency ?
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