The Conservatives made very little of their reply to Mr.
Childers's Budget speech on Monday. Indeed, their reply was not to his facts, but to inferences which they feared that the country would draw from his facts. The simple truth is, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer put it, that leaflets de- scribing in most misleading terms the alleged financial crimes of the Government, have been distributed in thousands in all the great boroughs, which it was simply the Chancellor of the Exchequer's duty to answer by actually comparing the achieve- ments of the two Governments in paying off Debt and in paying for the wars in which they bad embarked. Neither Mr. W. H. Smith, nor Lord George Hamilton, was able to put his finger on a single misstatement' of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; while Sir S. Northcote fell into some curious blunders, in his effort to justify his own finance and to depreciate that of his successor. Thus, he represented the efficiency of the Army and Navy last year, at the time of the Egyptian expedition, as due to the purchase of ships and stores made with the vote of credit asked for by the Tory Government, the fact being that the stores of that time had been wholly consumed long before the date of the Egyptian expedition. Sir S. Northcote romanced also in attributing the unpreparedness of the Military and Naval services in 1878 to the undue economy of the Liberal Government which went out of office in 1874, and this though every penny which the- Tories had asked for between 1874 and 1878 had been granted at once by the House of Commons. In point of fact, the Tory attack on the Budget speech was a failure, and probably felt to- be a failure by the party. When the storm of criticism sub- sided, Mr. Childers remained in possession of the field.
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