Sir. 'Stafford Northcote's reply was unusually bright and effee- tive.
He complained that the only case in which the Liberals are hard upon the close-fit of a Budget should be the case in which the Go'vernment propose to do something towards paying off Debt ; in other cases, they had calmly left £1,200,000, which turned vaut to be nearly £2,500,000, to be taken out of the balances In answer to Mr. Gladstone's question, "Did you ever hear.of a Chancellor of the Exchequer who came forward and proposed taxes in this House for the purpose of keeping up a Sinking Fund?" he replied, rather successfully, "Yes, I did. I remember a Chancellor of the Exchequer coming forward and proposing a Match-tax. I am proposing taxes at this moment to carry out arrangements into which my right honourable friend himself entered." As to the great contrast .drawn between terminable annuities as a mode of paying Debfand the ordinary sinking fund, he said it reminded him of a boy in Sir Walter Scott's novels, who, when told by a traveller not to lose the half- crown he had given him at pitch-and-toss, boasted that he had not lost it at pitch-and-toss, but at " neevie-neerie-nick-nack." The difference between the two methods was just as great or small as the difference between " pitch-and-toss " and " neevie-neevie- nick-nack." Mr. Lowe continued the discussion in a clever speech, in which he defined a Chancellor of the Exchequer as "an animal who ought to have a surplus," —to which he might apparently have added, an animal which it is no sin to vivisect ; but On the whole, the feeling of the House remained decidedly with _the Government, and unmoved by the somewhat petty criticisms of the Liberal chiefs.
