A PROSPERITY BUDGET. T HE Budget will be sufficiently popular even
though there is no reduction for people with more than £700 a year of the heavy Income-tax. Nobody is asking for such a remission with the energy that induces Members to vote. The thoughtful are doubtful whether any more sources of revenue ought to be given up, and as to the majority, although the rates are in many places bitterly resented, nobody really feels oppressed by the Queen's taxes. They are levied with too scientific a skill for that. The reduction on tobacco, which benefits the men, whereas a reduction on tea chiefly benefits the women, will exactly suit the electors, who will soon smoke enough to recoup the Treasury, and who, for the rest, will exult heartily in the prosperity which the Budget reveals. The true feeling of the people as they read the Budget statement is one of pride akin to that of the wealthy man who finds that his income exceeds that of all his neighbours and social rivals. The total sum raised-0116,000,000 gross, or £106,000,000 net after assignments in aid of rates have been calculated—is a record amount, exceeding any- thing previously raised and exceeding also that of almost any country in the world. There is a surplus of £3,678,000, produced by an increase in every department of receipt, and Sir M. Hicks-Beach, who was himself for the first time a little carried away by the success of his tax- gatherers, anticipates a further surplus for next year. The prosperity of the country, he believes, has not as yet approached its limit. The Death-duties draw magni- ficently, the crop of millionaires constantly increases, the rate of wages steadily rises, the people persistently con- sume more taxable articles, and altogether, in the judg- ment of the Treasury experts, we are in for a cycle of fat years. The revenue, as Mr. Gladstone once said, is going up "by leaps and bounds," and the people, who hardly realise that it all comes out of their pockets, have a sense of exultation. They are rich, they are great, they can meet any demand, however large—even the demands of war—and hardly know that they have been called upon for sacrifice. Some of us know in private life what the feeling is, how liberal we are inclined to be while the income rises, and how little we care about the kind or the scale of the suggested expenditure. It is a happy feeling that of the veins being over full, and while it lasts the warnings of the economical are of little account, and to every demur we reply with joyousness, "No matter ; we can easily afford it."
We have no wish to check the national gratulation, but we confess, remembering as we do what happens when the nation is poor, we listen to the boasting with some- thing oi\ apprehension. We doubt if all the money will be wisely' expended. Nobody spends money wisely if he has too ;ouch. We question if something of healthy strength 13 not lost when the habit of thrift is given up. We watch the happy faces of all the dependants of the State with something of fear lest their happiness should be short-li-ed. They, too, are losing the habit of thrift, and will feel, if the lean years come, as if they had all been purposely deceived by promises in which there was no reality. And the lean years are as certain as the ebb of the tide. War would at once sweep away all this financial prosperity, and even without war it may prove but short-lived. We cannot continue for ever to annex new markets, to discover new mining dis- tricts, or to be reaping from our commerce such enor- mous returns. A decline of business by 20 per cent., which is not either unprecedented or impossible, would make the nation poor again, and it would find itself like a landholder who has been " launching out " with straitened means, burdened by engagements, by promises, and, above all, by fixed expenditures, dowries, pensions, and remissions of rent. There would be too many servants, too many horses, too much liberality in every department, and retrenchment would be a business !nvolving heartbreaks. Naval and military expenditure is continually being enlarged ; the Civil Service makes ever new demands ; above all, there are constant new assignments " in aid " of this, that, and the other, of the rates, of Ireland, of education, of everything in fact that can plead its utility, or its greatness in the sight of the neighbours, or its poverty. We might, to be solvent, have to strike off ten millions a year from our outlays, or to put on a people just feeling the loss of their prosperity ten millions of new taxes, and thus once more to create that impression that the State is burdensome from which fifty years ago we suffered, and the cause of progress suffered, so severely. It is useless to preach, we know, while the spending fit endures, but we could wish that the exultation were less loud, that we did not so com- pletely confuse fullness of blood with strength, and that, above all, we were less reckless of promises to pay. If in the fat years we pay off mortgages, and confine expenditure to immediate income, a little waste only matters because- it softens fibre, but if we allow our debts to remain because they only involve interest, if we heap up promises of annuities to children, to servants, to the deserving, to the suffering, we shall, when the turn of the tide comes, and it will come, have to pass through a period when the very skies will seem to have grown darker. There is a trace of recklessness even now about our expenditure, as of men who possess a purse of Fortunatus, which, as onlookers who have seen very different times, we regard with keen alarm. The Government, says Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, tries to keep Members within bounds when they propose new expenditure, but the trying is half- hearted, and, at all events, never succeeds. The inclina- tion for thrift has departed from us, and with it, we greatly fear, some of that wisdom in the management of affairs which has built up the national estate to its present portentous height. They were lean years, not fat years, which evolved Peel and Gladstone, and induced the country to listen to counsels which ended in taking the financial pressure of the Treasury so completely off our necks that we hardly recognise that we, the people, and we only, still drag the huge carriage of the State. England is the millionaire of countries, but for the millionaire, as for the wage-earner, it is always true that it is possible to overspend, and that habitual overspending can have no end except bankruptcy, or a retrenchment for which the fortitude will have departed. We all praise Sir William Harcourt for filling the cup of the Treasury so full, but we may all live to regret that he produced the surpluses which have so filled our veins with a kind of wine of exultation. We trust our readers, all gladdened by the Budget, will pardon us for croaking, but we have seen times when they were all poor and resented taxation, and we wish to impress on them a counsel which they will find one day was wise. Spend what you like while you have it if expenditure makes you happy, but keep from pledging yourselves to future outlays which you or your children will feel to be more than you or they can contentedly endure.
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