Referring to the growth of trade and the return of
prosperity, the Chancellor of the Exchequer predicted a probable surplus, and also,—what he even regretted,—a rise in the yield of the taxes on drink, which have during so many years been falling. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he did not look forward with unmixed satisfaction to a surplus. It is far easier, he said, to resist demands for increased expenditure without a surplus. With it there are an unlimited number of pleas pressed by sections of the House of Commons for further grants here, there, and everywhere ; and though the guardian of the public purse is always encouraged to speak as if he had nothing so much at heart as the lightening of the people's burdens, it is always assumed that that cannot interfere with so small a matter as an increase in this and that Parliamentary vote in Supply. It would take a very strong manifestation of public opinion to keep the surplus intact for the remission of burdens.
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