The Chancellor of the Exchequer brought forward his Budget on
Thursday night, in a speech received with a good deal of derision by the House. When some one from outside asked at its close whether the cat was out of the hag, the reply was,— there is no cat, not even a kitten. And unless the increase of the tax on cigars from 5s. 441. to 5s. 6d., and a small tax on cocoa-paste are to be called kittens,—so it certainly was. Sir S. Northcote had, in fact, to avow that while he was getting deeper into arrears year by year, he had no inten- tion of proposing any addition to taxation that would enable him to meet those arrears. His estimate of revenue for the past year had been £83,230,000. The actual revenue had come very near it, thanks to the panic about tea in the last fort- night of the year,—which, however, said Sir Stafford Northcote, did not much more than balance a small group of similar panics last year, which had diminished the Revenue of this year. The Revenue had reached £83,115,972, showing a very small deficit of £114,028 on the estimate. The Expenditure, on the other hand, had vastly increased over the estimate of Expenditure. He had estimated the expenditure for the year at L-81,019,000. It had proved to be £85,407,000, showing an increase of expenditure over estimate of £4,388,000. As compared with the yield of Revenue, therefore, the deficiency for last year is about 22,292,000. Instead, then, of having a bal- ance for the payment of the Exchequer Bonds issued last year, there was a very considerable addtional sum to be added to these Bonds, in case no additional means were to be provided. And this was to be the policy of the Government,— Renew your bills, and issue more of them; believe, if you can, that the Zulu war will cost less than a third of the Abyssinian war,—and for the rest, live on hope. Only, in expectation of a General Election, the country must not be irritated by more taxes.
