It had been known for some time that the Budget
would not show so flourishing a prospect as we have been accustomed to for the last few years, but the result was far from unfavourable. Mr. Gladstone showed that the expenditure is now 2,900,0001. less than it was in 1859-60,—the year of the Italian war and the first year of the great naval reform, and 2,200,0001. more than in 1858-59, the last year before the great effort to increase °kr armaments,—so that we are now in fact just getting back to the expenditure of what we may call normal years. The surplus of revenue over expenditure for last year was (if the for- tification vote be included in the ordinary expenditure5 only 1,338,0001. The natural growth of the revenue without alteration of taxes, which Mr. Gladstone showed last year to be now about 1,780,0001. per annum, as nearly as possible reached that sum in 1865-6. Mr. Gladstone estimates his expenditure for next year at 66,225,0001., and the revenue, if no further changes were to be made, at 67,575,0001., that is, his available surplus for remission of taxation or payment of debt at 1,350,000/. only, not a very large sum ; but then it nlitst -be remembered that the finan- cial legislation of last year cut off from the income of this, in excess of what it cut off from that of last year, no less than 1,417,0001. He proposes to apply his surplus of 1,350,0001. thus : —307,000/. in repeal of timber duties, 58,0001. in equalizing the duty on wine in bottles with wine in the wood, 112,0001. in repealing the duty on pepper, 85,0001. in reducing the duties on stage carriages, omnibuses, post-horses, &c., 502,0001. in the conversion of debt into terminable annuities, thus losing of his surplus—
Timber £307,000 Wine 58,000}Customs, £477,000.
Pepper 112,000 Stage Carriages, &c. 85,000 Conversion of Debt 502,000
£1,064,000
—and leaving a surplus of 286,0001., which he proposes to retain. But the further burden imposed by these changes in the next financial year will be about 253,0001.
