His soul abhors a practice by which we never have a real annual account.' The annual Budget is a paper Budget, which is supplemented by bi-monthly or tri-monthly Budgets. Mismanagement of finance is bad; but what is even worse than mismanagement of finance is the destruction or disregard of the sound and healthy rules which the 'wisdom of a long series of finance ministers, of an excellent finance department, and many Parliaments, have gradually and laboriously built up to prevent abuse, to secure popular control, to work by degrees upon the public debt of the country, and to take care that the people shall not be unduly burdened.'

In the Edinburgh Corn Exchange Mr. Gladstone contrasted Conservative expenditure with Liberal expenditure. He showed that since Lord Derby quitted office, and the foreign policy became 'spirited,' the Government has so disordered the national finances that there is an admitted deficiency-admitted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself—of six millions of money.' It has incurred liabilities, for which it has not provided, to the extent of six millions sterling. But it has also added to the taxation close upon another six millions beyond the taxation under a Liberal Government. As Mr. Gladstone epigrammatically put it, Ministers have imposed nearly six millions of taxes in order to produce six millions of deficiency. Sir Stafford Northcote pleads for the increase in expenditure that taxation has not been increased in proportion. Mr. Gladstone replies that it aggravates the sin of extravagance that the prodigal has provided no means of discharging his debt. In answer to the charge of increased taxation, Sir Stafford ridicules the notion that the gross amount the taxpayer has to give is worth regarding. The one thing to consider is whether the burden has been increased. That each penny in the income tax produces a hundred thousand pounds more than when the Conservative Government came into office, is proof to Sir Stafford Northcote that he and his colleagues have not checked the accumulation of national riches. The taxpayers are paying only their rateable addition, if that, to the State in comparison with the growth in the kingdom's wealth. Mr. Gladstone retorts that, if a penny income tax has grown at the rate of .16,000l. a year in the six years of Lord Beaconsfield's rule, it grew at an annual rate of 34,000l. in the thirty-one preceding years of Liberal and really Conservative administration. It is idle for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say he has not stopped the growth of the wealth of the country. In six years he has disposed of half of it. Give him another six years at the dissolution, and depend upon it he will go far to dispose of the other half.' Sir Stafford Northcote had attempted at the Guildhall to shelter himself behind the weather in accounting for financial deficits which he could not deny. Mr. Gladstone will not suffer the financier he sets up in order to knock down-the pupil he was going to call' a 'chicken-hearted Chancellor of the Exchequer,' and who does not appreciate the virtue of financial

the Government. They fought against the Liberal Government, yet did not prevail to baulk the leaps and bounds of national prosperity. In the five years of Mr. Gladstone's administration the acre of land yielded an average of twenty-six bushels of wheat and four-fifths of the twenty-seventh bushel. In the five complete years before the present year that Lord Beaconsfield has been in office, the average has been twenty-six bushels and three-fifths of the twenty-seventh; 'so the difference between four-fifths of a bushel and three-fifths produced this terrible depression!'

There is an intellectual pleasure in sitting down and following in those triumphs of the reporter's art, the accounts of Mr. Gladstone's pilgrimage, the arguments by which he tracks his adversaries through all their windings, and digs them out of their most intricate earths. But a popular audience must have been metaphysically Scotch indeed, to catch, as seemingly this audience did catch, each subtle point in the elaborate demonstration that the present Government has taken many millions more in taxation than its predecessor, and from a people proportionately less able to bear it. Whether they could follow every figure or not, a good Liberal and a moderate Conservative must have been equally impressed by the denunciation of the intolerable enlargement of imperial cares. of which these fresh burdens on feeble shoulders are at once effect and cause. Moderate men of both parties will have agreed that Great Britain would have been better off had all the millions bestowed upon giving effect to the warlike policy of the Government, instead of being so applied, been thrown to the bottom of the sea.' But there are Conservatives in plenty, and there are still some Liberals who, lamenting the burden, yet remain victims of the delusion that it is of a nature the country was bound to accept. Even many such politicians, however, and still more they who think the money ill spent, will join with Mr. Gladstone in condemning the shiftiness of the finance which hides a deficit as long as it can, and, when compelled to admit its existence, declares it to be no very great matter. Mr. Gladstone cites the testimony on deficits of Sir Robert Peel, whom these gentlemen, sometimes, and as often as they find it convenient, which is not always, fall back upon as a Conservative.' What this Conservative financier declared the miserable expedient of tolerating deficits, and of making provision by loan from year to year,' has, exclaims Mr. Gladstone, become a standing law, almost the financial gospel, of the Government which is now in power.' He appeals to Conservatives, as well as Liberals, whether they will sanction, when they have a voice, a practice violating all the rules the Conservative financiers of old laid down as essential to sound and honest finance. It is as much in the interest of Conservatives as of Liberals, that he protests against a system by which the taxpayer never knows how the State, of which he is a part, stands financiallywhether it be solvent or insolvent. It is the same system of instinc

His soul abhors a practice by which we never have a real annual account.' The annual Budget is a paper Budget, which is supplemented by bi-monthly or tri-monthly Budgets. Mismanagement of finance is bad; but what is even worse than mismanagement of finance is the destruction or disregard of the sound and healthy rules which the 'wisdom of a long series of finance ministers, of an excellent finance department, and many Parliaments, have gradually and laboriously built up to prevent abuse, to secure popular control, to work by degrees upon the public debt of the country, and to take care that the people shall not be unduly burdened.'

6

In the Edinburgh Corn Exchange Mr. Gladstone contrasted Conservative expenditure with Liberal expenditure. He showed that since Lord Derby quitted office, and the foreign policy became 'spirited,' the Government has so disordered the national finances that there is an admitted deficiency-admitted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself—of six millions of money. It has incurred liabilities, for which it has not provided, to the extent of six millions sterling. But it has also added to the taxation close upon another six millions beyond the taxation under a Liberal Government. As Mr. Gladstone epigrammatically put it, Ministers have imposed nearly six millions of taxes in order to produce six millions of deficiency.' Sir Stafford Northcote pleads for the increase in expenditure that taxation has not been increased in proportion. Mr. Gladstone replies that it aggravates the sin of extravagance that the prodigal has provided no means of discharging his debt. In answer to the charge of increased taxation, Sir Stafford ridicules the notion that the gross amount the taxpayer has to give is worth regarding. The one thing to consider is whether the burden has been increased. That each penny in the income tax produces a hundred thousand pounds more than when the Conservative Government came into office, is proof to Sir Stafford Northcote that he and his colleagues have not checked the accumulation of national riches. The taxpayers are paying only their rateable addition, if that, to the State in comparison with the growth in the kingdom's wealth. Mr. Gladstone retorts that, if a penny income tax has grown at the rate of .16,000l. a year in the six years of Lord Beaconsfield's rule, it grew at an annual rate of 34,000l. in the thirty-one preceding years of Liberal and really Conservative administration. It is idle for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say he has not stopped the growth of the wealth of the country. In six years he has disposed of half of it. Give him another six years at the dissolution, and depend upon it he will go far to dispose of the other half.' Sir Stafford Northcote had attempted at the Guildhall to shelter himself behind the weather in accounting for financial deficits which he could not deny. Mr. Gladstone will not suffer the financier he sets up in order to knock down-the pupil he was going to call' a 'chicken-hearted Chancellor of the Exchequer,' and who does not appreciate the virtue of financial

the Government. They fought against the Liberal Government, yet did not prevail to baulk the leaps and bounds of national prosperity. In the five years of Mr. Gladstone's administration the acre of land vielded an average of twenty-six bushels of wheat and four-fifths of the twenty-seventh bushel. In the five complete years before the present year that Lord Beaconsfield has been in office, the average has been twenty-six bushels and three-fifths of the twenty-seventh ; 'so the difference between four-fifths of a bushel and three-fifths produced this terrible depression!'

There is an intellectual pleasure in sitting down and following in those triumphs of the reporter's art, the accounts of Mr. Gladstone's pilgrimage, the arguments by which he tracks his adversaries through all their windings, and digs them out of their most intricate earths. But a popular audience must have been metaphysically Scotch indeed, to catch, as seemingly this audience did catch, each subtle point in the elaborate demonstration that the present Government has taken many millions more in taxation than its predecessor, and from a people proportionately less able to bear it. Whether they could follow every figure or not, a good Liberal and a moderate Conservative must have been equally impressed by the denunciation of the intolerable enlargement of imperial cares of which these fresh burdens on feeble shoulders are at once effect Moderate men of both parties will have agreed that Great Britain would have been better off had all the millions bestowed upon giving effect to the warlike policy of the Government, instead of being so applied, been thrown to the bottom of the sea.' But there are Conservatives in plenty, and there are still some Liberals who, lamenting the burden, yet remain victims of the delusion that it is of a nature the country was bound to accept. Even many such politicians, however, and still more they who think the money ill spent, will join with Mr. Gladstone in condemning the shiftiness of the finance which hides a deficit as long as it can, and, when compelled to admit its existence, declares it to be no very great matter. Mr. Gladstone cites the testimony on deficits of Sir Robert Peel, whom these gentlemen, sometimes, and as often as they find it convenient, which is not always, fall back upon as a Conservative.' What this Conservative financier declared the miserable expedient of tolerating deficits, and of making provision by loan from year to year,' has, exclaims Mr. Gladstone, 'become a standing law, almost the financial gospel, of the Government which is now in power.' He appeals to Conservatives, as well as Liberals, whether they will sanction, when they have a voice, a practice violating all the rules the Conservative financiers of old laid down as essential to sound and honest finance. It is as much in the interest of Conservatives as of Liberals, that he protests against a system by which the taxpayer never knows how the State, of which he is a part, stands financially— whether it be solvent or insolvent. It is the same system of instinc

6

Anglo-Turkish Convention, and an appropriation of Cyprus, are communicated to the country only when the arrangements have become practically irreversible.

It does honour to the Scottish people that it approved as much Mr. Gladstone's advocacy of a moral and just foreign policy, as his exposition of the cost, actual and to come, at which an unjust foreign policy is being carried out. No more enthusiastic cheers saluted any of Mr. Gladstone's statements than his generous claim that, when the Ottoman Empire shall be finally dissolved, its succession should pass, not to Russia, not to Austria, not to England, under the name of Anglo-Turkish Convention, or whatever else it may be called, but to the peoples of those countries.' A foreign policy which would pare and mutilate the fortunes of a self-emancipated state, to soothe imaginary fears of some accession of influence thereby to a rival of England, is unworthy of this country. It is the policy which cut down the dimensions of Greece. The restless intrigues of the Hellenic kingdom ever since have been the national rejoinder to such narrow-minded selfishness.

To judge by the conversation of prosperous Londoners, it might be supposed that Englishmen accepted as an entire nation Lord Beaconsfield's new motto for Great Britain, Imperium et libertas,' in the construction Mr. Gladstone put upon it at West Calder: Liberty for ourselves; empire over the rest of mankind.' Happily, prosperous Londoners do not give the tone to the political sentiments of the nation. Lord Beaconsfield's adaptation of the Roman boast suited the latitude of Guildhall better than did Lord Salisbury's allegation of an inviolable British usage of seizing in every great European war a piece of foreign vantage ground to suit the latitude of Manchester. That was the doctrine, as Mr. Gladstone said of it with no more than necessary severity, of a political brigand.' So the nation at large has regarded it. At the same time we are afraid to assume too readily that the applause which greeted Mr. Gladstone's exposition of a purer doctrine implies that the audiences which gave it are henceforth proof against dexterously baited allurements of a greedy and violent policy. A few years ago it would have seemed inconceivable that a majority of the House of Commons, made up of Liberal as well as of Conservative members, should have sanctioned, even after the event, the appropriation of Cyprus and the Afghan war. Yet, if anything could arm the nation against its propensity to look at one side only of a question, and that the side turned towards itself, it would be a simple and honest yet manly profession of faith on the theme of foreign policy like Mr. Gladstone's at West Calder. The nation had been frightened by the dogma of absolute non-intervention. It fell an easy prey to the blandishments of politicians who talked of an energetic policy, and of traditional British policy.

Mr. Gladstone does not preach non-intervention in the affairs of Europe; but he lays down principles of intervention which limit it to circumstances in which Great Britain would apply abroad the principles