§ My duty is to lay before the Committee with as little controversial statement as I can the financial position of the country. Sir, the year that has just concluded has, financially speaking, been a most remarkable year. The amount that has flowed into the Exchequer has been greater, I believe, than in any previous 12 months, and, in spite of an 1053 expenditure which has been larger than any since the great war, the surplus has been one of the largest ever known. The credit of the country never stood so high; Treasury bills for 12 months have been floated in the course of the year at as low a rate as 13s. 9d. per cent., and the yield of Consols to a purchaser at the present time is, if you make allowance for the difference in the denomination of the stock, just about half what it was 100 years ago. A larger sum has been specifically devoted to the reduction of the National Debt than has ever been known. The deposits in our savings banks and the deposit and current accounts in our ordinary banks have exceeded all previous records. The production of gold in the world has been the highest ever known. The amount of bullion at the Bank of England has reached 49 millions; the reserve of the Bank of England in proportion to its liabilities was never so high. The condition of the working classes, judged by the consumption of tea, tobacco, and sugar—those articles which are, perhaps, the best guides, I think, in estimating the consuming power of the working classes—must have materially improved, and although I am afraid the condition of agriculture has, perhaps, even changed somewhat for the worse, yet the produce of general stamps, which is the best gauge of the business transactions of the capitalist classes, was never so high. Altogether, Sir, we have had a wonderful year, but, perhaps, in nothing has that year been more remarkable than in the falsification of the Estimates of my predecessor by the actual Exchequer Receipts. Some persons appear to consider that it is a feather in the cap of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the Exchequer Receipts of the year should materially exceed his Budget Estimate. I am quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman opposite will not take any view of the kind. If, instead of under estimating our Revenue by £5,812,000, he had over estimated it by that amount, I wonder what would have been said of him. The triumph of a Chancellor of the Exchequer is when the Exchequer Receipts agree with his Estimate. ["Hear, hear!"] That has not occurred in the present case, but, Sir, 1054 I am the last person to throw any blame upon my predecessor on that account. [Opposition cheers.] I have very largely profited by his miscalculation, and I am very deeply grateful to him for it, and I will go further and say that no one has any right to blame either him or his skilled advisers for it. They for once, and I hope only for once, have proved fallible guides. But no one, looking to the then existing condition of things, could possibly have expected the financial results of the past year. In the first quarter of the calendar year of 1895, the January quarter, the value of our exports and our imports and our railway earnings showed a decrease; in the second quarter, the quarter ending June, there was a very slight recovery; and it was not until June was well over—["hear, hear!" and laughter]—and by a curious coincidence—[renewedlaughter]—certain important political events had occurred which I am sure did not enter into the calculations of the financial experts, and possibly not of my predecessor—that everything seemed to tend upwards; and through the latter half of 1895—I am speaking of the calendar year—the increase in the value of our exports and our imports, of our railway earnings, and of the returns of the Bankers' Clearing-house, and all other indications of the kind, showed a most remarkable and continued expansion of the trade and commerce of this country. I wish to call the attention of the Committee to the period at which this occurred. I suppose you may go back for very many years without finding a time in which the volume of our exports had increased so much as they did in the latter half of 1895. In the first half of 1895—I am speaking now of the calendar year—there was an actual decrease in the value of our exports and imports of no less than £7,531,000 when compared with the same period of the previous year; in the second half of the year there was an increase of no less than £28,228,000. ["Hear, hear!"] I call the attention of the Committee to this because it bears upon what I shall afterwards have to say with respect to the period of the year at which the increases in our Revenue have mainly taken place.