§ I now come to the details of the Revenue of the past year. If hon. Members have supplied themselves with the printed paper, they will find the items classed under the several heads, to which I will briefly refer. The total Exchequer receipts of the past year amounted to £101,974,000. The Exchequer receipts of 1894–5 amounted to £94,684,000. The Exchequer receipts of the past year were, therefore, £7,290,000 in excess of the Exchequer receipts of the previous year, and £5,812,000 in excess of the estimate of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think the Committee will observe with satisfaction that that increase is to be noticed under every single head of the items of Revenue, with the exception of Land Tax, which remains as it was, and miscellaneous receipts, which show a decrease, because in the year just concluded there was no windfall, as there was in the previous year from the Naval Defence Account. But I should like to draw the attention of the Committee to the period of the year at which this increase principally accrued. I take the first two quarters of the last financial year together, because, as the right hon. Gentleman opposite knows very well, the receipts from Customs and Excise in those two quarters were confused by the delay in the payment of the duty on spirits owing to the anticipated reduction and the subsequent abolition of the sixpence extra duty. In the first and second quarters of last year there was an increase of £3,917,000 when compared with the corresponding quarters of the previous year. In the third quarter of the past year there was an increase of £2,153,000; that was the best quarter of all. But in the last quarter of the year there was an increase of only £1,220,000 over the corresponding quarter of the previous year. I do not know whether any one will be irreverent enough to say that the vast increase in the earlier part of the financial year was due to expectations from the present Government which have now been disappointed. [Opposition cheers and laughter.] I think I am rightly interpreting that cheer from the right hon. Gentleman; but in my belief these variations have very little to do with Governments or with politics. 1056 [Cheers.] I will just note in passing that the Post Office and telegraphs show a large and satisfactory increase over 1894–95, that the House Duty shows an increase of £60,000, and Income Tax an increase of £500,000—largely, I think, due to the great prosperity of the country, and to the fact of a larger proportion of these taxes having been paid within the financial year than would have been the case if the country had been less prosperous. But the heads of Revenue of the past year to which I wish to draw the attention of the Committee, are those in which the increase has mainly accrued and in which the variation is greatest, namely, Customs, Excise, Death Duties, and Stamps. I may just observe in passing that the Death Duties have been now, for the first time, separated from Stamps, at the suggestion of the hon. Member for King's Lynn (Mr. Gibson Bowles); and I am sure the Committee will feel that that suggestion has been a valuable one.