§ But if our increases of expenditure have been remarkable, even more remarkable have been the decreases of expenditure. First of all, there are the services of the Debt. Our predecessors in 1830 had to pay £29,575,000, or 58.5 per cent, of their total expenditure for the annual 1267 charge of the Debt. We pay £25,000,000 or 22 per cent of the total expenditure. Interest and management of the Debt cost them £27,686,000. They cost us £17,779,000—["hear, hear!"]—nearly ten millions less than it cost them. They were only able to devote to paying it off £1,889,000. We devote £7,221,000 to the same purpose. With them the annual interest of the Debt was an annual tax of 21s, 8d. per head of the population; with us it is only 9s. per head. On them the total burden of the Debt was £33 9s. 3d. per head of the population; on us it is less than half— £16 6s. 6½d. It is not surprising that Consols have risen in value so much that, while in 1836 a man could obtain an income from Consols of £3 by investing £89 10s., he has now to spend £121 for the same result. ["Hear, hear!"] The second reduction in expenditure has been in the cost of collecting the revenue. It costs us less to collect £94,250,000 of taxes than it cost our predecessors to collect £50,000,000. [Cheers.] It cost them £5 14s. 2d. per £100; and it costs us only £2 17s. 8d. per £100. And with all that diminution of the cost, smuggling, which was then a real profession, has become practically extinct. But the last head of all, although small, is perhaps the most interesting at the present time. Our monarchy was never so valuable to the country as it is at the present moment. [Loud cheers.] The personal influence of the Sovereign was never so great in European Courts. [Renewed cheers.]The Crown was never so necessary as now. when it unites an enormously extended Empire; and since 1836 the population and wealth of the United Kingdom itself have enormously increased. We hear sometimes grumblings at the cost of the monarchy, though we are not likely to hear them in the present year. [Cheers.] But no doubt they will be repeated some day. What are the facts as to the comparative cost of the monarchy in 1836 and now? When Her Majesty came to the Throne Parliament voted £385,000 a year to her Civil List, exclusive of Civil List pensions; and Parliament took in return Crown estates which then produced a net income of £203,000. The result was that the taxpayers of that day bore a charge on that account of £182,000. The same Crown 1268 estates now produce a net income of £412,000, so that the taxpayers at the present moment make a net profit by that transaction of £27,000 a year. [Cheers.] But that is not all. Besides the Civil List we grant allowances to members of the Royal Family and we vote sums for the maintenance of the Royal palaces. These two items amounted in the year 1836, the first to £312,000 a year and the second to £40,000 a year. Last year they amounted, the first to £173,000 a year and the second to £39,000 a year, So that in 1836 the total cost of the monarchy to the taxpayers was £534,000 a year, and last year it was £185,000 a year. [Cheers.] We pride ourselves, and I think justly, on possessing the best monarchy in the world. [Cheers.] But I am sure we may add that we also have the cheapest. [Laughter.] I could go on through many another matter— through the increase of our mercantile marine, the extension of our railway system, the enormous increase of personal wealth, the increased investments of all classes in all, forms of industrial enterprise, the increased consumption per head of the population, both of the necessaries and the luxuries of life. Every comparison would bear testimony to the wonderful improvement in the material well-being of the people of the United Kingdom which has occurred since 1836. Our people, I think I may say, are better governed, are better protected, are better educated than they were. Wages have risen, houses are better and healthier, food and clothing are cheaper, and, perhaps as important as anything, crime has enormously diminished. ["Hear, hear!"] I feel that all classes and all persons may not equally have benefited, that much may remain yet to be done. But this, I think, may be said with fairness. At no previous period of the country's history in a similar number of years has so much real improvement and progress been made, and I am quite sure that no similar period can show a nobler reign. [Cheers.]