§ So that the Committee will see that I have still to make up a sum of nearly £900,000 in order to balance the account and to give me a reasonable margin for contingencies. Now, of course, it is clear that for this purpose there will be no justification, and there can be no necessity, for anything like a new departure in taxation, nor do I propose to embark even upon the new departures of a minor character which a great many correspondents have recommended to me. I have been the victim for the last few weeks of an extraordinary number of persons, who all seem to think that the object of taxation is not to raise revenue, but to penalise their pet aversions. Dogs and cats, menservants and maidservants, advertisements and grinding organs, the bicycles, which are so dear to my right honourable Friend the First Lord of the Treasury, the perambulators, of which more domesticated persons know the value, have all bitter enemies in this country. One gentleman wants me to tax soap and artificial light; another suggests that if I would put a small duty on aerated waters I might make a man of the teetotaller, by whom I suppose he imagines these beverages are principally consumed. Another gentleman tells me I might raise an enormous revenue—I do not know whether it was my honourable Friend the Member for Sheffield (Sir Howard Vincent)—if I would put a tax of £100 a head on every pauper alien landing in this country; and, lastly, a very enticing person assures me that there must be at least 1,500 individuals, gentlemen, men of birth, education, position, respected of their countrymen—not, of course, Members of the House of Commons—everyone of whom would gladly give £10,000 for a baronetcy, if I would only give them the chance. And then, on the other hand, there are those comforting prophets, all of whom have doubtless shouted with the loudest for 1019 increased expenditure, who assure me that any kind of new taxation will be a screw in the coffin of Her Majesty's Government. I set them against my right honourable Friend the Member for Bodmin. I admire the anxiety for unpopularity which characterises my right honourable Friend. If I had not to think of others I might be tempted to imitate him. But when he suggested to me that I should impose a fractional in crease on the income tax in order to give a pleasant arithmetical exercise to the income-tax payer, and that a trifle should be added to every one of our Customs and Excise Duties so as to worry the commercial classes into objecting to increased expenditure, why, I am reminded of a saying which I think was Mr. Gladstone's, that the British merchant will stand being taxed, but he will not stand being teased. I turn from the heroic counsels of my right honourable Friend, but there is one proposition upon which I should like to say a few words.