§ I now come to the Debt of the country. The total Debt of the country on 1st April 1898 was £638,267,000. On 31st March this year it was £634,984,000. But that is not a. fair comparison of the Debt, if we think only of what I may call the dead-weight Debt or the old Debt of the country, for, of course, the figures I have quoted include the Debt now being borrowed from year to year under special Acts of Parliament for certain reproductive purposes which is outside the fixed Debt charge, the interest and the Sinking Fund being provided for annually by the Votes of this House. That Debt on 1st April 1898 amounted to £3,831,000. On 31st March this year it had increased to £7,479,000, the increase being mainly due, as I have already explained, to the fact that during the year I have borrowed to replace in Exchequer balances a sum of more than £2,000,000, which had been taken out of them for these purposes. The deadweight Debt on 1st April 1898 amounted to £634,436,000. On 31st March last 1003 year it had fallen to £627,505,000. The funded debt on the last date amounted to £583,186,000, a decrease of £2,602,000 as compared with last year. Of this decrease in the funded Debt I should say that part was due to the investment of £297,000 received for the redemption of land tax. The estimated capital value of terminable annuities on 31st March last was £36,186,000, less by £4,329,000 than last year. The unfunded Debt remains the same as last year, £8,133,000, so that there was a net reduction of dead-weight Debt in the year of £6,931,000. This includes the reduction due to the application of the New Sinking Fund 1897-98, £1,061,000, which, as I explained last year, the Commissioners of the National Debt were unable to apply before the close of last financial year. But it does not include the New Sinking Fund 1898–9, £1,394,000, which has not yet been applied to the reduction of Debt. During the year £7,577,000 has been set aside for the reduction of Debt, and it may interest the Committee to know that among the sums devoted to that purpose is a sum of £77,000, which had accumulated from some of our Suez Canal shares which had been drawn for payment. The market value of that great national asset, the Suez Canal shares, on 31st March last was £26,450,000, £4,000,000 more than it was two years ago. The Committee may, perhaps, be disposed to set that unearned increment of £4,000,000 against our expenditure of £1,000,000 in the reconquest of the Soudan.