§ I have been singularly fortunate, as compared with some of my predecessors in time of costly war, and increased taxation, in that for the last two years the receipts of the revenue have exceeded my anticipations. Last year my estimates of revenue were £142,455,000, but the Exchequer receipts exceeded that amount by £543,000. The expenditure estimated for in the Budget was £184,212,000. Afterwards the House voted Supplementary Estimates of £12,631,000, nearly all of them connected with South Africa, and £73,000 was an: increase which was not anticipated in the Consolidated Fund charges. On the other hand, there were savings on various-heads, mainly in respect of the year 1900 1901, amounting to £1,394,000, as compared with the Estimates, so that the total Exchequer issues last year were £195,522,000. If you deduct from this the Exchequer revenue of £142,998,000, the deficit is £52,524,000. That was provided for out of the Consols loan issued last Spring, which produced a net amount of £56,553,000, leaving, therefore, a balance to the good in the Exchequer of £4,029,000.
§ I hope the Committee may consider that this was not an absolutely unsuccessful result of my financial arrangements for the year that has passed. At any rate, it was a much better result than 163 was prognosticated by high authorities on the other side. I remember one evening in July when the hon. Member for the Carnarvon Boroughs, the hon. Member for Northampton, and the hon. Member for Poplar united in assuring me that I should have to provide many millions more for the cost of the war in South Africa than I had provided in my Estimates, and that we should have to hold an Autumn session of Parliament in order to find the money. And, Sir, two months later the leading organ of the Opposition in the Metropolitan daily Press—[Opposition cries of "Which is that?"]—I am not sure that I ought not to say the only organ—the Daily News [Opposition cries of "Oh!]—in an elaborate article, after what it described as a careful study of the financial position, assured its readers that my estimates of revenue were not likely to be reached by £3,000,000, that my estimates of expenditure would be exceeded by 17¾ millions, and that, allowing for what I had in hand from the Consols loan, I should want to borrow at least £10,000,000 more before the close of the year. Sir, I do not complain of those prophecies; I recognise that it is the ordinary duty of a self-respecting Opposition to view with suspicion even statements of fact by a Minister, and always to refuse to credit his anticipations; but at any rate I may congratulate myself that on this occasion their prophecies have been completely falsified.