§ I now turn to the Inland Revenue. Excise shows a heavy falling off. The receipts last year were £31,600,000 as compared with £33,100,000 in the year before. Beer fell by £200,000, producing only £13,300,000, and this has been the second year in which there has been a decrease in the consumption of beer. I think the reason has been that brewers generally, instead of adding the tax to their price, have decreased the gravity of their beer; but their customers do not like the diluted article as well as the previous article. Certainly it has happened last year that fewer balk barrels, as they are technically called, have gone into consumption from the breweries than went into consumption the year before. The revenue from home spirits has largely decreased. Last year it was£17,630,000, a decrease of £1,370,000 as compared with the year before, but nearly all this is due, not to decreased 168 consumption on the part of the people, but to forestalments of the duty, by clearances of spirits in the year before, depriving last year of the revenue which properly belonged to it. Here again, though I cannot say that the revenue from spirits is buoyant, yet I shall expect increased receipts from spirits in the year before us. We received from glucose £64,000 under excise duty in nine months.