§ The position today is much the same, to my mind, as it was in Mr. Gladstone's time. The crux of the situation is the necessity for increased indirect taxation. I have proposed such an increase. I know very well that the very name of a duty on corn may arouse prejudices strong and deep, born in the days when such a duty meant a duty intended to make corn dear, which, sometimes at any rate, was but too successful in its object. That, Sir, is not the duty which I propose today. It may be that attempts will be made to fan these prejudices in to a flame by a renewal of the cry of taxing the food of the people—[Opposition cries of "Hear, hear!"]—a cry which has always seemed to me somewhat absurd, considering that some kinds of wholesome food have always been taxed in our tariff. I cannot myself see that it is more wrong to tax an article that is consumed by a man than to tax the means by which he purchases it. I remember this cry was attempted to be raised last year when I proposed the duty on sugar. I remember that the good sense of the people at large rejected it; and I believe they will reject it again. I am convinced that they know and feel that, with the high wages of the present day (and bread so cheap that even in comparatively poor households I fear it is sometimes wasted), the tax I am proposing could at the very worst be but a very trifling contribution on their part to the cost of a war which the great bulk of them approve, and to the ever-increasing charge for the Navy, one of whose primary duties it is to protect the food supply of the country. Of this I am quite certain—that by no other indirect taxation could by any possibility so much money be found for the Exchequer 189 with so little effect upon the price of the article on which it is imposed, with so little injury to any manufacturing industry, or with less general disturbance of the trade and commerce of the country. I beg to