§ I think it will be interesting to turn for a few moments from this account of our national indebtedness to the figures of local indebtedness. They will repay attention. We sometimes hear it said or suggested that the great fall in the values of Government stocks and all high-class securities in recent years is wholly due to the extravagant borrowings of the State. In a time of great war you must borrow, but if we examine the matter a little more closely, it will be seen that other causes have been at work to reduce the price of gilt-edged securities, and that, if national stocks and the stacks of local authorities are to regain their old credit, local authorities as well as the 555 Exchequer must agree to restrict for a time their demand? on the money market. At the close of the year 1901–2, the latest for which figures are available, the total outstanding loans of local authorities in the United Kingdom amounted to £412,000,000, For England and Wales figures are available to show the growth of this indebtedness during the last twenty years. In England and Wales alone the total outstanding loans in 1880 were £137,000,000. In the ten years from 1880 to 1890 that amount was increased by £62,000,000. In the ten years from 1890 to 1900 the amount was further increased by £95,000,000, while in the two years from 1900 to 1902 the amount was increased by no less a sum than £49,000,000. That is to say, the present rate of increase is two and a half times as great as it was in the period between 1890 and 1900; more than four times as great as between 1880 and 1890. In the twenty years between 1880 and 1900, while in England and Wales the local indebtedness increased by £157,000,000, the gross capital liabilities of the State were reduced by £132,000,000. But when the State was forced again to become a borrower, owing to the exigencies of a great and prolonged war, there was no compensatory restriction in the demands of the local authorities. In the three years ending 31st March, 1902, the local authorities of the United Kingdom borrowed over £103,000,000. The total sum added to the National Debt on account of the war, which disturbed the equilibrium of four financial years, is therefore only just about four-and-a-half years borrowings of local authorities in the United Kin, dom at the present rate of progress.