§ The exact figures of the revenue are already in the hands of the House. They show that the Exchequer receipts from taxes fell short of the estimate by no less a sum than £2,790,000. The land tax and the house duty exceed the estimate by £50,000, and the income-tax produced £300,000 in excess of what was anticipated. But Customs and Excise, Death Duties, and Stamps all did badly and in the aggregate produced £3,140,000 less than the estimate which my right hon. friend put forward. The non-tax revenue did rather better and slightly exceeded the estimate, but the final result is that the year closed with a deficit on the revenue side of the account of £2,724,000 as compared with the anticipations of my predecessor. The Committee may expect from me some explanation of this great deficiency. I need not enter into a detailed account of the calculations upon which the Budget Estimates were based; it is sufficient to say that they were framed in the usual manner, on the best information which the Customs and Inland Revenue authorities could supply to my right hon. friend the Member for Croydon. It is never a very easy task, as I think my predecessors will admit, to forecast the revenue of the coming year; it is increasingly difficult to do so when the amount we raise from individual taxes is so high as it is at present, and when a very small percentage of error in the total estimate makes a very large practical difference. I must say that I think anyone who will look back over a period of years and compare the Estimates given by my predecessors, and supplied to them by 546 the great department of revenue for the then ensuing year, will be not so much surprised that sometimes they are in error as astonished that in the aggregate they should be so wonderfully close to the ascertained result. But the Committee may like to know more particularly wherein these Estimates were erroneous. I take first the Customs. The Customs revenue fell short of Budget anticipations by nearly £800,000. I am glad to say, and I think the Committee will be pleased to note the fact, that that is not wholly due to a falling off in consumption of dutiable articles.