§ But there is one suggestion to which I must allude, because from communications that have reached me I gather it finds favour amongst some Members of this Committee. It is that I should suspend the Sinking Fund. That is, no doubt, the simplest, as it certainly is from a Parliamentary point of view the easiest, way of getting out of my difficulty, but it is a suggestion to which I for one am unwilling to assent, and I hope the Committee will support me in my refusal. The Sinking Fund was only recently re-established on the cessation of war. It is our first reserve should—which Cod forbid—war break out afresh. It ought to be jealously preserved for such a contingency, and to have recourse to it recklessly and without imperious necessity in time of peace is to make as direct an onslaught on our power to wage an effective war, as if we were directly to diminish our naval or military preparations. If for these reasons I should consider that it was at all times bad policy to suspend the Sinking Fund without absolute necessity or at least very urgent cause, I think it would be doubly bad policy at the present time, with the price of Government securities at the figure at which they now stand, and with the knowledge that for several years to come the Government must be borrowers in pursuit of their statutory obligations under the Naval and Military Works 560 Acts, for the Irish Land Purchase Acts, and for other purposes. I therefore dismiss that suggestion.