§ I turn now to the Debt. And once again I must distinguish, as we have done in previous years, between what we are accustomed to describe as the dead-weight debt and the debt incurred for the purposes of public defence or improvement, such as naval and military works and public buildings and the like. Sir, the distinction is doubly sound, because, in the first place, the latter debt has, as the Committee are aware, its own provision for Sinking Fund and interest which is charged upon the Votes of the Department which has expended the money, and it stands wholly outside the dead-weight debt for the service of which the Fixed Debt Charge is provided. In the second place, we hold against that debt assets in the shape of the works constructed by means of that expenditure, which will outlast the currency of the debt itself. During the year this portion of the debt has been very largely increased. At the beginning of the year it stood at £31,868,000; by the close of the year it had reached a total of £41,664,000, an increase of £9,796,000. It is perhaps scarcely necessary for me to remind the Committee that the whole of the undertakings on which that money is expended had received the approval of the House in previous sessions, and that no increase of our liabilities was incurred during the past year. I have more than once expressed my own view to the Committee that, however necessary it was to have recourse to this method to make good the arrears of past years or to meet circumstances of an exceptional and extraordinary kind, it ought not to form part of our permanent financial system. We have, of course, still to complete the works which Parliament has already sanctioned and to take whatever steps are necessary in order to fulfil the obligations which Parliament has already incurred; but I hope that it will not be necessary to extend the programme which has already been approved. I hold that this procedure should be reserved for exceptional occasions. The dead-weight debt on March 31st, 1904, stood at £762,630,000. In the course of the twelve months the funded debt has been reduced by £1,950,000, the estimated liability on terminable annuities 1059 by £3,608,000, and the unfunded debt by the amount of the £2,000,000 which we borrowed temporarily from the Bank the year before in order to strengthen our balance. The total reduction of the dead-weight debt in the course of the twelve months has therefore been £7,558,000. At the close of the year this debt stood at £755,072,000. With that statement I finish my review of the past year and I turn to the prospects of the present year.