§ But the most serious fall in this portion of our revenue has been in that which is derived from the importation of foreign spirits, which show a deficiency of no less 1050 than £618,000. In 1903–4 the net receipts from imported spirits were £4,458,000, and I estimated for a revenue from the same source in 1904–5 of £4,450,000; the actual yield has been only £3,840,000, and of that deficiency no less than five-sixths occurred in the single article of foreign plain spirits. This was due to the same causes which have affected the price of sugar in the past few months—that is, the climatic conditions, which caused the failure of the potato and the beet crops. In 1904 the crop of potatoes in Germany was 198,000,000 cwt. less than in 1903, and as much as 312,000,000 cwt. less than in the plentiful year 1901. In 1902, when the surplus potatoes of 1901 had no doubt been turned into spirits, the import value here of German plain spirits was only 6s. 9d. per proof gallon. In 1904, when the German potato crop was the shortest of recent years, the price had risen to 14s. 3d. The demand for spirit in Germany absorbed the major portion of the production, and at the prices prevailing that country was apparently unable to compete with home-made spirits. I now pass from Customs to Excise.