§ I am now in a position to present my final balance-sheet to the House. Customs, after allowing for the reduction in the tea duty, will stand at £34,050,000, thus reducing the total estimated revenue to £142,454,000. The Fixed Debt Charge, being increased by £1,000,000, will stand at £28,000,000, and the expenditure will be correspondingly increased to £142,032,000, leaving a balance of £422,000 available to meet contingencies. That concludes my task. I have now only to thank the Committee for the 1068 attention which they have accorded to me. It has been my fortune to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in two years of trade depression and financial stagnation. Last year it was my duty to impose an increase in our burdens. This year the small measure of relief which it is in our power to afford falls, I am afraid, far short of the expectations which have been formed in many quarters. Such times as these do not lend themselves to the production of what are known as popular Budgets. But in the proposals which I have laid before the Committee on behalf of His Majesty's Government we have sought not our own present popularity, but the permanent interests of the country. And by adopting these proposals the Committee will do all that lies in their power to stimulate the movement of recovery which is now visible, to enhance our national credit, and to strengthen the confidence rightly felt in the soundness and stability of our national finance.