§ *THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. ASQUITH,) Fife, E.Mr. Emmott, as I am afraid I may have to make a somewhat considerable draft on the patience of the Committee in dealing with the present and the future, I shall content myself, and I will ask the Committee to be content, with a very brief, though, I hope, not wholly perfunctory, review of the past. The financial year which closed on March 31st was, in many ways, a remarkable one. Tried by all the ordinary tests, the trade of the United Kingdom, both at Home and over the sea, has rarely been more active or more flourishing. Nor was this prosperity confined to ourselves. It was shared, in greater or less degree, by almost all the producing countries of the world. To these generally favourable conditions there has been one prominent exception, 1176 the market for stocks and securities. Owing to causes of which I shall have to speak later on, there has been, especially in the later part of the year, a monetary stringency which looked at one time as though it were going to put a severe strain on the machinery of credit. It has been, from the financial point of view, in many ways, a year of surprises; and, perhaps, there has been nothing in it, superficially at least, more surprising than that the balance to the credit of the national account, which a year ago I estimated as likely to be somewhere between £300,000 and £400,000, was found, when the account was closed on March 31st, to be no less than £5,399,000. I have been the object of much misdirected congratulation in regard to the unforeseen dimensions of this enormous sum by people who do not understand the vital difference to the Chancellor of the Exchequer between the realised balance of one year and the estimated surplus of the next. Over the former, the realised balance of the past year, unless he chooses to ask Parliament to suspend the law, he has absolutely no control. It goes automatically to the Old Sinking Fund, and can only be legally applied to the redemption of debt; and as, moreover, any substantial excess in the realised over the estimated value is, or ought to be, the result of more or less accidental circumstances, its abnormal proportions afford little or no ground for anticipating a similar result in the coming year.