§ I am now in a position to show a final balance-sheet. For the year 1908–9, the estimated revenue on the existing basis of taxation is £157,770,000, and the expenditure is estimated at £152,869,000, showing a surplus of £4,901,000. The revenue given up in connection with the sugar duty is £3,400,000, and in connection with the stamp duty on marine insurance policies £20,000 (for the quarter which will fall in 1908–9). There is thus a total remission of taxation estimated at £3,420,000. To the expenditure side of the account has to be added the amount required for old-age pensions. The cost of the scheme for the quarter of the year for which it will be in operation will be £1,200,000. It is further proposed to grant to the local authorities for the cost of collecting certain licence duties £40,000. The total increased expenditure is £1,240,000. This, added to the amount of taxation remitted, will involve the reduction by £4,660,000 of the surplus, which was estimated at £4,901,000. There is thus a final balance of £241,000. That is the effect of our proposals. I do not know in what spirit they are to be attacked. I will only in my concluding words anticipate one obvious but, I think, superficial criticism. It will be said, I imagine—I should probably say it myself if I were a critic of this Budget—"You are looking out for the present and leaving the future to lookafter itself." That is as far as possible from being true, and let me say why. As I have shown, by the conjoint operation of the proposals in this Budget with the fruits of last year's surplus revenue, we are making in this year, 1908–9, provision for the further reduction of the Debt of the country by £15,000,000. It follows that next year, even if, in this matter of Debt reduction my right hon. friend 480 emulates and indeed outstrips the most strenuous efforts of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Goschen, he will still have at his disposal a free revenue of a very substantial amount. He will further have in hand £1,200,000—this year's contrition to old-age pensions. In my judgment there cannot be a greater mistake than to suppose that a free trade Finance Minister has come to or is nearly approaching the end of his resources in the matter of new taxation. My solitary contribution in that direction during my three years of office has been a comparatively trivial addition to the death duties last year, because, as I have said, I regarded it as my first and main duty to do what I could to reduce the national liabilities. The field is open to my right hon. friend, and I have the most complete confidence in his ability, if he should be in need—I do not know that he will—to make it yield a fruitful and abundant crop. This year, at any rate, we have done all that seemed to us possible. After meeting every obligation that the service of the country requires, we ask the House to sanction the application of the residue of the national income at our disposal in cheapening the raw material of some of our most important industries, in mitigating the cost of the consumer of one of the prime necessaries of life, and in laying a solid basis for a fuller and more humane provision for old age.