§ When these schemes are provided, I think we can claim that last year's Budget, with all its accessory measures, will challenge comparison with any set of measures passed by this Parliament in the aggregate of human misery they have saved. The most satisfactory condition of all is that in spite of these increased burdens for these purposes, the excellent trade prospects which we are now enjoying, prove that the nation has not been generous beyond its means. On the contrary, it looks as if the exceptional provision this rich and powerful nation has been making recently for the needy and unfortunate has been blessed with greater prosperity than has ever been attained in the whole history of its commercial greatness. Last year there were five nations, five of the greatest nations in the world, that were labouring in the trough of financial distress—Germany, France, the United States of America, Russia, and the United Kingdom—they all had huge deficits to meet. There is only one of them that has emerged.
§ Let me just summarise what has been accomplished already: We have wiped out completely a deficit of £16,000,000. In readjusting taxes for that purpose we have reduced existing taxes where they were pressing heavily by £1,200,000. We made provision for increasing demands on the Exchequer in respect of defence and social reform to the extent of many more millions. We paid out of current revenue Charges which other countries are borrowing for. We have no naval construction loan. We are paying for our ships out of the current revenue of the year. Yes, and we are paying out of the current revenue Charges for which five years ago we ourselves were bor- 1143 rowing. Not only that. Last year we provided towards the reduction of our liabilities, even when we are suspending the Sinking Fund, £6,691,000. This year we have provision for reducing our liabilities—old established debt and ether capital liabilities—by £9,687,000. What country in the world can show such a record? I ask more—what fiscal system in the world could stand such a strain? It has been a real triumph for both. We have heard a good deal m the last few years of decrying and depreciating British credit, British trade, British commerce, And British securities. Let anyone who doubts examine the facts and compare ours with the financial record of other countries, and he will find that there is no need for this well-organised despondency; that after everything that has happened even during the last few years we are paying our own debts, meeting our own deficits, while others are lumbering along with their burdens and with their deficits from one futile financial expedient to another, and I think he will come to the conclusion that the old country is still the soundest investment going. I beg to move,