§ So much for expenditure. I now come to the income of the year, and before I deal with that income I have a few more words to say on this subject. If the House will bear with me just for a few minutes. I should very much like to review the position of the revenue and the expenditure to-day as compared with our position three years ago. Then when I stood at this box I was faced with very great and immediate exigencies and greater prospects of increases in the expenditure of the country. There were the great naval exigencies. We were committed to an exceptional shipbuilding programme; there was no prospect of any diminution, but on the contrary of a gradual growth for some years. By that time we knew approximately what the expenses of the new departure in Old Age Pensions would be. We had a demand for a further Grant in Aid of local taxation. We were committed, in fact both parties were committed, to a great scheme of Insurance, and although we were committed to a contributory scheme, both parties were committed to supplement this contribution by a Grant from the State. In addition to that, we had the problem of unemployment, which was much more 1858 acute at that moment, and we had come to the conclusion that instead of giving these sporadic Grants of £200,000 or £300,000 a year in relief of distress and the setting up of works—the most wasteful and extravagant methods and I think the most demoralising way of spending public money—it was fan: better to put the thing upon some more rational and firm and businesslike footing by setting up a kind of Development Commission, and by also doing something for the improvement of the roads of the country and by setting up Labour Exchanges.
§ All these things were within sight. The country was committed to them. Both parties were committed to them, and any Chancellor of the Exchequer standing at this box three years ago must have had these things in his mind; and the Government decided when raising taxation not merely to raise taxes sufficient to satisfy the immediate needs of the year, but also to raise taxes that would develop and extend so as to cover the whole of the expenditure then in sight. That was the policy. How far has that succeeded? We had to find all these exceptional sums of money, we had also to keep up the payments of debt at the same time as to sustain our credit in the market. Now how far have we succeeded? In the last two years we had exceptional expenditure on the Navy, Pensions and Unemployment. We have been able to pay each. We have paid them all, and we have a balance of £5,000,000 or £8,000,000, according to the view which is taken of the credit, and we have also paid that enormous sum of money in reduction of debt. That is the record of two years. We have borne the whole exceptional strain of the last two years.