§ Now I come to the greatest strain of all. How did our policy bear this? The finance of this year represents such a strain upon the revenue as it has never been put to before. The strain upon the Budget of 1908 was much greater than was anticipated. I did not anticipate all that. I did not anticipate having to find the whole of the Grant towards pensions, including paupers. On the contrary, I made it quite clear in the statement of 1909, that it was the intention of the Government that it should be divided; so we took upon ourselves a strain of £1,500,000 above what we anticipated. I say, frankly, I did not anticipate that the naval expenditure this year would have gone up by £4,000,000—that imposed another exceptional and 1859 great strain upon our resources. How did we bear it? We have had to bear it before our taxes have had time to mature. The Super-tax has not matured; the Death Duties have not reached the limit of full strength; the Land Taxes are only just beginning. Now the result is that I am driven to propose alterations this year not very substantial, but—they are all in the direction in relief to the taxpayer. So that it has stood all this exceptional strain, and we are able at the same time to set aside something like £12,000,000 for the reduction of debt, and give a very small relief in two or three small things. At any rate they do give a relief in respect of one or two particular instances. That has been done without injuring the trade or industries of this country. Had the burden been so severe as to cripple industry, although the Budget had succeeded as a machine for extracting money, it would really have been a failure.