§ I have to address myself to another consideration. Unemployment is widespread. It is breaking the hearts and embittering the lives of hundreds of thousands of our workmen. The professional and middle classes are enduring privation today such as they have never before had to face. The unparalleled depression which beset us throughout the whole of the course of last year is still with us. Happily there are to-day hopeful signs of a revival which with a little encouragement might develop into solid progress. The burdens of taxation which have been borne by the British people both during and since the War in a degree that has excited the admiration of the whole world are now felt to be so oppressive as to check enterprise and deepen despondency. Is it essential that we should maintain this pressure? Is it not possible by slackening it to give some much needed stimulus to trade, thereby lessening our expenditure and next year at least, if not this, gain some revenue as the result of the augmented profits of revived industry? The policy of the redemption of debt we have pursued with vigour and success. We have provided£322,000,000 in cash for redemption of debt during the last two years. I have no doubt we were right in doing so. I have no doubt we benefited by it. It enhanced our credit, and it put back into the hands of industry considerable sums which were unprofitable in the hands of the State. Equally, I have no doubt as to the course which we ought to pursue at the present conjuncture in our affairs. We are saddled in the present year with a new burden in the shape of the interest that we have to pay on our debt to the United States of America. That we shall meet without question. It is possible by making too great exactions on the tax- 1040 payer to defeat the very object at which you aim, no matter how praiseworthy it is. I am of opinion that we ought not to ask the taxpayer in this year to redeem Debt. I do not mean to say that he is not to find the revenue to meet the expenditure. That must be. All I say is that after the superhuman efforts of the last few years and in the very exceptional circumstances of the times, we shall offend against no sound canon of finance if we content ourselves in this year with raising the revenue which is necessary to meet our expenditure. What does that involve?
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSit involves a fall in the rate of exchange.
§ Sir R. HORNEI do not think that for a moment. But that can be debated afterwards. It involves in the first place the suspension of the sinking fund to which I have referred, and in the second place that we should, to meet our obligations towards the holders of securities who have the rights to which I have referred, re-borrow the money necessary for that purpose. I think the Committee understand clearly that that re-borrowing is for the purpose of paying special forms of debt, and does not in any way result in adding to the general burden of debt. At the end of the year our debt will not be decreased, but it will not be any greater. I am confident in the belief that the circumstances of to-day justify what I am proposing. The need, not merely the clamour, but the real need for a reduction in the burden of taxation is great, if Industry which now gives signs of restarting, is to have a fair prospect of success. I accordingly propose that in the present year we shall not budget for any reduction of debt out of revenue.