§ The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Baldwin)To frame a Budget has at no time been deemed a light task, but in recent years, in the present year, and in years immediately to come, it has been, it is, and it will be a task which has exercised, and must exercise, to the greatest extent, the powers and wisdom of the men engaged upon it. Calculations to-day are made in a world of rapidly-changing values. Vast sources of revenue obtained from the liquidation of war-time assets are rapidly disappearing, and claims of expenditure are urged by men who have learned to think in millions whereas they formerly thought in pounds.
The very figures of revenue and expenditure are so swollen that they hardly convey any clear meaning to many of those who read them, and there is, above all, the persistent unknown quantity which prevents the solution of each equation as it arises. It is because of these conditions that such variations from estimated figures arise as led to the criticism levelled in last year's Budget Debate against the deficiencies then shown and will lead in this year's Debate to criticisms on the reverse ground of the surpluses which have emerged. But this environment, however unpropitious for the prophets, is the one in which we have to work, and it. is not the creation of my own fancy. Hon. Members may remember that what I have tried to express was put clearly and succinctly in the "Manchester Guardian" only two or three weeks ago, and with the permission of the Committee I will read two paragraphs because they are so apposite:
There was in those days (and the writer means before the War) a certain continuity in the financial and commercial curves, hut the War has shattered that continuity, and those curves are now in the habit of perpetrating the most unmathematical jumps and changes of direction, so that the prophet who has any care for his reputation would do well to keep silent for a year or two pending the restoration of something like the pre-War rhythm in the economic body.1722 Unfortunately, on the occasion of his Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer may not keep silent, but if prophets had always been compelled to prophesy, whether they wished it or no, the reputation of prophets through the centuries would have stood a great deal lower than it does to-day.