I rise to move that Clause 1 be postponed. My reason for asking for the postponement of the clause is the unfortunate procedure which has been adopted with reference to what, after all, is a supplementary Budget, a procedure of which the House has had some cognisance of in the last few minutes, by a Question and answer which show the difficulty in which we have been placed by the mode in which this question has been dealt with. The Committee has been placed in a difficult position by the Chancellor of the Exchequer's bringing forward what are his new financial proposals in the altered circumstances on the Second Reading of the Loan Bill. It was impossible on that Bill to have anything like a discussion on the statement he then made; and, by the Orders of the House, we are now precluded from entering upon a general discussion of these Budget proposals on going into Committee. I have no wish to interfere with a large number of the clauses of this Bill, clauses about which there may be some difference of opinion on various points with which we are familiar in Finance Bills, but I do venture to submit to the Government that it is not fair to ask the Committee to proceed any further in the imposition of new taxation until we have from the Chancellor of the Exchequer a statement, not of a vague, uncertain character, but a statement embodied in the shape of Estimates, laid upon the Table of the House, telling the House how he proposes to spend the large sum of money which will now not be required, but which the House has provided for the war. I will endeavour to lay before the House my reasons for arguing that, by pointing out the difficulties with which we are faced. Some eight weeks ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought in a Budget in which he estimated for a gross expenditure of £193,109,000. That sum included the ordinary provision for the Sinking Fund, and the estimated expenditure was, therefore, reduced to £188,469,000. I am sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not differ from me if I say he would not have budgeted for that sum if eight weeks ago he could have foreseen that in so short a time the war would have been practically closed, and the House have been attending thanksgiving services over a Declaration of Peace, on terms universally satisfactory both at home and in South Africa, and that the normal state of affairs was being rapidly resumed. It was a War Budget; the Chancellor of the Exchequer looked at the position in the gloomiest way, and in those circumstances rightly asked for this very large sum of money. Now a new state of things has arisen, and I ask the right hon. Gentleman to remember what he included in his Estimate. I was not present when the right hon. Gentleman made his statement—

Hear, hear!

But I have read it most carefully, and I cannot reconcile his figures, nor, if I understood the debate correctly, could a much greater authority, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouthshire understand them. Therefore there is something to be explained to the ordinary man in the street. As I understood the Estimate, it included, not only the ordinary Estimates for the year, about which there can be no dispute, but £40,000,000 for war expenditure for between eight and nine months. The Secretary for War had only made provision for carrying on the war till practically the end of the year, at a cost roughly of £5,000,000 a month. It included interest, not only on the war debt which had then been incurred, but also on the war Debt in respect of that which was to be borrowed this year.

Which has been borrowed.

The Budget provided for the payment of £750,000 interest on the new war Debt, and, subject to the correction of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it provided, I think, £750,000 for the South African Constabulary. The Chancellor of the Exchequer did not make that clear the other night, but he included £1,800,000 as a special grant for civil administration in South Africa.

That is in the Estimates already.

Yes. I am enumerating the figures outside the ordinary Estimates which were included in the Budget. It included the £40,000,000, the interest on the Debt incurred, the £750,000 for the South African Constabulary, and over and above that, £17,000,000 for what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said was requisite to carry on the war until the end of the financial year, because he was not satisfied with providing for only eight or nine months expenditure. I cannot make out from the figures whether the right hon. gentleman provided for the £250,000 Grant to the West Indies—my impression is that the right hon. Gentleman did not, and, therefore, I do not put that in; but it was mentioned to the House. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House quite fairly that he had not included a variety of charges with reference to the termination of the war; he had not included the gratuities which would be paid at the end of the war; the transport and other terminal charges, and those are the charges now before the Committee. The Budget of 1901–02 made large provision on the assumption that there would be extra charges at the end of the war, and, though, the bulk of that sum has been expended in consequence of the prolongation of the war, there is still a balance of between £4,000,000 and £5,000,000 which went to swell the Exchequer balances at the end of the financial year. We cannot discuss it now, but I beg to enter my respectful dissent from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's view with reference to these Exchequer balances. The right hon. Gentleman said he did not provide for the stores and horses, payment for which would be required at the close of the war, and he did not provide for the concentration camps. I state frankly that the House had full notice that these sums would be required at some future date. What was the revenue on which the right hon. Gentleman relied to meet the estimated expenditure? He took a revenue from the existing taxation of £147,785,000 and added new taxation £5,150,000, making his total revenue £152,935,000. Subtracting that sum from the expenditure, he showed a deficit of £35,500,000. That was the position as he left it at the end of the year, and when the change arose he ought to have laid upon the Table a complete statement of the scheme which he had in his mind, so that the Committee could check it at all points. As £40,000,000 was the estimated expenditure on the Army at its full strength for between eight and nine months, and as that estimate is now-reduced by two or three months, we can see without going very closely into figures that there must be a large saving there. I gather that the Chancellor of the Exchequer puts the saving at, £28,000,000. Then there is the extra provision of £17,000,000, and that also is not wanted. Some accounts put this sum at £17,500,000, and others at £16,000,000, but I put it at £17,000,000. At all events, we are not far apart, and that sum is not wanted. But from the expenditure which would be saved, there must be deducted the new expenditure required, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has stated that for the various items connected with the closing of the war he will require the whole £40,000,000 voted for a war expenditure of eight months, of which he saves £28,000,000. He now says that he will require the whole of that sum for the various items connected with the closing of the war and the transports, and for the other items of expenditure to which I have just called the attention of the House. Then I raise the constitutional principle, that there has not been any estimate of that expenditure, and that it has never been considered in Committee of Supply. I do not think we ought to commit ourselves to the expenditure of £28,000,000 simply upon the mere ipse dixit of any Minister, however highly we may think of him—and nobody thinks more highly than I do of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There is a constitutional principle involved of the control of the House of Commons over public expenditure. We know that a good deal of this expenditure will be War Office expenditure, and our past experience of War Office expenditure is not encouraging. Our experience of the War Office expenditure upon horses and stores, upon transport and other items, has not been very encouraging; and I do not think that any Department of the State ought to be given a free hand in regard to an expenditure of something like £28,000,000. Certainly the House of Commons ought not to be asked to vote new taxation until there is laid before it, signed by the Secretary of State for War, a statement of the mode in which the £28,000,000 is to be spent. The right hon. Gentleman has put the surplus, which will remain outside the loan, at £10,500,000. And he proposes to deal with it in this way. He proposes to take £4,640,000 in order to replace the sum which was abstracted from the Sinking Fund. I think that is a proper course to take. It was borrowed money, and I do not question what he said on that point, but it is quite another question when we come to additional taxation. I think my right hon. friend the Member for West Monmouthshire expressed not only his own view on this point but also the view of many other hon. Members who differ from him politically. My right hon. friend said that if we restored the Sinking Fund that would be a provision for the present and for the future reduction of the Debt, and he pointed out that it does not mean only £5,000,000 today, but in the future as in the past it would mean £7,000,000 devoted to the Sinking Fund. My right hon. friend the Member for West Monmouthshire also pointed out that there remained another £5,000,000 to be dealt with, and that while you are taking £5,000,000 for the Sinking Fund you might also relieve the country of the £5,000,000 taxation. That would dispose of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's surplus of £10,000,000 and it could not be called an unfair partition of the money at his disposal. That is a clear issue, upon which the House will be called upon to give a decided verdict. I endorse my right hon. friend's view completely. That is a very proper course, and £4,500,000 is a fair proportion in the interests of posterity. But something is due to the taxpayers of the present, on whom new burdens are to be imposed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has given a rather singular account of how he proposes to spend the other £6,000,000 and here another constitutional principle is raised. First, the right hon. Gentleman wishes to deal with the floating Debt. The right hon. Gentleman says there is a considerable floating debt, but that should be dealt with at the proper time and in the proper place, and I do not think it is necessary to impose new taxation to deal with the floating debt which at the commencement of this year was not in contemplation when the right hon. Gentleman introduced his Budget. Then the right hon. Gentleman says that he requires money to finance the Exchequer. Owing to the arrangements now made it is perfectly true that the great bulk of the expenditure is going on all the year and that the great bulk of the money, does not come in until the last quarter of the year. But that is a question of banking and not of borrowing the money. Previous Chancellors of the Exchequer under quite as difficult circumstances have had no difficulty whatever in arranging matters with the Bank of England.

But you cannot go beyond a certain point.

There was no difficulty last year. But if it is necessary to have further borrowing powers, let them be defined and limited. Then the right hon. Gentleman spoke of possible advances to the Orange and Transvaal Colonies, but he has told the House that those charges are to be met out of a loan on the revenues of the Colonies guaranteed by the British Government.

I showed plainly that I did not contemplate any advances made out of these £6,000,000 being more than temporary. Of course, it takes time to make the necessary arrangements for the sanctioning of a loan by the legislative body which will have to be established in the Colonies, and for bringing Bills before Parliament for our guarantee. In the meantime it may be absolutely necessary that advances should be made for the purposes which everyone approves. But the advances will be merely temporary.

I do not understand the machinery of the legislation which is to sanction this loan. I am quite sure, however, that it could not be raised on better terms than the last issue of Consols. I do not think all these numerous schemes of expenditure which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has drawn within his net can come before the House of Commons as objects of expenditure for which new taxation should be imposed upon the country, and new taxation ought not to be imposed until the House of Commons has approved of those measures and until the House knows all about them. I do not wish to detain the House any longer but I want to put this question fairly, and I shall be ready to fight any detail afterwards in the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In many of his proposals I do think he is making haste without making much speed. The House ought to have an authorised statement of what is to be done with the sums of £28,000,000 and £17,000,000, and should be given an opportunity of discussing this second Budget of the year.

I very much regret that the right hon. Gentleman was not present on Wednesday last, when I made the very statement to the House for which he now asks. [Cries of "No."] I can give no other explanation than the repetition of that statement. The right hon. Gentleman has given two reasons for the postponement of this clause. The first is that he wants to know in what way we are going to spend the £28,000,000, of the £40,000,000 taken on the Estimates for the war expenditure in South Africa which will not be required or war expenditure owing to the earlier termination of the war. I said that the money would be required for certain military purposes, including the maintenance for a longer period than had been anticipated of the population now in the concentration camps—all of them being purposes which were not included in the original Estimate of £40,000,000. Then the right hon. Gentleman asks that a detailed statement of the mode in which it will be applied for that service should be laid on the Table. It will be laid on the Table; but I understand that the right hon. Gentleman desires that the money shall be actually voted by the House before the House proceeds with the Finance Bill levying the taxation necessary for the expenditure of the year. Such a proposal was never before made to the House of Commons. The clauses of the Finance Bill are always considered in Committee long before all the Estimates are voted by the House.

But not before they are laid before the House.

Then is the demand simply that the Estimates shall be laid before the House?

I ask that the promise of the Secretary of State for War that those Estimates would be laid on the Table shall be fulfilled before the House proceeds with the Bill.

There are certain services admittedly necessary for the termination of the war. They are not like new Estimates or expenditure on which the view of Parliament might be doubtful. It is expenditure which must be incurred, and which every one will be glad to incur in view of the termination of the war. We are asked, before we proceed with the clauses of the Finance Bill proposing the taxation necessary to defray that expenditure, that fresh estimates should be placed on the Table of the House. I must say that the request seems to me to be entirely unreasonable. Then the right hon. Gentleman gives another reason for his present proposal. He agrees with my proposal with regard to the restoration of the Sinking Fund, but he differs from my proposal with regard to devoting the remaining surplus of the loans raised to the paying off of debt to which it ought properly to be devoted; and he referred to the suggestion made the other evening by the right hon. Member for West Monmouthshire that instead of taking that course the proposed new taxes already mentioned by the House, after two considerable debates, should be dispensed with, and, in fact, that we should devote borrowed money towards the reduction of taxation. I decline to take that course. I have declined to take that course already; but I own I am surprised that such a suggestion should ever have come from the right hon. Member for West Monmouthshire. The right hon. Gentleman has not only preached the duty of paying our way, but has practised it under great difficulties; and yet he is actually the person to suggest to me that, with a deficit of £28,000,000, I should devote borrowed money to reduce taxation which has been in operation for nearly two months, and that suggestion is supported by the light hon. Member for Hast Wolverhampton. These right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Members who sit behind them have for the last three years been denouncing me because I did not raise enough from taxation and raised too much by borrowing for the purposes of the war. I am astounded that they should turn round in this kind of way and press me to take that course. It would be an evil precedent in the history of the finances of this country. No, Sir, their real objection, of course, is not to the abstract principle of increasing taxation in order to provide something towards this deficit of £28,000,000 for the year. Their real objection is to the particular taxes—or to one particular tax which I propose to raise for that purpose. Then let us have the fight out. Why does the right hon. Gentleman interpose with this dilatory and obstructive Motion in order to prevent us from coming to that fight? The fight comes on in the first clause of the Bill, and if he desires to attack me for pressing the corn duty in place of yielding it and devoting borrowed money towards this great deficit, then let him denounce me as he is perfectly able to do when we are discussing that clause. But this is a dilatory and obstructive motion, and I will not pursue its discussion further.

I do not think I ever recollect an entirely new supplementary statement being produced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer with so much vehemence and warmth. The case he has advanced to us is a very serious one. As to the figures that he laid before the House the other night—I suppose it is due to my own obtuseness—I was not able to understand them at the time, and I have examined them since in print, and I am totally at a loss to understand the statement he made then, or to reconcile the figures in print with his speech on the Budget or the tables accompanying it. He proceeded to talk of £174,000,000 the other nigh as being the figure of the expenditure. I pointed out to him at that time that it was absolutely inconsistent with his own tables, where he showed an expenditure of £188,000,000. Therefore, I remain of the same opinion I held then after the most careful examination I can give to the statement that the surplus he has at his disposal must be considerably more than he stated on that occasion. Now he says that he laid before us the other night particulars of how the £28,000,000 were to be disposed of. He did not lay before us anything except a general statement. He said, "I am going to do this, that, and the other, and that will exhaust the £28,000,000." That is not, Sir, the information the House of Commons has a right to expect. If that is his view of what the Budget means, it is the most extraordinary I ever heard. He says that the Budget does not depend on the voting of Supplies. No, Sir, but it depends on the Estimates presented to the House. That is the essence of the Budget. If you disapprove of the Estimates presented to the House you object to them in the Budget, and you object to the new-provisions of taxation in that Budget. The right hon. Gentleman chose tonight to treat the matter as if peace had made no change whatever in the financial condition of the country. In his view we, in April, settled the whole finances of the year when we were at war, and when he said, reasonably enough, that what he intended to do was to provide for a twelve months continuance of the war. Now he turns round and says that the House should sanction the whole of this expenditure. Can anything be more unsatisfactory, anything more unreasonable, anything more contrary to the fundamental principles of finance than that when you estimate the taxation of the country on the basis of expenditure at £188,000,000, and then find that that is £20,000,000 too much, you should say all this was sanctioned two months ago, and therefore cannot be altered? It ought to be altered. The conclusion of peace makes it necessary that it should be altered. It is trifling with the House and the country to assert that because you made a statement founded upon a condition of things which has ceased to exist, therefore that statement and that policy is to continue. I say that no finance Minister ever dealt with the taxation of the country on such a basis as that. Under all former conditions of the same kind, when a peace was concluded the whole taxation of the country was altered. What happened in 1815? The House of Commons determined unanimously to abolish the income tax, and that is a precedent in finance against the conduct and the course taken by the right hon. Gentleman. Now we are placed in a very awkward position, and we ought to have some moans of escape from it. We ought really to deal with this matter as if we were engaged in the Second Reading of the Finance Bill. The Second Heading of the Finance Bill was founded on the hypothesis of twelve months war with expenditure corresponding to it; and the House is entitled, looking at the whole condition of things, and the whole of the expenditure contemplated upon the Estimates for which the spending Departments are responsible, to consider what burdens it will or will not lay upon the country. That is the finance of this country, and I hope it will long continue to be so. Now we are in Committee upon the Finance Bill, and no general view can be taken of the financial position when we are asked singly and one by one to vote taxes which, if we had a general view of the whole situation, we might pronounce to be unnecessary and superfluous. I say that the House is entitled to review the altered conditions of the financial necessities of the country in consequence of the happy establishment of peace. To ask in the first two months of the financial year that we should go on for the remaining ten months on a Budget founded on Estimates when war was in progress and might continue for ten months more, is in my opinion irrational and unjust to the taxpayers of the country. I never listened to anything that astounded me half so much as the statement just made by the right hon. Gentleman. He said that we object to a particular tax. Yes, Sir, of course we object to a particular tax. We object to any tax which we think is unnecessary, whatever it is. If the general condition of the finance of the nation makes any one tax unnecessary, or makes all the taxes unnecessary we have a right, and it is our first duty, to pronounce upon that situation. Now there is a particular tax that we object to more than any other, and the defence of that tax was the condition of war. The Colonial Secretary went down to Birmingham and declared that it was a war tax in these very words—

"This is a tax for war, a just and necessary war."

made a remark which was inaudible in the gallery.

I think you have in practice collected the taxes upon the preliminary sanction you obtained. But then that preliminary sanction was given in another state of things, and you have no right to rest on that preliminary sanction when the essential conditions on which it rested have been entirely changed. The House has a right, in fact it is our duty, to take into consideration the change which has come about with the promulgation of peace, In point of fact, the Government finds itself in possession of a large sum of money—the Chancellor of the Exchequer says £10,000,000, I believe it is more—but whether it is £10,000,000 or £20,000,000, there is nothing more unsound in finance than to allow the executive Government to be in possession of such a large sum unappropriated. It is not by that means that we have avoided that waste, extravagance, and mischief to sound finance which has prevailed in other countries. It is in the rigorous adherence to rules which the House of Commons has insisted upon in protecting the money of the people that our system of finance is grounded. What is the condition of things? If you leave this £10,000,000 in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he is not bound to apply it in any particular way. It is money in his pocket. It is money of which no account has been rendered to the country at all. The right hon. Gentleman says that the money is wanted for the war. So is the Army wanted for the war, but we do not give £20,000,000 or £30,000,000 to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to spend as he likes on the Army.

I cannot spend a penny of it until it has been voted by the House of Commons.

What are you going to do with it? The appropriation of this money stands on the same touting as that for the Army itself. When we are going to spend money on the Army the Government requires to give the House of Commons the details of the particular items of that expenditure. Why should we not, in regard to this £28,000,000, have the particulars of the expenditure just as much as of the expenditure on the Army itself? The proposed procedure of the Government strikes at the roots of the whole financial system of our country. How ought this money to be dealt with? I say first of ail that we are entitled to have a new Budget. If peace had been proclaimed two months ago we would not have bad these taxes: that is certain. And that being so we ought to have time for consideration and to have an account rendered to us. I do not see why this £28,000,000 should be voted before a statement is laid on the Table of the House just as the Estimates are laid on the Table. That is the demand which the right hon. Gentleman who moved the Motion before the Committee has made.

I promised the other evening to lay a statement on the Table.

What a promise! It is as if the Chancellor of the Exchequer asked for £30,000,000 for the Army on the promise that on some future day he would lay a statement on the Table of the House telling us how the £30,000,000 is to be appropriated. Was there ever such an absurdity as that? What is the meaning of the Order that within a certain number of weeks from the meeting of Parliament the Estimates shall be presented to the House of Commons? It is for the express purpose that Parliament shall know every single farthing you propose to spend; and if the Government does its duty, it ought to present details of all that the money is wanted for for the year; and a departure from that system, and introducing great Supplementary Estimates is a great evil and mischief. Why, part of the Supplementary Estimates are produced even before beginning the consideration of the Finance Bill. We are entitled, before we go a step further in the taxation of the people, to have an account on the basis of the expenditure to wind up the war. The right hon. Gentleman rather censured me for being a party to the suggestion that this money should be appropriated, half to the reduction of Debt, and half to reduction of taxation. There is a clear difference between money raised by borrowing and money raised by taxation. But you find yourselves now in a new position altogether. You have collected this money and have got it in hand, and it seems to me to be not unfair that when you make a disposition of it you should appropriate some of it to the Sinking Fund; and when the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the other night that he meant to do so, I applauded him. But appropriating the money to the Sinking Fund is very different from appropriating it to paying off Treasury Bills. Is this additional taxation necessary? If not, it is unjust. Those are the grounds on which I sincerely and cordially support the proposition of my right hon. friend. I think we ought not to proceed with further taxation until we have laid upon the Table the Estimates of the expenditure to which that taxation is to be devoted. That is a very simple proposition. I think that if we were to go on in Committee without these estimates, and impose additional taxes upon the people, we should be acting inconsistently with the principles of British finance, and I hope, at all events, the House will pronounce upon that issue.

said he thought it was unfortunate that so much heat had been developed on what was after all a pure matter of business. The Budget introduced two months ago was a War Budget; this was a Peace Budget, and it was more portentous than the War Budget. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had a surplus of £12,000,000, and in addition to that there was a saving on war expenditure of £28,000,000, which was to be re-expended yet without details so far given, so that this Budget involved an unspecified expenditure unauthorised by any grants in Supply, of £40,000,000. It had been explicitly laid down by May that Committee of Ways and Means should precede Committee of Supply, and that the Committee of Supply could not go beyond the amount provided for in the Committee of Ways and Means. They were, however, now asked to leave in suspense an amount of £40,000,000. He admitted there was great difficulty in understanding the figures. He had tried his hand at them himself and if he had failed other Members might fail. He was not sure that there was not some misapprehension in the mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he told the Committee that he could not borrow from the Bank of England boyond a certain limit. The right hon. Gentleman could borrow every farthing that was granted for the service of the year. There was no such limit.

I did not say that there was a legal limit; what I said was that we could not borrow on Ways and Means beyond a certain limit without seriously disturbing the money market.

said that that was quite another matter. But the original remarks of the Chancellor of the Exchequer had certainly suggested to him that there was something in the law which provided that he could not borrow beyond a certain point. The right hon. Gentleman was well aware that there was absolutely no limit to his borrowing powers. He might borrow from the Bank every farthing of his Budget, except that he was bound to re-pay his borrowings in the succeeding quarter. This was an entirely new Budget; it was a Peace Budget; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer made no difference between a War and a Peace Budget, except that in the latter he had applied £4,640,000 to the Sinking Fund, and had taken off the Cheque Duty, a sum amounting to £500,000. His total estimated revenue was £152,935,000, but deducting the Cheque Duty it was £152,435,000. Add the produce of the Loan £30,000,000, and the draft the right hon. Gentleman proposed to make on the Exchequer balances of £5,500,000, and that gave a total revenue or resources for the year of £187,935,000. Now look at the other side. The expenditure specified was £170,719,000. Add to that the Sinking Fund £4,640,000—a total expenditure of £175,359,000. Now deduct that from his resources and the House would see that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had a surplus of £12,576,000.

I do not think the hon. Gentleman includes the money for the South African Constabulary and the grant to the West Indies.

said he did not, because they were not in the original Budget. He only gave the changes made in the new Budget.

Oh, yes, they were.

said that if they were, then they were also included in his figures. The right hon. Gentleman asked the Committee to put the loan out of consideration. He could not put the loan out of consideration in dealing with the Budget. The loan had been effected, and the right hon. Gentleman had the money. If he had not had the money, the situation would be wholly different, and he would have been justified in talking about devoting borrowed money to the purposes of taxation. There was an old Italian proverb, "if my aunt were a man she would be my uncle." The right hon. Gentleman had got the loan, and they could not argue as if he had not borrowed it. He had, he thought, shown quite clearly that the right hon. Gentleman had a surplus of £12,500,000; but the right hon. Gentleman also stated that there would be a saving in war expenditure of £28,000,000, which he proposed to apply to purposes only generally indicated. That made £40,000,000 of undenominated expenditure, which the right hon. Gentleman should show reasons for before asking the Committee to provide it. The right hon. Gentleman endeavoured to show reasons, but they were vague and general reasons, not specific reasons, and he himself did not think that they were satisfactory reasons. The Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to treat the £40,000,000 surplus quite lightly; and he asked the Committee to be content with a very general and vague expression as to the purposes to which he was about to apply it. He could not treat that surplus lightly. It was more than the whole produce of the income tax for the present year, more than the whole cost of the war for the year as provided in the Budget, and was an enormous sum. The Chancellor of the Exchequer suggested that it would be spent on gratuities—there were no details or figures,—on furlough pay, transport, deferred liabilities of the War Office, concentration camps, garrisons, and finally advances to restock farms. But these latter were purely temporary, because the final provision in regard to them would come out of a loan to be guaranteed by the country. As to his further suggestions that he would want money for financing the Exchequer, it was not a question of financing the Exchequer as it now appeared, but of financing the money market, because the right hon. Gentleman had avowed that what prevented him from borrowing up to his power was not any legal limit, but money market considerations. He could not accept as a Budget statement the vague generalities of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but let them for the sake of argument accept his figures as far as the £28,000,000 was concerned, and there still remained the £12,500,000 to be accounted for. Here he would remark, that with the peace Budget as in the war Budget the Chancellor of the Exchequer entirely left out of account any contribution which would be received from the Transvaal mines towards the expenses of the war. He thought that was very important. He believed that unless a contribution were levied at a moment when the mine owners had a present or recent sense of danger, no contribution at all would be received, for the mining interests were very powerful, and had means of acting on individuals by salaries and syndicates of a potent character, and they would probably resist any considerable burden. When the war was entered upon, the right hon. Gentleman said he looked principally to the Transvaal for the expenses of the war, and he said that possibly even the whole expenditure and, at any rate, a considerable proportion of it, would be obtained in that manner. That considerable proportion had shrunk and shrunk and shrunk, and now the right hon. Gentleman only suggested that some part of the expenditure might be borne by the Transvaal mines. He passed from that and returned to the £12,500,000. That surplus was partly obtained by the imposition of new taxation—income tax £2,000,000 and the corn tax £2,500,000. Without these taxes there would still be a surplus of £8,000,000. He admitted that he was not quite certain of the figures, but he had taken them from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's own statement, as far as he could make it out. But whether the surplus was £12,500,000 or £10,000,000, or even the £6,000,000 to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had sought to whittle it down, it was partly formed of taxation which was proposed when there was already a surplus in existence. By no conceivable manipulation of the figures, could the surplus be reduced to the £4,500,000 which was produced by new taxation. Without putting on either of the two taxes he had mentioned, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not only have ample money to pay every specified expense of the year, but he would have sufficient even for unspecified expenditure. Under these circumstances, it was absolutely unjustifiable to impose any extra taxation at all. It was not a question of issuing a loan to relieve taxation. The right hon. Gentleman had the loan, and it was neither right nor proper to put on £4,500,000 of taxation, in order to swell the surplus he already had. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that whatever residue he might have, would, if possible, be applied to the reduction of taxation. But would that be possible? The right hon. Gentleman asked the Committee to leave his hands free; but his hands were full of money. There was no position so dangerous for a Chancellor of the Exchequer, as to have his hands free and yet full of money. That danger was immense. The only protection a Chancellor of the Exchequer had when his colleagues and the Departments of the State came to him with their demands was that he had not the money and would have to ask the House of Commons for it. The right hon. Gentleman would not now have that protection, because his colleagues and the Departments would reply that the right hon. Gentleman had the money and could, therefore, indulge them in any of these demands. Under such circumstances, it would positively rain Supplementary Estimates. There would be Estimates from the First Lord of the Admiralty, from the Secretary of State for War, and from the Vice-President of the Council, who would ask that the expense of education should be borne by the Exchequer instead of by the rates. But supposing the Chancellor of the Exchequer resisted all such demands, and that the £12,500,000 or, if the right hon. Gentleman liked, the £6,000,000, went to the Sinking Fund, he should remember that he had already applied £4,600,000 to that Sinking Fund. If he were to make it £10,000,000 or £6,000,000 more, surely that was a large sum to add to the Sinking Fund, at a time when taxation was extremely oppressive. In 1899 the right hon. Gentleman relieved the taxpayer by raiding the Sinking Fund; now he was raiding the taxpayer for the benefit of the Sinking Fund; he took from the Sinking Fund when he should not have done so; and now he was taking from the taxpayer when there was no need. He thought he had shown conclusively and clearly that, taking into account the new circumstances which had arisen, and the loan, there was no need, for the purposes of revenue, for increased taxation. Then why was it proposed? The Chancellor of the Exchequer was rather wrath with the right hon. Gentleman opposite who objected to the corn tax; but if that tax were not proposed for revenue, it must have been proposed for some ulterior purpose. (Cheers.) He heard cheers on both sides of the House. The right hon. Gentleman was a Free Trader. He went through Oxford, and the dismal conglomeration of pretentious platitudes which were known by the name of political economy, and emerged a Free Trader. But he was also a land owner, and when he remembered the maxims of Adam Smith, and Cobden and Bright, he kept a warm corner in his heart for the land, and also, perhaps, for the price of corn. He was inclined to apply to the right hon. Gentleman, with some variation, the language of Matthew Prior—

"The merchant, to secure his treasure

Conveys it in a borrowed name.

Revenue serves to grace my measure;

Protection is my real flame."

The hon. Gentleman will not be in order in pursuing the discussion.

said he was about to remark that this was not the proper occasion on which to discuss that question; but neither was this a proper way for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to begin a change of policy. If such a policy were to be initiated, let the right hon. Gentleman propose to put on 10 per cent. or 20 per cent. on all the imports of the country. A 4 per cent. charge on corn was not sufficient to please either friend or enemy. Would it please the Colonies?

I think the hon. Member is anticipating. He had better wait until I put the clause as a whole.

The real point of the Motion, and the point which made him look with a friendly eye upon it, was that the Committee had not yet had the details of the new Budget before it. As regarded the £40,000,000 included in the Budget they had not the figures or an estimate. Whether by postponing this clause, or in some other way, he submitted that it was absolutely necessary, before coming to a proper judgment upon the financial aspect of the year, that the figures for the year should be placed before the Committee.

said in his opinion the Committee were indebted to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton for the Motion he had moved today, and he did not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer had given at all a fair reply to the right hon. Gentleman. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said that he ought to have been present on the last occasion, but if the right hon. Gentleman had been present on the previous Wednesday he would not have been much wiser. The figures of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Wednesday last were not very clear, and would not have given much information. He himself put a Question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on that day. He asked the right hon. Gentleman whether he had given up to that date the slightest explanation of what he was going to do with the surplus of £40,000,000 odd of last year's borrowing, but the right hon. Gentleman made no reply. The figures were very simple if they avoided complication, and looked at only those which were necessary. We were face to face with an entirely new-situation. The right hon. Gentleman had told the Committee that he was relieved from the necessity of finding £17,000,000, and also from borrowing another £12,000,000 which he had referred to earlier in the discussion. The right hon. Gentleman had told the Committee that he was relieved from providing in the course of the year £29,000,000. All that was then suggested was that the right hon. Gentleman should give the taxpayer a similar benefit to that which had come to himself. That was the position he took. He thought there was an entirely new situation, and all that the Motion asked was that the right hon. Gentleman should pause before insisting upon new taxation which must and would cause a great disturbance to trade. If that single point were taken, the Committee would see that there was a great deal in the case which had been put by his right hon. friend. We were now in a state of peace; every telegram coining from South Africa showed that everything was going on well. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted to pin the Committee down to the arrangement made two months ago, at a time when the country was at war. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of this taxation as already imposed. The tax had not yet been imposed; and, even if it were, he believed there were many precedents in recent years for rejecting Budget proposals which had been put into force. In the case of the present Budget, if the Committee were not able to look at the new situation in which the country stood, then the whole proceeding of the Committee was a farce. The Motion of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton asked that the clause should be postponed in order that the Committee should have an opportunity of looking at it from the point of view of the present situation. I he right hon. Gentleman had revenue to the extent of £149,000,000 without any new taxation, and they had no undertaking as to how some £20,000,000 of that revenue was to be employed. He thought the tax-payer ought not to have to bear any greater burden. Every one knew that it was only temporary, now that we were at peace, and under those circumstances it seemed a very violent thing to increase so largely the normal revenue of the country. What harm would it be to postpone the clause? Lot them go on with the next clause, and go on with the Budget, and let the right hon. Gentleman take time to consider this matter. The income tax payer bad got burdens to bear already. He naturally would say "What is the use of Peace to me, if yon are to wring out of me the last penny?" The same precedent was adopted in 1815. The income tax was taken off immediately on the receipt of the announcement of peace. It was a most reasonable suggestion that this clause should be postponed, and he hoped the appeal of his right hon. friend would be acceded to.

said that at the end of the Crimean War the then Chancellor of the Exchequer took a very different line to the right hon. Gentleman opposite in regard to the Budget generally. When he brought in his first Budget the negotiations for peace were going on, and it was quite uncertain which way they would go. On that occasion the line which the then Chancellor of the Exchequer took, was to bring in a Budget for the first quarter of the year, in order that when it was ascertained whether peace was certain, he would be able to make his financial Statement for the year. The Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day recognised that peace would lead to an entirely new situation and a new Budget, and before he brought that new Budget before the House he laid the revised Estimates upon the Table.

said the debate had shown that no real agreement existed as to the essential facts under discussion. He suggested that the right hon. Gentleman should consent to lay on the Table a revised edition of the Financial Statement. The conclusion of peace had profoundly modified the financial position, and it was only fair that the Committee should know precisely how they stood with regard to the Finances of the country. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had proposed a fundamental change in their financial policy. He believed the corn tax was generally considered as such—and the onus probandi of the necessity of the tax lay upon the right hon. Gentleman. It was impossible to justify such a proposal unless the necessity was first proved, and that necessity could not be proved unless everybody was in possession of the figures relating to the national finance, and agreement established in respect thereof.

endorsed the appeal that the Committee should be put in a position really to judge of the present financial situation before they were called upon to impose new taxation. Hon. Members who had dissented from the statement of the last speaker that large changes were being made, seemed to have forgotten that a sum of £30,000,000, originally proposed for certain purposes, was now to be applied to something totally different, and that a sum of £16,000,000 more than was required, which was borrowed under the Loan for war purposes was going to be applied in other directions altogether. The Committee were entitled to ask for time, properly to consider these fundamental differences between the original Budget and that now proposed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said that no such proposal had ever been made before. Of course it had not, for the simple reason, that no Chancellor of the Exchequer had ever made such proposals as the present in previous cases of peace and war. Both in regard to the Crimean War and after the Continental War, the House of Commons had an opportunity with the facts and figures before it, of reconsidering the financial position. In the present year there had been no proper Budget at all. In his original statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer had given—as he seemed to have become accustomed to doing—the loosest possible Estimates, and for some £17,000,000 he could give no proper Estimate at all. Such a course was absolutely unprecedented, except when Supplementary Estimates or a Vote of Credit had been immediately introduced. In the same way, the right hon. Gentleman was now proposing to give the loosest possible Estimate of the way in which the money was to be expended. The Committee was certainly entitled to some delay in order that they might be able to judge of the necessity of the new taxation. The right hon. Gentleman would not be damnified in any way by such delay, as the tax was already in existence and being collected. The fact was the position in which they stood was largely duo to the hurry of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in issuing his loan for more than was ultimately shown to be required. He had borrowed at 93 per cent. some £16,000,000 more than was necessary, and the country would have to pay that money off at par. He agreed with the principle laid down by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that in time of war a large proportion of the necessary expenditure should be met out of current taxation; his quarrel with the right hon. Gentleman was that in no year since the war began had he so raised anything like sufficient. Out of £200,000,000, he had taken out a new taxation of only £40,000,000 or £50,000,000. But there was nothing inconsistent between supporting that principle as a general principle, and objecting to a particular tax, which was not an old tax, being continued, but a new impost, proposed for one purpose, and now apparently to be applied to something entirely different. The country had always understood from the right hon. Gentleman and also from the First Lord of the Treasury and the Colonial Secretary, that the corn tax was to be imposed for war purposes.

No. The hon. Member misrepresents both my colleagues and myself. As a matter of fact, last year, and this year, I stated most plainly that the imposition of the new indirect taxation, whether on sugar, coal, or corn, was not only for the war, but also for permanent purposes.

said that while he strongly objected to the corn tax as a separate tax, he objected to it still more as a permanent impost. He supported the imposition of taxation to meet war expenditure, but this tax was so bad in its nature that he would rather have cowardly finance than fiscal folly. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of the strength of his financial principles in imposing taxation, but when slight pressure was brought to bear by the bankers he dropped a certain proposal and had brought forward no alternative to take its place. Throughout these debates, the Opposition, in objecting to the corn tax, had suggested alternatives which they would support. Those alternatives had been refused, and, as the right hon. Gentleman would offer no alternative himself, he should support the Motion of his right hon. friend.

said that hon. Members who had urged that the conclusion of peace had profoundly modified the financial situation of the original proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that before these new taxes were voted the country ought to know the purposes for which the money was needed, must have forgotten the statements made in more or less detail, by the right hon. Gentleman when introducing the Budget. On that occasion the Chancellor of the Exchequer took into consideration the very contingency which had since arisen, and explained that in the event of peace being concluded in a few weeks the money would be required for gratuities and bounties to the soldiers who had served in that war, for disembodiment, for transport home of reservists and others, for the maintenance of a considerable force in South Africa, for the relief and resettlement of the two colonies, for rebuilding and restocking farms, and so on. It was rather hard, therefore, that, because a contingency which the right hon. Gentleman took into consideration at the time had now occurred, he should be told that his proposals were altogether inapplicable to the present situation. Under the circumstances the demand for the postponement of this clause was clearly unreasonable. As for the corn tax being a war tax alone, if they would look at the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer they would see that a column or two of his speech was devoted to the necessity of broadening the basis of taxation. The opposition to this clause was aimed at this particular tax, and but for the corn tax this Motion would never have been made. This was simply an attack by a side wind upon a tax which hon. Gentlemen opposite disliked, and with regard to which he thought they were very much mistaken, because it was a tax which would inflict less hardship upon all classes of the community than any other tax which any Chancellor of the Exchequer would be able to discover.

said that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sleaford had taken up an amazing position, considering that he was such a staunch supporter of Parliamentary procedure. The demand made was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should indicate the purposes for which the money was required, and that Estimates should be submitted showing how the money was to be spent. No doubt the Chancellor of the Exchequer indicated in his Budget speech that if the war came to an end the money asked for might be required for other purposes of a more beneficial character, but the reason this Motion had been proposed was because the House was entitled to have a more specific definition of how this large surplus was to be applied. They bad heard a great deal about the policy of the open door of which he approved, but this new policy of the open purse was certainly contrary to the usage of Parliament. He would take the Chancellor of the Exehequer's own figures, and prove that he had at the present time £45,000,000 which he might spend, and for which no Estimates had been submitted to the House. In the Budget speech proposals were made for an expenditure in South Africa amounting to £57,000,000. The right hon. Gentleman had shown that for two months the expenditure on the war had amounted to £12,000,000. That left £45,000,000 to be disposed of, and the Committee was entitled to ask for specific statements and an Estimate to show clearly how that money was to be spent. The right hon. Gentleman, in his very excellent speech last Wednesday, urged the House to leave his hands free, with a distinct understanding that all the surplus of £6,000,000 should be devoted to the reduction of the present Debt. He had every confidence in the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he did not think they should leave his hands free to dispose of such a large sum of money. It was a most dangerous doctrine that money should be spent without having been previously sanctioned by the Committee. In his interesting Supplementary Budget speech of Wednesday last the right hon. Gentleman explained how he was going to deal with the sum at his disposal. He wished to show the right hon. Gentleman how he could remit the corn tax without disturbing the Budget, and he thought this would constitute a reason why this clause should be postponed. After providing, as the right hon. Gentleman intended to provide, for the restoration of the Sinking Fund to the extent of £4,600,000, and after applying, as he proposed to apply, £6,000,000 to the reduction of the floating Debt, he maintained that in addition to all that the right hon. Gentleman had a sum of £4,000,000 which he took into account in his Budget speech, but which he did not take into account on Wednesday last. If the right hon. Gentleman would apply that he would not require the corn tax and he would have in addition a surplus of £1,000,000 sterling. He would present the Chancellor of the Exchequer with a Supplementary Budget. In his original Budget, after providing for the Sinking Fund contribution, the right hon. Gentleman showed a deficit of £26,800,000. Since then he had to provide £1,750,000 for the South African Constabulary, the grant to the West Indies, and the increased interest charge for the Debt. That made the total deficit £28,500,000. On the other side, he had the loan of £29,900,000. His proposed new taxation amounted to £4,600,000, and he had also the surplus of last year's loan amounting to £4,000,000, which gave him £38,500,000 after providing for the restoration of the Sinking Fund. The right hon. Gentleman must admit that the Exchequer balances at the present time were abnormally large, and he had in those balances the £4,000,000 which were borrowed last year for the purposes of the war. Therefore, after providing for the restoration of the Sinking Fund and the war expenditure to the conclusion of hostilities, the right hon. Gentleman had a balance of £28,000,000 this year; and in addition to that he maintained he had a further balance of £10,000,000 sterling. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken in no unmeasured terms as to the inconsistency of hon. Members on this side of the House proposing that the corn tax should be remitted, while they had always maintained that the right hon. Gentleman applied too small a portion of taxation to the redemption of war indebtedness. What was the principle he had applied? He would not include the contribution to the Sinking Fund. He had always maintained that the application of the Sinking Fund to war expenditure was like the principle of the Irishman who cut off a piece of his blanket at the top and sewed it on at the bottom in order to make it longer. With regard to this £10,000,000 that was left he asked the right hon. Gentleman to apply the principle which he had hitherto applied in providing for war expenditure. Deducting the Sinking Fund contribution he had gone on the principle that he provided a quarter of the expenditure out of taxation and three-quarters by borrowing. He wished him to apply the same principle to the surplus of £10,000,000, and then they would have £7,500,000 for the reduction of the Debt, and £2,500,000 for the remission of taxation. He hoped the right hon. Gentlemen would consider that, because the £7,500,000 for the reduction of the Debt was in addition to the £4,600,000 restored to the Sinking Fund. He trusted the right hon. Gentleman would accede to the appeal which had been made to him from his own side of the House, and give the Committee some statement as to how this £45,000,000 was to be expended. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in reply to the hon. Member for Poplar, said he did not regard this as a war tax, and that that was a reason why the clause should not be postponed, but, having regard to the fact that in his Budget speech the right hon. Gentleman said he looked upon the corn tax as a trifling contribution to the cost of the war, now that it had come to a close, he hoped he would respond to the appeal made to him to reconsider the question of the remission of this tax, which to him was a hateful one, and a departure from the principles of Free Trade.

said he strongly objected to the particular tax proposed to be imposed by this clause, but the present Motion was not concerned with the merits or the demerits of the tax. The Motion was made in order to give an opportunity of protesting against what appeared to many of them to be a thoroughly vicious system of finance. It was all very fine to attempt to defend this by stating that it would be confined to the present instance, and, saying that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was so excellent a man that they could trust him with a free hand to deal with £40,000,000 after he had stated in a vague way his intentions as to the disposal of the money. That was an absurd way of arguing a case of this kind. It was a question of precedent and principle. If the whole finances of the country were to be conducted in the House of Commons in that way, their business would be turned upside down, and there was no limit to the extent to which that precedent might carry them. He had always understood that if there was one vital principle more than another, which had always been observed in dealing with finance in the House of Commons, it was that Ways and Means should follow Supply, and that no demand should be made in Ways and Means except after Estimates had been laid before the House, on the authority of the heads of the various spending departments. He never heard a Minister until this year ask the House of Commons to raise in Committee of Ways and Means, a large sum of money in respect of expenditure, as to which no opportunity for discussion had been given to the House of Commons. That was not asking for a small thing. It was asking the Committee to make a great and fundamental departure in the whole procedure of the House of Commons in this regard. Why should they be asked to impose an enormous burden of extra taxation on the people on vague statements, and when they bad no information whatever as to the details? The Chancellor of the Exchequer said just now that he made on Wednesday last the statement for which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton now asked. He did nothing of the kind. It was not for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay such a statement on the Table. His business was not to prepare Estimates, but to provide Ways and Means. He asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the conclusion of peace, he would lay a revised statement before the House, and be replied that he would make a statement on Wednesday last, but on that evening he merely made a statement of the vaguest possible kind. He said that, roughly speaking, be would be obliged to use the whole of the £40,000,000, set down in the Estimates of the year for the war in South Africa. After giving roughly the figures showing how the money would be distributed, the right hon. Gentleman said he would have a balance of something over £6,000,000 which he would devote, if he got a free hand, to the redemption of the floating Debt. That, again, appeared to be a totally new departure for the House of Commons. When the Departments knew that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was to have a balance of £6,000,000 they would be encouraged to come down on him to get the money out of him. This discussion was important not only on account of their objection to this particular tax, but also because of their objection to the enormous departure they were asked to make from the regular established custom of the House of Commons in dealing with financial matters. As bearing on the evil consequences which must flow from such a proceeding, he would refer to what was said in reference to the loan. The Chancellor of the Exchequer asked for authority, only about six weeks ago, to issue £32,000,000 of Consols, and on this very same vicious principle he asked that he should be allowed to include in that sum £17,000,000 not allocated or accounted for in the Estimates of the year. He gave only a vague account of what was to be done with the £17,000,000. The hon. Member and others protested against any such permission being given to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and they pointed out that in the uncertainty which prevailed the proper course, in accordance with purity of financial practice, was to borrow what was required to meet the services of the year, and if additional Estimates had to be laid before the House of Commons authority could be asked for a second loan. By borrowing £17,000,000 more than he required at that particular period, the right hon. Gentleman had lost to the country £1,000,000. That could have been saved if the Chancellor of the Exchequer had postponed the borrowing of the £17,000,000 until a later period when Consols had recovered in price. If the balance of £6,000,000, which was partly due to that loan, was to be used S in the redemption of Debt, he presumed the Debt would have to be redeemed at par, and the loss of £1,000,000 would be the result of borrowing more than was required. They were now asked to provide for a great Budget, which was unduly hurried on the House of Commons quite unnecessarily while the question of peace or war was hanging in the balance. He could understand the policy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer hastening to make a financial statement while the negotiations for peace were going on, to impress the Boer leaders with the idea that the resources of this country were not exhausted, and that the Government were prepared to raise untold millions to carry on the war, but he could not understand why the right hon. Gentleman should force on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill, at a time when the financial accounts of the year could be remodelled in the event of peace being concluded. There was absolutely nothing to justify or explain the extreme anxiety of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to get the Finance Bill forward, once he got the taxes Resolutions. It would have been quite competent to hold back the Second Reading of the Bill until peace was concluded, and the Estimates recast, so that on the Second Reading the right hon. Gentleman might be able to announce the modifications he proposed to introduce in the Budget, in consequence of the conclusion of peace. What was the position they were placed in now? In the first place they had voted very large sums of money under certain headings in the Military Estimates which, with regard to millions, were not to be spent in the way in which they were set forth in the Estimates; in the second place there were various heads of expenditure which had not come before the House in any shape; and in the third place the Committee were absolutely in the dark whether they would ever be allowed to discuss the revised Supplementary Estimate at all. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said, in answer to an interruption, that he could not spend a penny of the £40,000,000, until it was voted by the House of Commons. That was not absolutely true, because a great deal had been voted by the House on the War Estimates which would have to be revised and corrected. He did not know whether it was the intention of the Government to have that money revoted, or whether they had power to divert it to other purposes altogether. With regard to the Supplementary Estimates, they undoubtedly would have to vote the money, whether they were allowed to discuss the various items or not. A great portion of the £40,000,000 might be taken on a closured night and shoved through the House without a single hour of discussion. That was a monstrous thing. He did not know to what extent they were safeguarded in this matter by the new Supply Rule. It was now fortunately enacted that, in regard to new services, they would have an opportunity, apart from the closure, of discussing them. With regard to the other services connected with the conclusion of the war, he was afraid they would be ruled out of that exemption. They might have all the new Votes on the Table two or three days before the end of the session, but what satisfaction would that be when they would all be closured in Committee of Supply without a single word of comment being allowed upon them. What the Chancellor of the Exchequer was asking was that this Committee of Ways and Means should provide £30,000,000, in respect of which there were no Estimates, and no security that Parliament would ever have the opportunity of discussing them. If that method of dealing with national finance were sanctioned, what was to prevent the Chancellor of the Exchequer introducing, at some future time, his Budget before the Estimates of the year had been laid before the House? The right hon. Gentleman might say—"I estimate the expenditure at £100,000,000 and you may trust me that it is all right. I want £30,000,000 for the Naval Service, £30,000,000 for the Army Service and £40,000,000 for the other services; and by-and-by you will have the Estimates presented to you." He had noted in his experience of the House of Commons the truth of the saying in the catechism that if you once fall into a venial sin, these venial sins mount up by little and little until you become all bad. Practically the House of Commons commenced sinning in small venial transactions. But these formed precedents, until, at last, a principle was established. Therefore, he maintained, that if this principle were sanctioned on the present occasion by the House of Commons it would form a departure from the old Rule that both Committee of Ways and Means and Committee of Supply should have before them the Estimates for the year. Otherwise there was nothing to prevent a Chancellor of the Exchequer from basing his demand on a Budget night for a Vote on his own rough estimates, given in round figures, as to what would be required for the service of the year.

The hon. Member has based his support of the Motion of the right hon. Member for East Wolverhampton not so much, or, indeed, not at all, upon objection to the particular tax referred to more than once, but upon objection to proceeding with the subject on the present occasion. The view of the hon. Member appears to be that, although I stilted in my speeches on introducing the Budget, that, in the event of the war coming to an early termination, the expenditure otherwise required for the war would be devoted to services connected with the termination of the war, and although I promised on Wednesday to lay on the Table a full Statement explaining how the diversions would be made, yet he is not prepared to go on with this Bill until he has seen that Paper. That, I think, was the position taken by the hon. Member. But that is not the position of the right hon. Member, who merely moved to postpone this particular clause. There was not a word in his speech to indicate that he was not perfectly prepared to proceed with the other clauses of the Finance Bill.

I said we should have a, new Budget in order that we might consider the whole of the financial position.

Then the contention is more unreasonable than I supposed, Hon. Gentlemen opposite will not proceed with the renewal of the ordinary taxes for the year which are required for the service of the year until this Statement in relation to the new allocation of the Army Estimates for the service of the war is in their hands. A more unreasonable proposal I never heard submitted to the House. I undertake to lay a Statement before the House, at as early a date as possible; and I will promise, on behalf of my right hon. friend the leader of the House, that proper opportunity shall be given for discussing the alteration of the allocation of items as compared with the Estimates, before the end of the session, and in fact at a reasonably early date. I explained on Wednesday last the alterations in my financial proposals necessitated by the termination of the war. I will undertake that a Statement showing the differences from the Statement circulated at the date of the Budget shall be in the hands of Members within a short time; and, seeing that we have occupied two and a half hours in discussing whether we shall proceed with this clause or not, we might without further delay come to a decision on that point.

The right hon. Gentleman, with an air of great candour, as if making a great concession, has not really conceded the point we wish to impress upon the House. His promise that in a few days a Statement shall be laid on the Table and an opportunity for discussion given before the end of the session—

That was in reply to the hon. Member for East Mayo as to the closure being inflicted.

His promise to discuss the change in the Estimates does not meet us We are invited today not only to continue old taxes but to agree to the imposition of a new tax of a peculiar character in a condition of things in which it is difficult to see the necessity without the detailed Estimates and the Statement which ought to be in the hands of Members before they are called upon to vote on any such tax. The right hon. Gentleman has drawn a distinction between the postponement of this clause and the postponement of this stage of the Bill to a later date; but the whole matter centres upon this one clause, because it is a peculiar clause; for we are invited not only to impose a new duty, as to which there is a strong feeling in the country contrary to its imposition, but a duty of no ordinary kind; it is a duty which is to lead to a total subversion of our whole financial system in regard to the commercial relations of this with other countries.

I never said so.

No, but the right hon. Gentleman's friends have said so. We have had the greatest difficulty in discovering what this duty is. I am not going to discuss it. Sometimes it has been called a war tax, to-day it has been described as part of the permanent revenue of the country.

It is not a war tax only.

It is partly a war tax and partly it is not. I will concede this, that the right hon. Gentleman was very adroit and astute in his Budget speech, which I think I have in my pocket. This is all in the right hon. Gentleman's favour. I thought I had got hold of a good weapon against him. This is what he said—

"I am convinced that the people know and feel, with the high wages of the present day and bread so cheap"—and so on—"the tax I am proposing could at the very worst be but a very trifling contribution on their part to the cost of a war which the great bulk of them approve, and to the ever-increasing charge of the Navy, one of whose primary duties it is to protect the food supply of the country."

said that, as far as he could judge from the cheers of hon. Gentlemen opposite and the emphasis of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the two arguments on which the right hon. Gentlemen relied were, that, there being a deficit on the year of £24,000,000, he was bound to make provision for that deficit other than by way of loan; and, secondly, that it would be improper to devote the borrowed money towards the reduction of taxation. He contended that the real deficit on the ordinary taxation of the year was not £24,000,000, but £47,000,000. How did the Chancellor of the Exchequer in preceding years provide for the war expenditure? In 1900–1901, out of a total war expenditure of £68,000,000, £15,000,000 was provided by taxation; in 1901–1902, out of £73,000,000 of war expenditure, the right hon. Gentleman provided £20,000,000 out of taxation. In the present year out of £47,000,000 of war expenditure, £23,000,000 was provided out of taxation. It was not anything like the same proportion. In the first year 22 per cent. of the amount required was found by taxation, in the second year 21 per cent., and now the right hon. Gentleman's conscience was not satisfied with less than 59 per cent. of the war expenditure being found out of taxation. Under those circumstances they were entitled to say it was not, as the right hon. Gentleman alleged, a necessary provision out of the taxation of the year for the cost of the war. It was a, provision of three times as much as the right hon. Gentleman thought necessary to make in the first year of the war. That being so, the Committee was entitled to say that to make this arrangement for the provision for the deficit was really hoodwinking the Committee on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, and, he submitted, with all respect, that the right hon. Gentleman was not acting on anything like the same principle as that on which he acted in the first year of the war. With regard to the right hon. Gentleman's second point, he submitted that, when the current expenditure was paid, not out of taxation, but out of money raised by way of loan, then they were relieving the necessary taxation by loan. Everyone would agree that, if the loan had not already been raised, it would not be proper to remit existing taxation, and then raise a new loan to meet any deficit that might arise. But that was not the case in this instance. Hero we had £10,000,000 in hand, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not propose to use that money in relief of taxation. He proposed to impose new-taxation and devote that surplus to the reduction of Debt, Was that an economical proceeding? New taxation cost money; the Treasury did not get it all. The right hon. Gentleman in his last borrowing had lost millions, owing to the price at which he had to issue his loan. That had gone, and could not be recovered, and he now proposed to add to that loss by compelling the people to pay an additional cost in the coming year on every pound raised. Under the circumstances he submitted that both the arguments of the right hon. Gentleman had failed. This was obviously bad finance, and he should be much surprised if hon. Members did not agree that it was bad finance to leave the Chancellor of the Exchequer with a balance of £10,000,000, which was a, bait for everybody on his side of the House, and which was a temptation to himself, inasmuch as it was money which he could spend without consulting again the House of Commons, and money over which the Committee had lost all control.

thought that all would agree that the Motion of the right hon. Member for East Wolverhampton was eminently reasonable and justifiable. The Motion was that the first clause of the finance Bill should be postponed until Parliament was fully seized of all the figures and facts of the new position of affairs, and until they knew how the Chancellor of the Exchequer was about to deal with this surplus which he had in hand. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was raising revenues which were not appropriated in any shape or form, the expenditure of which had not been debated or passed by any Committee of Supply, and the expenditure of which had not in any way been foreshadowed by the Government; large sums of money, the destination of which was unknown, and the disposal of which nobody knew anything whatever about. It had always been the opinion of Chancellors of the Exchequer up to the present time that it was undesirable to take money out of the pockets of the people unless it was necessary; that it should be left to fructify; but the right hon. Gentleman opposite had struck out an entirely new line, and one which up to the present time had not been countenanced by any Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Committee had heard about floating Debts. Now they heard about floating surpluses. By this action on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he lost all his safeguards against the spendthrift habits of Government Departments. What was the right hon. Gentleman doing? At a time when taxation was heavier than it had ever been known by any hon. Member of the House, when the income tax had reached the high water mark of this generation, when now duties had been imposed on foodstuffs not before taxed, the right hon. Gentleman proposed that he should absorb a large sum of money for which he had no use in the reduction of Debt. The Committee had been bewildered by the figures of the surplus of the right hon. Gentleman. Some experts had put it at £45,000,000, whilst others had brought it down to £6,000,000. The right hon. Gentleman himself fixed it at £10,000,000.

There would be a surplus from loans of £10,500,000; £4,500,000 of that will go to the Sinking Fund, and I may add that I pledged myself on Wednesday last that the remaining £6,000,000 should be used for paying off floating Debt, except so far as it might be necessary to divert it for the temporary advantage of South Africa. I never dreamt of devoting it to ordinary Supplementary Estimates.

said the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman showed the necessity of having some Statement with regard to this matter. Nobody but the right hon. Gentleman understood the position of affairs at present. Our fiscal affairs were in a state of jumble. The fact that the right hon. Gentleman stated that he would devote this surplus to the reduction of floating Debt pre-supposed that there would be a surplus. That being so, was the extra penny on the income tax, were these new grain duties, necessary at the present time? He submitted that they were not only entirely unnecessary, but mischievous and iniquitous. It had been urged that the Amendment of the right hon. Member for East Wolverhampton was obstructive, but it could not be said to be anything of the kind. It raised the whole question of whether this new taxation was necessary or not, and he considered that this matter should be deferred until all the figures had been placed before Parliament. The Committee was arguing the matter in the dark, and would be well advised to accept the Amendment.