tion for the public good; and though a deficit must ever be a fearful joy, this we may believe that for the wise in the Cabinet this year's deficiency had a radiance about it when it loomed at its largest that was lost when it dwindled into manageable mediocrity. I say dwindled, but only as guessing, not knowing, by how much a precipitate payment of taxes in the later weeks of the financial year has lowered a wise hope and confounded a patriotic purpose. The year's deficiency may have lost a profitable use by becoming less, or after all may prove great enough to justify, if the Government has sufficient courage to venture it, an endeavour to replace the taxation of the country on the broader ground which should never have been quite abandoned. The wish to do so must be there; the thought of the attempt must be there, stimulated by the later experiences of the Government, and by the high probability that an already vast cost for defence must increase as the universal rage for naval development goes on. So much appears certain and unavoidable. Doubt comes in when we remember that the reintroduction of indirect taxes, even at their mildest, does need courage in a British Government; and that the popular mind is so little instructed in the changed condition of things all the world over, as not to see why the basis of taxation should be enlarged. The vast expense of the coun try at the War Office and the Admiralty divides, to my view, into a war expense and a trade expense. Though not actually at war, we are in a state of war a state of war that may not be unfairly illustrated by the case of a nation called upon to keep a costly army in the field, far from home, to hold in check a force mustering for invasion. War there would be but for these extraordinary armaments, and therefore the charges on account of them are in an evident sense war-charges. The incometax has been abusively applied, but it has been always understood as especially a war-tax; and this leads me to think that since we are in a state of war, the call for reducing that tax is not imperatively reasonable. A few weeks ago the Times,' in a very remarkable article, suggested a reduction of twopence in the pound. Now, if the other great nations did faithfully cut down armaments, so that, according to Mr Goschen's offer, we also could reduce, it would be fair to give the whole of the financial benefit to income-tax payers. and if we must still add to our naval out-goings, the tax should stand at its present rate, I think 6 If not, certainly with no addition for additional charges. It stands high enough as long as the country being in a state of war the mass of the people pay not a farthing on that account. That they should be called upon at this point to take up some part of the burden-say as much as may be borne unawares-is not only justice but righteousness. It should be done for the sake of doing it were there no other reason. But there are many good reasons; amongst which we may set high the fact that the war-charge of to-day is almost entirely devoted to the defence and acquisition of trade-the means of living. It is to seize markets, keep markets, fill workshops and factories, that all the world's at strife, the nations eager to trample each other down. And the most urgent and direct end of these endeavours is the contentment of the people that is to say, the supplying of wages and the storing of cupboards. I say the most urgent and direct end. Demagogues may answer no; the statesmen who have nations in charge are conscious at every hour of their lives that it is true. And if true, when should the working-men of this country begin to take their share in its war-charges if not now? Are not their personal interests sufficently touched at this point to justify personal concern, and even the sacrifice of a penny a week to put them out of jeopardy? have been taught to think of it as the one revelation of Infinite Wisdom in regard to the traffic in commodities; so that to say "Infringement of Free - trade principle is to damn any little arrangement in cottons or sugar which the differing conditions of another people may seem to commend. The superiority of direct over indirect taxation has been preached less dogmatically; it does not admit the glamour of religiosity so much, or even at all. But this, too, has been wrought up into a matter of principle, whereas it is only another matter of expediency, to be decided as circumstances differ. When direct taxation was so much in favour, when the true gospel was to cut down indirect taxation to the utmost, the Intellectuals of the time were under the deusion that commerce would extinguish war. That was as much as to say that the call for extraordinary additions to revenue would diminish, the ordinary returns available for calculable purposes increasing meanwhile by "leaps and How badly they must have bounds." Had that been а been taught by People's Friends wise forecast, not only a reif they think not! But how duction of indirect taxes, but badly taught they have been! removal of the machinery for There is a free-trade principle, collecting them, the choking of most excellent use for certain of the fountains thereof, would peoples in certain conditions have been wise enough too, no and circumstances, and by doubt. But the forecast being those peoples not to be abanas foolish then as it looks now, doned lightly. It is, however, we see how right they were no law of nature, but an ex- who held that fewer indirect pedient a variable expedient, taxes should be abolished and never yet used without that the sources of a greater exception or deviation. Yet number should be kept runthe people of this country ning, if almost imperceptibly, Yet even in readiness for the need that for one, read with the pleasure would surely come no one of a Looker-on who was never doubting that they were prop- of a different opinion, but erly available for it. However, always strongly of this. No, the national finance was gov- nor even took free - trade for erned by a man of genius, anything but what it is-an whose grand peculiarity was (his expedient good or otherwise friends say), that whenever his as conditions decide. mind was fixed upon a certain such an one might read with course, he resolutely excluded a shock what followed (in the as hostile, as offensive, every Times!') after the aboveconsideration that rose up quoted sentence : "The reagainst it. Under his influence imposition of a shilling duty abolition of indirect taxes went on corn, which was not felt on. The fountains thereof when it was in operation, and were choked, their attendant would bring in at the present machinery was destroyed, and time a very large sum, is one an idea was given out that proposed reform. A duty of their restoration could only a halfpenny a pound on sugar, be accepted as one of the in- which is another, would yield humanities of war. some six millions a-year. We doubt if the present Chancellor of the Exchequer is likely to propose either. Yet if some measure of the kind is not adopted we shall find ourselves, in all probability, confronted with far more serious financial problems in the immediate future." 6 Time passes, a year in the life of a nation being only as a day, and events which lay in wait to prove our directtaxation policy excessive have arrived. So much must be clear to the common-sense perception of most men, while they that are dull have the Times' to help them to a spyingglass. On the first day of this month of March its readers saw there a declaration that "there is now good reason for reconsidering and revising our financial system as a whole, and in a bold and comprehensive way." (This is said, I should remark, without regard to the considerations advanced in the foregoing paragraphs, and upon a different line of argument.) Question asked, whether the basis of taxation has not been perilously narrowed? Answer, that "the true policy is to extend the scope of indirect taxation," which I, Reimposition of a tax on corn, reintroduction of a sugar-taxthis is going deep at the first plunge; and yet not so deep in one direction as may be supposed. It is said that the "shilling duty on corn corn" was not felt when it was in operation, nor can it be imagined that so light an impost would ever be felt. But what if this shilling was no tax at all, and abolition of the duty still more needless and improvident than the surrender of the city coal-dues? Whether he remains of that opinion I know not; but some years ago, when our importations of grain were much smaller than they are now, one of the first authorities in trade and finance (he has no superior) believed that the abolition of the shilling corn-duty was a grievous mistake. A hard freetrader, he yet had no doubt on that point. For the advantage of "Government measure, which the collection of the duty secured, was fully worth the shilling a quarter to buyer and seller; and, at the same time, a trade - convenience put into the Treasury every year a large sum of money as well earned as the Post Office profits. The abrogation of the duty made no difference to the consumer, because the cost of measurement had still to be paid, and of course paid by him. The shilling duty had this further advantage, it was thought. Being usefully there, it could be increased by another shilling, and yet make no sensible addition to the consumer's outgoings. The two-shilling duty would bring a large revenue from what would be in effect a one-shilling duty. Prove all this to be true, and yet the shilling duty would be called a tax on the food of the people-insidious, malicious, intolerable; and the proposal to restore a charge on sugar would be denounced no less fiercely. But while we speculate Sir Michael's plans are settled, before this discourse appears they will perhaps be known. If in any discreet way they assert the righteousness and timeliness of falling back a little on indirect taxation, good: or so I think, for reasons given. To be sage-sage in the sense enjoyed by the good French father of a family-much it becomes us as a Government and a people. Prudence, discretion, calculation, the arts propitiatory and disarming, these should guide us in our dealings with foreign States, for all our many ships and preponderating sea-power. To seek out causes of quarrel and remove them, to weed out growths of rancour from honest and perhaps inevitable rivalry, to cultivate useful friendships on worthy terms-why, what Government should not be forward in works so helpful to themselves, and what people be slow to exhort and approve? All counsel to that effect is precious, and not less precious because there seems to be a universal, everlasting need of it. All good men, many bad ones, and nearly all who are both bad and good, must wish to see the foreign business of their country so conducted. Yet no Government and no people seems to hold this desire in countenance. I think I know why, but the explanation is so much disliked that I do not repeat it. The fact, then, may pass for strange though true, that where every motive for sagesse rises to the nth and exists in perpetuity, it is little more than a Sabbath observance— recurring in most countries at about one year in seven: and usually upon some sort of compulsion. There will be no United States of Europe and America till the wild-wood savagery of 3 D which we have here a sign is tamed. But that will not be, probably, until the Christian nations, having no more barbarous hinterlands or effete empires to civilise, begin to civilise each other of course by differ ent processes. Such occasional efforts to harmonise the unharmonious as we already witness will help, no doubt; but not at ill-chosen times, not if they wear too plain a look of compulsion, not if they rush all at once to extremes of solicitude and anxiety. For wherever "the law of the beasts" lingers, as it does in international affairs, timidity invites violence-feeds it. 66 A great many silent Britons find these mistakes, and more, in the imploring question that goes echoing round and round the newspapers, 'Why not come to an agreement with Russia? What prevents an understanding with Russia? How is it that our Governmenta Government which acknowledges that a British policy offensive to Russia was altogether wrong never at tempts an arrangement with the Czar?" That it could be done if Lord Salisbury had a mind to do it, and would only make the necessary unobjectionable concessions, is the common answer to these questions; which are asked, indeed, that the chosen answer may follow. It is not the first time that these nervous inquiries have rung through the press. At short intervals they have been heard again and again; and the only reply the reply which the questioners them selves furnish-is for one thing incomplete, and, for another, the most incredible that can be imagined. Lord Salisbury indisposed to make a peacesecuring agreement with Russia? Lord Salisbury reluctant to concede unobjectionable terms? What genius could contrive a more absurdly unjust suspicion ? Merely to speak the Prime Minister's name is to dissolve every such fancy. It does more. It supplies the complete answer to a question which had been better disposed of in silence. This Name the name that stands first in British statesmanship, and we see the face of one who ever since the Constantinople Conference, at any rate, has been thought friendly to Russia. The Constantinople Conference was in 1876; but not many months have passed since Lord Salisbury made a bid in open market for the much-desired Russian understanding. was when he said publicly that we had "put our money on the wrong horse": plain overture, as everybody understood then, and as nobody should forget who now asks, "Why no agreement with Russia?" But personal bias has not all to do with the matter. Whatever the leaning of his likes and dislikes, what should be expected of any British statesman holding office in these later days, than that he should labour to ascertain the conditions (if any) upon which England and Russia might hedge off their rivalries and work them out peaceably? To do that became the absolute duty of every British |