It is not surprising that the voice of protest should thus be raised from all quarters against the principles of Mr Gladstone’s finance. To begin with, he has been a most prodigal financier, and cares not a jot for the future. At a time when the charges on the National Debt were reduced by the falling-in of the terminable annuities, to the extent of two millions a-year—when there was an unexpected repayment of a portion of the Spanish loan, and other windfalls—and when he found a surplus of considerable amount left to him by his predecessors in office,—then surely, if ever, the country had a right to expect from the Chancellor of the Exchequer a succession of good annual balance-sheets. If the policy of maintaining a substantial surplus is not carried out under these favourable circumstances, the fault must lie with the administrator of the national finances. Yet, so far has Mr Gladstone been from adhering to the old and sound maxim of financial policy, that he has not only given us no surplus, but has recklessly incurred us a deficit, of which he now makes no mention. Had this bad condition of the finances been incurred in consequence of an exceptional increase of the national expenditure which could only be met by the imposition of new taxes, it might have been excusable. But there was no such difficulty: the revenue was sufficient, if let alone, to have more than kept pace with the expenditure. The peculiar culpability of Mr Gladstone as a financial Minister—the pernicious feature of his system which called forth the eloquent denunciation of Lord Overstone, and the emphatic protest of Earl Grey and Lord Monteagle, and of the ablest financial journal of the Liberal party, the ‘Economist’—is, that during this period of so-called exceptional expenditure he has deliberately thrown away the means which were at his disposal for meeting it. He has abolished taxes against which there was no peculiar ground of complaint, and he has reduced others in order to cheapen certain commodities for which there was no general demand.