On one occasion in 1857, when the late Sir G. C. Lewis—whose death is a loss alike to the country and to the Ministry—referred to an opinion of one who had as good a knowledge of the practical working of taxation as any man either before or since, Mr Gladstone exclaimed with the utmost contempt—“He goes back to Arthur Young, sir: old Arthur Young he takes for his authority!” And when, in his own recent Budget speech, Mr Gladstone, with all the ingenuity of rhetoric, was calling upon the House to stand amazed at the rapid increase in the [nominal?] income of the country (one-fifth during eight years), which he claimed as the result of his policy,—and Sir J. Packington quietly suggested that it is Australia and the new gold mines that have caused the difference,—Mr Gladstone rejoined, “Australia! Oh no: the right honourable gentleman is lost in the depths of heresy on that point.” This overbearing presumption is natural to Mr Gladstone, who finds it a convenient way of summarily evading difficulties which are more easily scoffed at than answered. But we take leave to think that there are few intelligent men in this country who, for width of view and soundness of judgment, would not have preferred the late Sir George Lewis to his more eloquent and ingenious colleague. And for ourselves we entertain no doubt that Sir J. Pakington was perfectly correct in his suggestion, and that the great increase alike in the income of this country, and in certain branches of the expenditure, is in part attributable to the rise in the monetary value of property and labour in consequence of the new markets for our goods in Australia, and the great addition to the stock of gold.[9] Mr Gladstone would probably treat Mr M’Culloch in the same contemptuous fashion,—especially as Mr M’Culloch’s opinions and arguments, if correct, totally demolish the “system” which Mr Gladstone of late years, and in contradiction to his former self, has been labouring to establish. But we shall give the public an opportunity of judging whether Mr M’Culloch’s opinions are not as well founded as they are harmonious with those of the Conservative party. Mr M’Culloch maintains that it is more than doubtful whether any remission of taxation should take place unless the revenue exceed the ordinary expenditure by some 5 or 10 per cent of its amount. In other words, he considers that, with an expenditure equal to that of the United Kingdom, the estimates should always be so framed as to have a conjectural balance of four or five millions. Mr Gladstone rarely aims at having a surplus of even a tenth of that amount; and sometimes £80,000 or less seems to him enough to meet the chapter of accidents, and sustain the moral power and financial credit of the country! The following passage, which appears in the new edition of Mr M’Culloch’s work, seems to have been written expressly in reference to the financial administration of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer:—