This is the weak point of Mr Gladstone’s Budget. Suppose his expectations are fully realised—suppose he have a surplus at the end of this year of half a million, and that the productiveness of the taxes increase next year to the extent of £700,000 (which is not likely),—there would nevertheless be a deficit in the year 1864–5 of £200,000. Such a result, the most favourable that can be expected, cannot be regarded with indifference. But this is not all. Is it not a fact that the balances in the Exchequer in March last year were £2,684,000 less than they were in 1860, when Mr Gladstone began his present financial administration? And as he does not take any account of that deficit in his new Budget, the deficit remains unprovided for, and of course renders his present financial programme doubly hazardous. It was only by the help of the two and a half millions abstracted from the Exchequer balances, and also by creating new Debt to the extent of £461,000, that he escaped bankruptcy during the two first years of his financial administration: and if he had been a Minister of ordinary prudence, he would have felt bound to replace those sums before he proceeded to make further reductions of taxation. But he is determined to produce popular Budgets, however dear a price the country may have to pay for them in the long run. He justifies anew the censure which Mr M’Culloch has passed upon such a system of finance. He makes the show of a surplus for the ensuing year, only by ignoring nearly three millions of deficit which he has accumulated in past years, and by preparing a new deficit for the year 1864–5.