financial ingenuity could suggest, down to their last supposed master-stroke, the addition of 10 per cent to the assessed taxes--thus adding very nearly the last straw which was to break the camel's back--the last peculiarly cruel pressure on the lower orders. [2] Hansard, vol. lxi. col. 423. "Shall we persevere," he continued, "in the system on which we have been acting for the last five years? Shall we, in time of peace, have recourse to the miserable expedient of continued loans? Shall we try issues of Exchequer bills? Shall we resort to Savings' banks?--in short, to any of those expedients which, _call_ them by what name you please, are neither more nor less than a permanent addition to the public debt? We have a deficiency of nearly L.5,000,000 in the last two years: _is there a prospect of reduced expenditure?_ Without entering into details, but looking at your extended empire, at the demands which are made for the protection of your commerce, and the general state of the world, and calling to mind the intelligence which has lately reached us," [from Affghanistan,] "can you anticipate for the year after the next, the possibility, consistent with the honour and safety of this country, of greatly reducing the public expenses? I am forced to say, I cannot calculate on that.... Is the deficiency I have mentioned a casual deficiency? Sir, it is not; it has existed for the last seven or eight years. At the close of 1838, the deficiency was L.1,428,000; of 1839, L.430,000; of 1840, L.1,457,000; of 1841, L.1,851,000. I estimate that the deficiency of 1842 will be L.2,334,030; and that of 1843, L.2,570,000; making an aggregate deficiency, in six years, of L.10,072,000! ... With this proof that it is not with an occasional or casual deficiency that we have to deal, will you, I ask, have recourse to the miserable expedient of continued _loans_? It is impossible that I could be a party to a proceeding which, I should think, might perhaps have been justifiable at first, _before you knew exactly the nature of your revenue and expenditure_; but with these facts before me, I should think I were degrading the situation which I hold, if I could consent to such a paltry expedient as this. I can hardly think that Parliament will adopt a different view. I can hardly think that you, who inherit the debt contracted by your predecessors--when, having a revenue, they reduced the charges of the post-office, and inserted in the preamble of the bill a declaration that the reduction of the revenue should be made good by increased taxation--will now refuse to make it good. The effort having been made, but the effort having failed, that pledge is still unredeemed. _I advised you not to give that pledge_; but if you regard the pledges of your predecessors, it is for you now to redeem them.... I apprehend that, with almost universal acquiescence, I may abandon the idea of supplying the deficiency by the miserable desire of fresh loans,