Funded debt L.27,778,000 Exchequer bills 752,600 ------------ L.28,530,600 Charges on Consolidated Fund 2,750,000 Caffre War 1,100,000 Naval excess 245,500 Navy L.7,726,610} Army 7,162,996} 21,820,441 Ordnance 2,924,835} Miscellaneous 4,006,000} ------------ L.54,446,541 Add militia 150,000 L.54,596,541 The calculated deficit will therefore amount to £3,263,781. This is a lamentable enough exposition, more especially as it follows upon a year of singular hardship and depression. Burdened as we are already, both with state and with local burdens, we are now required to submit to a further pressure: the credit of the nation must be maintained, and in some way or other this additional impost must be levied. And here we shall state, at once, that, all things considered, we see no just grounds for charging Lord John Russell--or his Chancellor of the Exchequer, who seems, on this occasion, to have been superseded as incompetent--with any undue want of economy. An outcry will, of course, be made by the furious and fatuous fanatics of the League against the increase of the army and navy estimates, amounting altogether to about £300,000. This charge, for reasons which we have stated before, we believe to be just and reasonable, and it is certainly nothing more than the situation of the country demands. But supposing that not one additional shilling were to be laid out on the strengthening of either service, there would still remain a sum of nearly three millions to be provided for; and we have now to consider the means by which that additional impost may be fairly and equitably levied.