Enough has been said to explain how matters stood with the ordinary State revenues in this time of trial. The slowly advancing crisis, the deficit carried forward from one year to another, had become burning owing to the straits of the people and the unfavourableness of the elements. It had begun to cry aloud for remedy, and, when one looked around despairingly for the remedy, or even for means of alleviation, the most purblind could not fail to see the whole hideousness of our financial condition. There could be no thought of voting for new expenditure, the country was naturally incapable of bearing much taxation. It was now exhausted, its tax-paying powers adversely affected, and the critics declared that the sight of insufficiently nourished human beings was becoming more and more common in the country. They attributed this firstly to the shocking taxes on provisions and secondly to the direct taxation which was known to oblige stock-owners to turn all their full-milk into cash. As to the other less respectable though enticingly easy remedy for dearth of money, of which the financial authorities were well aware, namely the raising of a loan, the time was come when an improper and inconsiderate use of this means must begin to bring its own bitter punishment. The liquidation of the national debt had been taken in hand for a time in a clumsy and harmful way. Then under Albrecht II it had stopped altogether. The yawning rifts in the State had received an emergency stuffing of new loans and paper issues, and subsequent Finance Ministers had grown pale to find themselves faced with a floating consolidated debt redeemable at an early date, whose total was scandalously large for the total number of heads of the population. Dr. Krippenreuther had not shrunk from the practical steps open to the State in such a predicament. He had steered clear of big capital obligations, had demanded compulsory redemption of bonds, and, while reducing the rate of interest, had converted short-dated debts over the heads of the creditors into perpetual rent-charges. But these rent-charges had to be paid; and while this incumbrance was an unbearable burden on the national economy, the lowness of the rate of exchange caused every fresh issue of bonds to bring in less capital proceeds to the Treasury. Still more: the economic crisis in the Grand Duchy had the effect of making foreign creditors demand payments at an exceptionally early date. This again lowered the rate of exchange and resulted in an increased flow of gold out of the country, and bank-smashes were daily occurrences in the business world.