Mr. Disraeli’s tactics in thus evading defeat have sometimes been cited as a proof of his skill. In reality, they were the outcome of inexperience and exaggerated self-confidence. He did not correctly understand why Sir James Graham and Mr. Gladstone desired to move a moderate resolution. They were, of course, anxious not to turn out the Ministry before Mr. Disraeli’s Budget saw the light. They were morally certain that it would contain some fantastic proposals, which must not only wreck the popularity of the Government, but destroy public confidence for ever in Mr. Disraeli’s financial skill. Events proved that they were right in their calculation. [Illustration: NORTH TERRACE AND WYKEHAM TOWER, WINDSOR CASTLE.] On the 3rd of December, in a speech of dazzling brilliancy, Mr. Disraeli introduced his famous and fatal Budget. It reduced the Malt Tax by one-half. The House Duty was raised from 9d. to 1s. 6d. in the £, and extended from houses of £20 to houses of £10 rental. Light dues paid by ships other than for the support of lighthouses pure and simple were taken off. Tea duties were to be reduced gradually by small annual amounts from 2s. 2¼d. to 1s. a [Illustration: THE DUKE OF ARGYLE.] pound. The Income Tax was to be extended to funded property and salaries in Ireland. A distinction was drawn in taxing permanent and precarious incomes, the exemption for industrial incomes being limited to £100 a year, and for incomes from property to £50; and the rates of assessment per £ were 7d. on incomes from rent of land and from funds, but only 5¼d. on incomes from farming, trade, and salaries. Farmers’ incomes were to be taken as a third instead of a half of their rents. The remissions were so balanced by the additions to taxation that no surplus on the estimated revenue could be shown. A surplus of £400,000 was, however, manufactured by appropriating as revenue the repayments on local loans made to the Exchequer Loan Commission--repayments hitherto used for clearing off debt. The scheme could not stand criticism. After four nights’ debate, it was utterly demolished, Mr. Gladstone’s speech attacking it being one of the few which are said to have ever really turned doubtful votes in the House of Commons. The addition to the House Tax, pressing, as it did, on those who would come within the extended range of the Income Tax, infuriated the urban voters. The remission of half the Malt Tax failed to satisfy a landed interest, hungering for compensation for the abolition of the Corn Laws, because a reduced Malt Tax, it was agreed, benefited nobody but the publicans and the brewers. An extension of the Income Tax to funded property, Mr. Gladstone contended, was a breach of Mr. Pitt’s pledge to the public creditor, in 1798, that no distinct and special tax should ever be laid on the stockholder as such. Mr. Gladstone, like all the eminent financial authorities, protested against recognising the illusory principle of a