The story of the Parliamentary Session of 1851 may be briefly told. The obstruction of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill left little time for legislation. Sir Charles Wood, as usual, bungled the Budget. He had a comfortable surplus of £2,521,000. His estimates were careful and judicious, and showed on the basis of existing taxation an anticipated surplus of £1,892,000. It was in disposing of this sum that Sir Charles plunged into a sea of difficulties. He said it would not enable him to abolish the Income Tax, the retention of which, during the early days of Free Trade, he recommended as necessary for the stability of the fiscal system. Hence he proposed to spend his estimated surplus in (1), reducing debt by about £1,000,000; (2), in commuting a tax “which bore on the health and morals of the lower classes,” namely, the Window Tax, into a house duty; (3), in reducing the duty on foreign and colonial coffee to a uniform rate of threepence in the pound; (4), in reducing the timber duty by fifty per cent.; (5), and by transferring to the State a certain proportion of the local charge for maintaining pauper lunatics. On the 17th of February, in Committee of Ways and Means, Sir Charles accordingly moved that the Income Tax and Stamp Duties in Ireland be renewed for a limited period. The manner in which the Budget was received clearly showed that it would be unpopular. The Tories attacked it because the Income Tax was to be retained, and the transfer of the charge for pauper lunatics they ridiculed as a mockery of relief to the distressed rural ratepayers. Mr. Hume complained that there was no attempt made to reduce military expenditure by asking the Colonies to bear the cost of their own defence. The representatives of the large towns protested violently against commuting the Window Tax into a house duty. The controversy was, however, cut short by Lord John Russell’s resignation after his defeat on Mr. Locke King’s resolution, to which reference has already been made.