Mr. Gladstone’s Budget was hotly attacked. His estimated expenditure--including supplementary estimates--for the year 1861-62 had been £71,374,000. The actual expenditure had been less than that by £536,000. But still the revenue had only amounted to £69,674,000, so that there was a deficit of £1,164,000. Had there been no supplementary estimates voted there would, however, have been a surplus of £335,000. The harvest had been bad, and the American War had depressed trade. Hence it was not natural to look for elasticity in the revenue. Yet Mr. Gladstone estimated the revenue for 1862-63 at £70,190,000. As the expenditure would be £70,040,000, he could not look for a surplus on the existing basis of taxation of more than £150,000. He would not, he said, impose new taxes. But on the other hand he could not remit any old ones. He even proposed to abolish the duty on hops, and as a set-off readjust brewers’ licenses, so as to sacrifice by this change only £45,000 of revenue. His scheme, in fact, consisted of a Budget without a real [Illustration: MR. SEWARD.] surplus, and its only popular feature was the simplification of the wine duties.[132] Why had Mr. Gladstone failed to provide a surplus? Had not Peel said that one ought always to begin the year with a surplus? Why was the Paper Duty surrendered, seeing it would have provided a surplus? Why did Ministers persist in exceptional expenditure when they assured the country that their relations with the only foreign Government that could be distrusted were friendly and satisfactory? Our expenditure was due to distrust of Napoleon III., whose objects were the same as ours. And yet, [Illustration: QUEEN ANNE’S ROOM, ST. JAMES’S PALACE. (_From a Photograph by H. N. King._)]