princes, peers, foreign envoys, and men of distinction in all ranks gathered together to listen to the orator. The year had been uneventfully prosperous, and again the balances were on the right side of the national ledger. The revenue had produced £70,208,000, or £2,037,000 above the estimates; the expenditure had been £67,056,000, or £1,227,000 below the estimates. On the existing basis of taxation, Mr. Gladstone estimated for the coming year a revenue of £69,460,000; but his estimated expenditure was only £66,890,000, so that there was a large margin for financial readjustments. He got rid of £20,000 by modifying the duty on corn and grain and the tax on small licences; he devoted £1,330,000 to reduce the sugar duties, and by taking a penny off the Income Tax he sacrificed at once £800,000, though ultimately £1,200,000; he reduced the duty on fire insurances on stock-in-trade from 3s. to 1s. 6d. per £, which involved a loss of £283,000. The net result of his scheme was a loss of revenue of £2,332,000, while the relief from taxation amounted to £3,000,000. This left him with an estimated surplus for the coming year of £238,000. The Budget was popular, not only on its own account, but on account of the masterly exposition of the financial state of England which accompanied it. Englishmen read with swelling pride the figures in which Mr. Gladstone congratulated them on a steady increase of £1,000,000 every year to their revenue--an increase due to its “inherent vigour.” As for the movement of trade, it was marvellous, the value of exports and imports having increased from £377,000,000 in 1871, to £444,000,000 in 1874. Nor was the Queen capable of concealing her satisfaction at the results of the great fiscal policy, the responsibility for initiating which, she and her husband had anxiously shared with Peel. It was the justification, not only of his foresight, but of their unswerving faith in his insight and ideas, that since 1842 the trade of her people had simply been trebled--that what men of business called their “turnover” had now reached the enormous sum of £1,500,000 for every working day of the year. It was not surprising that, with such mighty interests at stake, her Majesty cast her personal influence into the scale against Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell, who led the War Party in the Cabinet, and shrank from putting such a vast fabric of industry in jeopardy, merely to gratify the wounded vanity of a Minister who, having signed an invalid Treaty, was enraged because it was torn up under his eyes. Mr. Gladstone carried his Budget, though he failed to carry a useful measure to substitute the Scottish for the English system of collecting Imperial taxes.[215] He was successful, however, in spite of the clamour of the private companies, in passing a beneficial measure removing the restriction on Government life insurances.[216]