Mr. Gladstone introduced his Budget on the 3rd of May. The income, he said, had been £67,812,000 and the expenditure £66,474,000, leaving a surplus of £1,338,000. His estimated loss from remission of taxes had been very slightly below the actual loss, except in the case of Income Tax, for the wealth of the nation was now accumulating so rapidly, that a penny Income Tax, instead of producing £1,000,000, as had always been the calculation, produced £1,400,000. For the coming year Mr. Gladstone estimated, on the existing basis of taxation, a revenue of £67,575,000. His probable expenditure, from an increase of £78,000 in Estimates, he set down at £66,225,000, so that he had an estimated surplus of £1,350,000 to dispose of. He therefore repealed the timber duties, equalised the duties on wines in bottle and in wood, abolished the duty on pepper, and made a considerable reduction in the tax on carriages. He calculated that there would be a loss of £502,000 on the conversion of debt, so that he would, with these changes in taxation, be left with a surplus of £286,000. The financial debates simply ratified Mr. Gladstone’s schemes; but they were rendered memorable by Mr. J. S. Mill’s celebrated speech urging on the House the necessity of reducing the National Debt as a matter of duty to posterity. One of his chief arguments was based on the thesis of Mr. Stanley Jevons that succeeding generations must, at the existing rate of consumption, face a failure in the coal supply of the country owing to the exhaustion of its mines.[245]