The only other Bill of importance passed during the Session was one dealing with Irish University education. It abolished the Queen’s University, and substituted for it the Royal University of Ireland, an examining body like the University of London, empowered to grant degrees, except in Theology, to all qualified students who might present themselves. The Budget, as might be expected, was by no means a popular one. Since 1878 extraordinary expenditure, incurred on account of an adventurous Foreign Policy, had simply been treated as a deferred liability. On the 3rd of April Sir Stafford Northcote, in explaining his Budget, admitted that the revenue, which he had estimated at £83,230,000, had fallen short of that sum by £110,000. As for his expenditure, it had exceeded his estimate by £4,388,000. He had therefore no money in hand with which to meet the deferred liabilities of 1878-79; in fact, he was face to face with a fresh deficit. Comparing his actual revenue with his actual expenditure, the deficit was seen to amount to £2,291,000. The position, then, was this. In 1878 he had paid off £2,750,000 by bills, which he thought he would have been able to meet in 1879. Now he found he could not meet them. These he reserved [Illustration: THE DUCHESS OF CONNAUGHT.] for another year, adding to them a fresh set of bills for the new deficit, which transferred to the future a lump sum of debt equal to £5,350,000. Leaving this item out of account, and ignoring the cost of the South African War, he estimated the expenditure of 1879-80 at £81,153,000. The revenue, he hoped, would amount to £83,000,000, so that the estimated surplus he expected would suffice to cover the cost of the operations in Zululand. It was a dismal statement, at best. But ere the Session ended it was discovered that the real position of affairs was even worse than Sir Stafford Northcote had admitted. In August he had to inform the House that the Zulu War was costing the country £500,000 a month, and that he must get a Vote of Credit of £3,000,000. This, with an addition of £64,000 to the ordinary Estimates, raised the original estimate of expenditure to £84,217,000. Thus the estimated surplus of £1,847,000 vanished, and in its place there stood a deficit of £1,217,000 for 1879-80, which might probably be increased. The plan of evading the payment of debt, so as to render a costly policy palatable to the electors, was thus a failure. The longer the payment of the debt was deferred the more it grew, and it was clear that the finances of the country were drifting into inextricable confusion. [Illustration: THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT.]