they, too, poured forth their invective on Mr. Cross’s Bill. The effect of this sudden attack of the whole metropolitan Press was to paralyse a vast body of metropolitan opinion that up till then had run in favour of the Ministry. “It came into power on beer,” said a malicious Liberal one afternoon in the Tea-room of the House of Commons, “and it will float out on water.” A more cautious statesman would have postponed dissolution till a happier moment; but Lord Beaconsfield persisted in appealing to the people, and the Government passed an Electoral Bill repealing the law which prohibited candidates from paying for the carriage of voters to the poll. It was obvious that in the coming struggle the Tories were at least resolved to give the rich men on both sides all the advantages of their opulence. When the Budget was produced Sir Stafford Northcote had a sad tale to tell. His revenue for the past year, instead of yielding £83,055,000, only yielded £80,860,000, showing a deficit of £2,195,000, to which had to be added [Illustration: AFTER THE MIDLOTHIAN VICTORY: MR. GLADSTONE ADDRESSING THE CROWD FROM THE BALCONY OF LORD ROSEBERY’S HOUSE, GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH. (_From the Picture in “The Graphic.”_)] supplementary estimates for South Africa, bringing it up to £3,340,000. For the coming year, however, he estimated, supposing there were no changes of taxation, a revenue of £81,560,000, and an expenditure of £81,486,472. But it was no longer possible to postpone payment of past deficits. These had accumulated to a sum of £8,000,000. He proposed to pay this off by creating £6,000,000 of annuities terminable in five years, and meeting the yearly charge for them by adding £800,000 a year to the service of the National Debt. As this would relieve the Government from its existing payments for interest on Exchequer Bonds, the fresh revenue needed to meet the payments for the new annuities in reality came to £589,000, and not £800,000. As to the remaining £2,000,000 of deficits, Sir Stafford Northcote seemed to trust to luck for their payment. The additional revenue he proposed to get by a revision of the Probate Duty. As he increased the Succession Duty on personal property, and left that on land untouched, the Budget was extremely unpopular with the landless class. But even his scheme as it stood, with its £6,000,000 added for five years to the National Debt, and its £2,000,000 of postponed deficits, involved the sacrifice of his Sinking Fund for paying off the debt. Virtually the Government told the electors that they had brought Britain to such a pass, that she had to abandon for five years her scheme for paying off her National Debt, in order to clear off £6,000,000 of their deficits.