But by far the most damaging failure of the Session was Mr. Lowe’s Budget. It was known that the large outlay on the Army, due to the abolition of Purchase and other causes, would leave a deficit of about £2,000,000 to be met by Mr. Lowe in the coming year’s accounts. How was he going to meet it? An elastic revenue and rigid economy in expenditure had left Mr. Lowe with a surplus of £396,681. But he had on the next year’s account an estimated deficit of £2,713,000,[15] which he proposed to meet by a tax on matches--“not on matrimonial engagements,” as he remarked,--by a readjustment of the Probate and Succession Duties, and by an increase of about one penny farthing in the £ of income-tax.[16] The Radicals attacked the Budget furiously, and Mr. Disraeli formed with them what Mr. Gladstone termed an “unprincipled coalition.” But the Tories and the Radicals objected to the Budget on entirely different grounds. Mr. White, member for Brighton, quoting Mr. Bright’s declaration that a Government which could not rule the country with £70,000,000 of revenue did not deserve public confidence, complained of the increase in the Army Estimates, and warned the House that if such enormous sums were spent on the protection of property, the people would elect a Parliament pledged to tax property to pay them. Mr. Disraeli, correctly gauging popular feeling, objected to the match tax, the proposal of which enraged the poor match-makers of the East End of London. He gave just expression to the feeling not only of his own Party, but of almost all the rich men on the Liberal benches, when he denounced any increase in the Succession Duties. The Government only escaped defeat by hinting that they would abandon the Match Tax. After some fencing, the whole Budget was reconstructed, the Succession Duties being also given up, and the additional supplies needed by the Government being met by a twopenny income-tax.[17] There could be no better illustration of the strength and weakness of the Gladstone Government than this Budget. Theoretically and logically, it was quite defensible. Purchase in the Army had existed for the convenience and advantage of the wealthy classes. It was, therefore, fair to increase the Succession Duties in order to pay the expense of abolishing it. The Match Tax again satisfied the ideal of public financiers, who all yearned for the discovery of an impost that should fall on an article which, though used by the masses, was yet not food, or one of those “luxuries” like tea, which can with difficulty be distinguished from necessaries. Moreover, as Professor Stanley Jevons proved, the Match Tax would have laid even on the very poor less than one-third of the burden which had been imposed by the shilling duty on corn, that Mr. Lowe had repealed in 1869.[18] Unfortunately, however, Mr. Lowe, in preparing his Budget, ignored the prejudices and foibles of the people. He imagined that if