It was admitted by Mr. Gladstone that only non-contentious legislation could be taken during the Session. Still, he made one exception. He announced that he intended to renew certain “valuable and equitable provisions of the Irish Crimes Act.” This decision arrived at, after much discussion in the Cabinet, hurried the Ministry to their fate. The Parnellites privately obtained assurances from some of their influential Tory allies that if the Irish votes were so cast as to destroy Mr. Gladstone’s Government, the Tory Government that came after it would allow the Crimes Act to lapse, and would abandon Coercion. The Tory leaders, according to Lord Randolph Churchill, met and resolved to oppose any proposal to renew the Crimes Act or continue coercive legislation for Ireland.[208] But it was desirable for them to avoid the too open manifestation of their alliance with the Parnellites on a question of supporting the Government in upholding law and order in Ireland. Now that the Coalition was ready to strike, a side issue had to be discovered on which united action might be taken without scandal. This was furnished by Mr. Childers. It happened that, after Whitsuntide, the Cabinet was wrangling over something else besides Coercion--namely, the Budget--and the financial situation was not, it must be confessed, a pleasant one. A violent popular agitation in the autumn against the Admiralty, had produced a panic about the weakness of the Navy.[209] Lord Northbrook had then promised to make important additions to the Navy. Some steps were also to be taken to protect British coaling stations abroad--and all this helped to increase the Estimates. The Vote of Credit of £11,000,000 aggravated Mr. Childers’ difficulties. He had, in short, to face a deficit of a million in his accounts for 1884-85, and, with a falling revenue, an expenditure in the coming year of £100,000,000! The country remembering Mr. Gladstone’s furious denunciations of Lord Beaconsfield’s administration for running up public expenditure to £81,000,000 in 1879-80, was profoundly chagrined to find that under an economic Liberal Government, expenditure had been run up in 1885 to £100,000,000. The discussions in the Cabinet as to how the money should be raised ended in the adoption of the principle that Labour as well as Property must share the burden. Mr. Childers, therefore, raised the Income Tax to 8d. in the £, equalised the death duties on land and personal property, putting a special tax on Corporations instead of succession duty, and imposed a stamp duty on moveable securities. These changes, he explained in his Budget speech (April 30th), would [Illustration: THE QUEEN IN HER STATE ROBES (1887). (_From the Photograph by Walery, Regent Street._)] [Illustration: MR. GLADSTONE. (_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]