The Government were now compelled to abandon the bulk of their legislative programme. They, therefore, made no attempt to proceed with any measures unless they were so democratic that the Liberals could not with decency oppose them. Hence they passed a Coal Mines Regulation Bill, an Allotments Bill--disfigured, however, by the obstacles in procedure which it put in the way of labourers who applied for allotments--and a Bill to prevent substitutes for butter known as “Margarine,” from being sold as butter. The success of this measure led to a demand for a similar Bill to prevent publicans from selling poisonous Hamburg spirit as “Fine Old” Cognac, or Scotch or Irish whisky. Baron de Worms, as representative of the Board of Trade, however, though eager to prohibit shopkeepers from selling a wholesome animal fat as butter, was shy of prohibiting the publicans--whose votes were of some value to the Tory Party--from selling poisonous Hamburg alcohol as old brandy. Mr. Goschen’s Budget was introduced on the 21st of April. He described it himself as a “humdrum” Budget--though as a matter of fact, as Lord Randolph Churchill said, if _he_ had proposed it the country would have denounced it as a scheme full of financial depravity. The Estimates had been taken to show a revenue of £89,689,000, and an expenditure of £89,610,000. The actual receipts, however, for the past year had been £90,772,000, and the actual expenditure £88,738,000. In spite of supplementary estimates, amounting to £1,129,000, there was a surplus on the year’s accounts of £776,000. Mr. Goschen’s general statement showed that not only were the taxes yielding less than they ever did, but that, though the rich and the poor had suffered much from commercial and agricultural depression, the profits of the middleman had not been reduced. For the coming year he took the revenue to amount, on the existing lines of taxation, to £91,155,000, and the expenditure he set down at £90,180,000, leaving a surplus of £975,000. To this he added £100,000 by increasing the duty on the transfer of Debenture Stocks, and by minor changes in the Stamp Duty. He then added to it a further sum of £1,704,000, by reducing the charges for the public debt. His surplus was thus inflated to £2,779,000, of which he spent £600,000 in reducing the Tobacco Duty, £1,560,000 in taking a penny off the Income Tax, £280,000 in relieving Local Taxation, £50,000 in aid of Arterial Drainage in Ireland, leaving him a probable surplus of £289,000. To manufacture a surplus by the simple process of ceasing to pay off debt, would certainly not have secured for any other Chancellor of the Exchequer, except Mr. Goschen, the reputation of a financial puritan. Mr. Gladstone and Lord Randolph Churchill demonstrated by unanswerable arguments the unwholesomeness of the financial policy which reduced the payments for the National Debt by cutting down the Income Tax instead of by cutting down departmental expenditure. But Mr.