April, when Sir Stafford Northcote made his statement. In spite of Mr. Lowe’s remission of taxes, his payment of the _Alabama_ Claims, his disbursement of £800,000 on the Ashanti War, the year 1873-74 ended with a surplus in hand of £1,000,000. On the basis of existing taxation Sir Stafford Northcote for the coming year estimated his revenue at £77,995,000, to which he added £500,000 from interest on Government advances for agricultural improvements heretofore added to Exchequer balances and never reckoned in the revenue. His expenditure was taken at £72,503,000, so that he had the magnificent surplus of £6,000,000 to play with. Never did a Finance Minister use a great opportunity more tamely. With such a sum at his disposal he might have re-cast the fiscal system of England and won a reputation rivalling that of Peel. But Northcote had not the heart to climb ambition’s ladder. He pleaded lack of time as an excuse for attempting no great stroke of financial policy, and he frittered away his six millions as follows:--He gave £240,000 in aid of the support of pauper lunatics; £600,000 in aid of the Police rate; £170,000 in increased local rates on Government property, and this sum of £1,010,000 was to be raised in succeeding years by further payments for pauper lunatics to £1,250,000 as an Imperial subvention to local taxation.[71] He devoted £2,000,000 to the remission of the Sugar Duties; he took a penny off the Income Tax, which absorbed £1,540,000, and he remitted the House Duties, which cost him £480,000. The half-million of interest on loans which he had included in revenue Sir Stafford Northcote used to create terminable annuities, which would in eleven years extinguish £7,000,000 of National Debt. The fault of the Budget was that nothing historic was done with a surplus such as rarely occurs in the history of a nation. Even if Sir Stafford Northcote felt unequal to the task of re-casting the whole financial system, and giving relief to the poorer taxpayers, he could easily have earned for his Government the enduring gratitude of the nation. He might, for example, have created terminable annuities to pay off twenty or thirty millions of National Debt before 1890.