was good; for banks, railways, collieries, and most industries showed an enormous increase in the business done and profits made, and this meant more work, more wages, and more happiness for the people generally. Under these circumstances he estimated that the income-tax would yield half a million more than last The total estimated revenue from all sources year. 90,430,000l. Deducting from this sum the amount of the estimated expenditure, including the supplementary estimate of 125,000l., Mr. Goschen found himself left in possession of a surplus of 1,986,000l., or, in round figures, 2,000,000l. Reviewing the possible ways in which this surplus might be dealt with, the right honourable gentleman dismissed all idea of touching the death-duties or the income-tax, on the ground that interference with either would require a whole session. After arguing this point and certain other difficulties at some length, Mr. Goschen proceeded :-"I have two millions at my disposal, in one sense; but there sits on the Treasury bench another despoiler of the public purse-my right hon. friend the VicePresident of the Council. In the gracious speech from the Throne at the opening of the Session this passage occurred :Your attention will be invited to the expediency of alleviating the burden which compulsory education has, in recent years, imposed upon the poorer portions of my people.' The Government do not intend to depart from the pledge which was given in that speech-a pledge which we intend to carry out at the earliest date and in the amplest manner. The cost of that operation is large-the cost of following up compulsory education with a corresponding amount of free education." (Mr. Goschen was here interrupted by a voice from the Treasury bench suggesting the word "Assisted," while cries of "Free, free" proceeded from the Opposition benches.) "I do not object to stand by the wordfree.' We intend to deal with the subject in no niggard spirit, as the Committee will see when I tell them that the cost of that operation will absorb the two millions at my disposal. The Committee will judge from that of the degree and completeness with which we are prepared to carry out the pledge given in the Speech from the Throne. I have said that it will cost us 2,000,000l.; that is the aggregate cost, including what will be given to Ireland and Scotland; but of course we shall not have an entire year. We do intend, if the House of Commons, as we expect and hope, second us by a resolute determination to get through its business, that if possible no administrative delay of a single day shall occur; and, if our views are carried out, the parents will be relieved under the bill from fees for the children, whose education will be free under our proposals from September 1 next." For the present financial year, Mr. Goschen went on to say, only about half of the 2,000,000l. would be required. Premising that he must retain a margin, he assumed that the balance at his disposal would be 900,000l. This he proposed to deal with by spending 500,000l. on the construction of barracks, and the remaining 400,000l. in covering the loss to ensue on the withdrawal of light gold from circulation. As finally completed the balance-sheet of the year 1891-92 stood as follows: : He In the brief discussion which followed Mr. Goschen's statement he was generally congratulated upon his appropriation of the surplus; though Mr. Bartley (Islington, N.) observed that any system of free education which would interfere with voluntary schools would be met with determined opposition, and Mr. Illingworth (Bradford, W.) indicated another source of danger to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's educational proposals, by the warning that when public money was spent on education there must be popular representative control. At the adjourned discussion of the Budget (April 27) Sir William Harcourt (Derby) criticised Mr. Goschen's finance in a lively speech. described it as being of the "post-obit" kind, and complained that Mr. Goschen was guilty of the financial heresy of spreading his expenditure over several years, instead of meeting it when it By this and other irregular means he had manufactured a surplus when there was none. Referring to Mr. Goschen's own flight of humour in his Budget speech-(he had said that he had been year by year "despoiled" of his surpluses by his colleagues)--Sir William reminded the House, amid much laughter, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was himself a member of the same "long firm," and practically an accomplice of the burglars, for, like the accommodating maid-servant, he" left the door open," and it was he himself who " carried the bag." Speaking of his critic as "an authority in these matters," who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, "though not for very many months," Mr. Goschen observed, in the same ironical vein, that Sir William Harcourt "still wished to suspend a two millions sinking-fund to meet a deficit of half a million." Passing on to remark that he had had notice for some time that "a far superior authority to the member for Derby" intended to arraign his finance, Mr. Goschen expressed the hope that, if the challenge was to be fought out at all, it would be fought out on that occasion. But Mr. Gladstone did not respond to this suggestion, and took no part in the debate at all, except in the way of occasional interruption and correction. Replying to Sir William Harcourt's strictures, Mr. Goschen showed that his own conduct in spreading expenditure over a series of years had Liberal sanction, and quoted cases in which Mr. Gladstone and other Liberal Chancellors of the Exchequer had done the very same thing. Mr. H. Fowler (Wolverhampton, E.) afterwards criticised the Budget, which he declared to be a concession to Mr. Chamberlain's views on free education, and "one of the most marvellous party triumphs of the time." A general discussion followed, and the whole of the Budget resolutions were ultimately agreed to. The criticism which the Budget received in the press did not reflect the objections urged to it in the House of Commons. The proposal to establish free education was the chief matter which the newspapers took up. To both the press and the public it appeared to come as a surprise. The Times deprecated "the addition of a new measure to the Parliamentary work of a session which was begun five months ago on the express understanding that it was to be brought to an end, at the latest, in July." The Standard took exception to the principle of the intended measure, and complained that the effect of it would be to injure voluntary schools. The Daily News welcomed the principle, but insisted that if the State paid the fees in voluntary schools the public must have the control of them. With the exception of the Standard, most of the leading Conservative papers supported the proposal of the Government. They argued that it would be popular with the country, and that it was better for the voluntary schools that free education should be accomplished by the present Government, who would protect their interests, than that it should be introduced by a Radical Government, who would subject them to popular control. Liberal Unionist journals were divided in opinion. Some of them gave an unqualified assent to the proposal, while others expressed the fear that a Free Education Bill might wreck the session, as the Local Taxation Bill wrecked the last session. There was very little public discussion of the question pending the introduction of the bill by which the plan of the Government was to be accomplished. A small section of Conservative members, however, organised an opposition, which they kept up, though with waning numbers and strength, until the success of the measure was assured. Of this section Mr. H. H. Howorth (Salford, S.) was perhaps the most prominent spokesman. Writing from the House of Commons to the Times on the night on which the Budget was introduced, Mr. Howorth denounced with some bitterness what he described as the "dramatic surprise" of the night. "That the Chancellor of the Exchequer," he said, "should devote the whole of his surplus to furthering a scheme which is strongly disapproved of by a large proportion of his supporters and by the greatest educational authorities in the country is in itself extraordinary. That he should have done so in the way he did is, to say the least, embarrassing. We are, it seems, to be committed to devoting two millions of money to free education, for the disguise by which the pill was originally gilded is no longer maintained, and the term assisted education' has dropped out altogether. . . . There are some of us here who do not believe that any safeguards that can be devised will resist the tide of a Radical flood, and that they will be swept away at the first general victory of the other side. Meanwhile, we shall have lost the vantage we now hold when we come to fight the Socialistic battle of the future, because we, the Conservative party, shall have put on the statute-book the astounding enactment that a man may transfer the burdens which duty and honour enforce upon him, and which he is able to bear, to the shoulders of his neighbours-a proposition which might have been taken from the catechism of Socialism." On the other hand, Mr. Chamberlain promptly gave his aid outside Parliament to the scheme of the Government. Speaking at a Board School prize distribution in Birmingham (April 24) he declared that one of the greatest obstacles to extended education had been doomed to extinction by the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. After alluding to the reactionary opposition of a section of the Conservative party, and the support given to them by the Standard, he remarked that at the opposite pole was the Daily News, which would deny the benefit of free education to the working classes, unless the change could be made instrumental for destroying denominational schools. But to destroy denominational schools was now an impossibility, and nothing was more astonishing than the progress they had made since the Education Act of 1870. He had thought, he said, they would die out with the establishment of Board schools, but he had been mistaken, for in the last twenty-three years they had doubled their accommodation, and more than doubled their subscription list. At the present time they supplied accommodation for two-thirds of the children of England and Wales. That being the case, to destroy voluntary schools-to supply their places with Board schools, as the Daily News cheerfully suggestedwould be to involve a capital expenditure of 50,000,000l., and 5,000,000l. extra yearly in rates. But whether voluntary or denominational schools were good or bad, their continued existence had nothing to do with the question of free education, and ought to be kept quite distinct from it. To make schools free was not to give one penny extra to any denominational endowment. At the present time the fee was a tax, and if the parents did not pay fees they were brought before the magistrates, and if they still did not pay they might be sent to gaol. The only thing the Government proposed to do was not to alter the tax but to alter the incidence. The same amount would be collected; it would be paid by the same people, but it would be collected from the whole nation out of the general taxation, instead of being, as now, a burden on parents just at a time when many were most strained to meet the demands of the family, and found a difficulty in providing clothing and food for those not at work. Of extra-Parliamentary speeches prior to the introduction of the Budget there was not a large number, though one or two speeches of some importance were delivered. Sir William Harcourt, at Cirencester (April 17), rallied Mr. Chamberlain on his dictum that Home Rule was dead, inconsistent as it was with his subsequent statement that, "if the Gladstonians were returned to power, all other questions would disappear in a moment, and once more in their places you would have a Home Rule Bill." Passing on to speak of the Gladstonian conception of Home Rule, Sir William Harcourt denied that the principle for which H |