"Expenditure from decade to decade; for in 1879 they had a lesser Expenditure than in the year after the Crimea for Imperial Civil charges, and there was a reduction of £22,000 in 1879–80 as compared with 1875–6. He had no doubt it would be pointed out that the Conservatives had spent in 1878–9 £4,932,000, raised by Exchequer Bonds—and that was true; but it should be remembered that in those years the Russo-Turkish War cost £6,124,969, the Transkei and 1265 Transvaal £529,000, the Zulu War £1,559,000, and the Abyssinian War, in 1867–8, £17,865—in all, £8,293,834, of which extra Expenditure £3,361,834 would be met out of income, and £4,932,000 by the issue of Exchequer Bonds to be redeemed in two or three years. And, surely, that fact might well be defended, because the normal Expenditure of several years had been crowded into a few months. £1,500,000 had to be spent to buy ships that it would take four years to build. Malta had to be victualled for three years; a large number of torpedoes, and a great amount of stores, had to be purchased. But these were not lost. They had not been used, and why should one year's Revenue bear the burden? There was another point, one as to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose (Mr. Baxter) had expressed dismay—namely, the increase of the Unfunded Debt from £4,479,000 when the last Government resigned, to £27,870,100 on the 31st of March last, while the Funded Debt had only fallen from £723,514,000 to £710,843,000. He admitted they had not reduced the Unfunded Debt as their Predecessors had; but he contended that, apart from the value of Terminable Annuities, they had not increased its true amount. The Unfunded Debt consisted of Exchequer Bonds and Bills and Treasury Bonds running for short periods, and these had increased, in the five years ended March 31 last, by £20,914,514. Of this sum, only £5,350,000 had gone to meet extraordinary Expenditure. £4,000,000 of it were applied to the purchase of the Suez Canal, of which the securities were certainly not falling in value, while the rest of it had been placed out in loans to local bodies. A sum of £12,460,000 was now outstanding in this way. However much hon. Members might differ as to the policy of making these loans, it was a policy which had been largely accepted by the House and generally approved by the country. He thought the Government had a right to set off against their Funded Debt the amount of their assets, whichamountedto£17,500,000. Though, therefore, the total figures quoted by the opponents of the Government sounded very alarming, the net Unfunded Debt of the country had been really reduced by £2,580,500, and the 1266 Funded Debt had undoubtedly decreased by £12,500,000. He would now for a moment or two turn to the broader policy which had been attacked so vigorously by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Mr. Goschen)—the policy in accordance with which the Government had framed their Budget and postponed their liabilities. What was the position of the Government at the time the Budget was drawn up? They had to face the extra Expenditure of 1878–9, caused by the Transkei, Zulu, and other African troubles, and the war between Russia and Turkey. Let them take this extra Expenditure and see how it might have been met and how it had been met. The wars to which he had alluded left £10,176,000 as the total increased charge to be met by taxation or otherwise. "
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