TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CONSERVATIVE FINANCE. THE financial policy of the Government is as cowardly as its foreign policy is grandiose. We are to have all the satisfactions of glory, with as little as possible of the imme- diate inconveniences and expense. When in 1876 Mr. Disraeli boasted at Guildhall that the British Government had no occasion to shrink before the cost of one, two, or three cam- paigns, but that having once entered the field, it could con- tinue fighting till it had attained its end, we should never have supposed that his Government would have shrunk from paying even the mere cost of a menace, with the Ways and Means of the year, and would have asked leave to distribute that cost over the Ways and Means of three years,—in other words, to borrow under no pressure for a short period, with no certainty at all that that short period may not have to be prolonged. In April last, when Sir Stafford Northcote expected to spend much less than he now finds it necessary to spend, he shrank from providing even for that expenditure out of the Ways and Means of the year. Now he presents us with a supplementary bill of £3,766,000 (of which £400,000 is an extra charge for the Caffre war), instead of that which he had in April calculated as likely to vary from a minimum of £1,000,000 to a maximum of £1,500,000. In other words, his present estimate exceeds the double of the maximum as he calculated it in April by more than three-quarters of a million, while it exceeds the treble of the minimum as he then calculated it by the same amount. He explains this miscalculation by saying that it cost more than he then supposed to make our opponents sure that England was really in earnest. In April probably he thought it would be enough to summon troops from India, and might not even be necessary really to bring them,—whereas it was necessary to bring them, and to conclude the Convention with the Porte, and to occupy Cyprus, and all this has cost money. Well, the obvious criticism on that statement is that Sir Stafford Northcote was very sanguine, if he thought that the flourishing of a money-bag with less than six millions in it would be enough to reduce Russia to pliancy. But that is not the chief fault of Sir Stafford Northcote's finance, after all. It was timid enough—when he knew that the Cabinet had decided on summoning the Indian troops, and had under its serious consideration the policy of taking Cyprus, with all its expenses, and still more, the Anglo-Turkish Convention, with all its heavy responsibilities, on the shoulders of Great Britain, —to ignore the expense which he knew that this policy must produce. That was a grave fault. But it does not seem to us half so grave as shrinking from extra taxation now that the event has proved that the sanguine view of the case was mistaken, and yet that England has no immediate burden to bear which he cannot well provide for out of the resources of the year. When he under-rated the cost of menace, he proposed that we should run in debt, rather than inconvenience our- selves by paying for that luxury at once. Now that he knows he has under-rated it, his course is still the same. Probably he says to himself,—' Oh! it will cost more than I expected,—a good bit more,—still, it is not worth while to disturb the mind of the country on the subject. Next year, or the year after, is quite soon enough to discharge the little bill. It is a pity to disgust the people with a glorious foreign policy. Therefore let us say in August for the heavier debt, what we said in April for the lighter,—trust it to the future. No matter that it is contrary to precedent ; no matter that even in the case of the Abyssinian war, we provided all that was expected to be spent out of the resources of the year. You must not be too virtuous, if you want to be popular. It is ill-mannered to thrust the bill for the fireworks on the young gentlemen who have only just let them off. Let the memory of their delight die away before you begin to dun them for the money, else they may begin to hesitate when you propose to them fireworks again. Never mind whether the deficiency be between one or two millions, or between four and five millions, draw upon the future for it, and then we can with the greater ease take credit with the people at once for our spirited foreign policy, and our reluctance to add to their burdens.' Such is, as it seems to us, the probable drift of Sir Stafford Northcote's reasons for not adding to the taxation, in spite of the heavy extra deficiency he had to announce.
But there is no respectable defence for it. As Mr. Childers showed in his very lucid speech, in 1859 there was a very similar crisis. War broke out between France and Austria, and the increase in our Naval and Military expenditure raised the deficit to over five millions. The Liberals came into power, Mr. Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and though the Budget came late in July, the whole deficiency was provided for by the taxation of the year. Mr. Disraeli, who was then in Opposition, said, "To raising the sum by taxes, not by loan, I give my unqualified support." In 1860 the case was even worse. The China war had broken out, and late in the Session it was found that the deficiency would be considerable, and again, late in July Mr. Gladstone raised the spirit duties. Once more, when the Abyssinian war broke out, the first year was expected to cost £2,000,000, and the second, £3,000,000 (though they did cost a great deal more). The Conservative Government of that year imposed as late as November an additional penny on the Income-tax, and in the following year a further addition of twopence, so that there was no shrinking then on the part of the Conservatives themselves from the duty of meeting the cost even of actual war out of the revenues of the year. Again, in 1870 a great war broke out late in the Session, and it be- came necessary to add to the military expenditure at a late period of the Session. What course was taken ? A second penny of Income-tax was added to the taxation. Now of these four precedents adduced by Mr. Childers, is there one which can be said to be inapplicable to the present case, either in con- sequence of any special right of the present generation to ask posterity to share its burden, or of any special incompetence of the Governments of the years referred to, to urge such a plea with decorum ? It will be said, of course, as Sir Stafford Northcote did say, that the cost incurred this year is the cost of averting a war which would have fearfully burdened future generations. And he wishes us, we suppose, to infer that those who are responsible for that cost may fairly ease them- selves to some extent of the lighter burden they have incurred, by shifting it on to the future, by way of compensation for the much heavier burden, of the fear of which the country is re- lieved. But then that plea, that the policy of the Govern- ment has had the merit of averting war, is a matter of argu- ment, as Mr. Gladstone showed, and is denied strenuously by a large section of the British people. Besides, were not the pre- parations of 1859, the Chinese war of 1860, the Abyssinian war of 1867, and the Belgian Guarantee of 1870, to be justified on precisely similar grounds ? The preparations of 1859 were intended, of course, as precautionary, on the eve of a great Continental war, and doubtless had their effect in giving new weight to Lord Russell's Italian policy in 1859-60. Assuredly the weight of taxation was much more seriously felt at that time, and the excuse for drawing bills on the future was much greater, than it is now. And yet no one hesitated in taking up the burden of the time, and refusing to share it with posterity. Still more was this true of 1860, when the finance of the year was more embarrassed than in any year of the new commercial era. In 1867 again there was actual war, and a serious one, in the due prosecution of which every English subject who travelled or might wish to travel in Africa or the East was directly interested. And the excuse, therefore, for sharing the burden with posterity was obvious. In 1870 the cost of guaranteeing the independence of Belgium was not to be accounted as the price of any purely temporary advantage to Great Britain. It was a policy on a par with the avowed objects of the recent Treaty and Convention, and certainly might have been as decently shared with future generations, as the cost of threaten- ing Russia and offering a Protectorate to Asia Minor.
But there is one feature of the case which makes still more than any consideration we have named, against the present evasion of our financial claims. It is, that if our new policy means anything, what we have done this year is only the beginning of an expenditure much heavier than any we have yet incurred. If we are to shirk the cost of menace now, what shall we do with the much greater cost of menace which we must incur under the Anglo-Turkish Convention for the future? If we do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry ? We have moved some thousands of Indian troops, bought an ironclad or two, occupied Cyprus, and that is all. But in future years we are bound to repel invasion along a line of 1,000 miles, and therefore, of course, to prepare to repel it, if there be any sign of it. And not only have we under- taken to do this, but to force on Turkey the reforms in her Ad- ministration requisite to enable us to do this efficiently. If these responsibilities are not to be dead-letters, what expenses must we not incur in future years, even without going to war, on the same principle on which we have, if Sir Stafford Northcote is to be trusted, " averted " war by military preparations this year ? How many troops shall we not have in years to come to order to Armenia, or Syria, or even Mesopotamia, just to make it clear to the Russians that we are in earnest in saying, "Thus far, and no farther ?" If we are always to spread the cost of these operations over three or four years, what will our National Debt be a century hence ? Nothing can be more pernicious than, at the commencement of such a new era as Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford North- cote have announced to us, to shrink from the petty obligations of the year, and shift them to the years which are to come. "Sufficient unto the year are the burdens thereof," is a motto which we have acted up to during many years of a substantially insular policy. But we can no longer adopt it with any propriety. We are taking up the burdens and responsi- bilities of a great Continental Power, and yet in the very act of taking them up, we are shrinking, for the first time, from the one financial rule in which even insular Powers can alone find safety,—while, if Continental Powers ignore it, they rush upon bankruptcy. Just as we are courting the dangers of a new and grand policy, we are shirking the safeguards of our old and modest policy. Surely Sir Stafford Northcote must be desirous to take it out of the power of Lord Beaconsfield, to renew Mr. Disraeli's boast of 1876. If we go on as we have be- gun, we shall, before many years are out, have no heart to say to Russia that while she is limited by the fear of bank- ruptcy, we can undertake campaign after campaign, and fear nothing for the length of the struggle. The country which, in the plenitude of its wealth, draws on the future to discharge a burden of £4,000,000, just in order to avoid the unpopular policy of putting on new taxes, can hardly afford to protect a thousand miles of dangerous frontier, at a distance of three thousand miles from home, against even a bankrupt State which has its resources close to the frontier in dispute. If we have menaced Russia successfully this year, we have, at least, in the financial arrangements of this week, given the best proof she could desire, that we are not financially courageous enough, even if we are rich enough, to threaten her effectually in the future,—though we have, nevertheless, engaged to do this, under the terms of our Treaty with the Sultan.
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