In the debate on the first reading of the Imperial
Budget in the Reichstag on Saturday last Herr Sydow, Secretary for the Imperial Treasury, stated that the sum which the Imperial Government had set itself to raise by new taxation was £25,000,000. It would seem that the world is entering upon an epoch of " bloated deficits." The estimated American deficit has been put at £30,000,000, and. France expects to be obliged to have recourse to a great increase in taxation,—in view of the proposed scheme of old- age pensions. What our own deficit will be remains to be seen. In a leading article on Monday marked by a tone which we know not how to describe except as one of querulous optimism, the Westminster Gazette takes the Spectator to task for having declared that some £25,000,000 would have to be found if the Government honestly paid their way.—The Daily Chronicle, we may remark, which supports the Ministry no less vigorously than the Westminster, is responsible for placing the sum which will have to be found at over £20,000,000.— We can only say we hope that the Westminster may prove right and the Spectator wrong, but we are by no means sanguine.
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