In reply, Mr. Goschen pointed out that, so far from
its being an innovation to postpone to future years the payment of in- stalments of any considerable capital expenditure, the Govern- ment are now paying year by year the sum authorised under the measure of Mr. Gladstone's Government for the localisation of the forces. Moreover, operations of this kind are not inno- vations at all. No doubt the pledging of the Suez Canal bonder is new, and there is some novelty in the principle of the Naval Defence Act which Parliament had authorised; but these were the only two novel features of the existing finance. The £400,000 for replacing light gold was by way of substitution for the £600,000 which had not been muddled away. As to the set- ting aside of 2800,009 for freeing education, Mr. Childers, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, had set apart a sum of 2170,000 as probably needed for sixpenny telegrams, just as he himself had, set aside a sum of £800,000 to enable him to set education free in the present financial year, if Parliament should authorise him to do so. It was perfectly idle to object that he had been a.
money-jobber because when he tried to borrow two millions, he found that the terms asked were heavier than it was at all needful for the country to pay, and had therefore proposed to issue Treasury bills for the present. The India Office was constantly engaged in operations of that sort, and there was no sort of humiliation in them at all. No doubt there were more Treasury bills out than he wished to see out, but that was the result of a great reduction of the capital of' the Debt, which, though the public had, accepted it for the most part, had left to the Chancellor of the Exchequer- & small balance which had to be paid off at par. It would' have been absurd to have forced Consols on the. market when not at par, in order to pay this balance, and the consequence was a larger than usual issue of Treasury bills ; but when 21,400,000 a year had been saved at once, and in another fourteen years £2,800,000 would be saved to the country, the issue of a few millions of Treasury bills at a. somewhat higher interest than Consols, was a small price to pay for so great a gain. The reply was really complete, but the House talked the discussion out, so that the second reading was not carried till Thursday night.
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