Mr. Gladstone opened by remarking on the strange device assumed
by the Conservatives for a new Conservative journal, —a picture of the beautiful clock tower and clock of the Houses of Parliament. It was curious because, the merit of a clock being to keep good time, the Conservatives would hardly be expected to appreciate that merit, inasmuch as it was the invariable rule of the party to be many years behind time. For instance, they had within the last few days been parad- ing their tardy sympathy with Catholic Emancipation, which was carried fifty-four years ago, and with the removal of Jewish disabilities, carried twenty-five years ago, they having been the steady opponents of both these reforms at the time when they were first carried. From this Mr. Gladstone passed into a, review of his own Administration since taking office in 1880, and of the manner in which the Government had dealt with the legacy of embarrassments left to it, for which he claimed at least a respectable amount of success. But the cream of his speech was his very lucid comparison of the finan- cial achievements of the triennial period 1877-1880, under Tory administration, and the triennial period 1880-1883, under his. own. He began by admitting that the total expenditure of the first three years was 253 millions and a. half, while the total expenditure of the last three was 259 millions,leaving an apparent
balance against the Liberal Administration of five and a half millions of expenditure. But deducting in both eases the expense of collecting the revenue, this balance against the Liberals is reduced to about three and a half millions, instead of five and a half millions, and that without reckoning how much of the expenditure went to pay-off Debt. Deducting repayment of Debt, as not constituting true expenditure, but only saving in disguise, the balance is turned from one -of three and a half millions against the Liberals to one of eight and a half millions in their favour ; which, again, when increased by the three millions handed over to India on account a the Afghan war, in which India had been improperly and un- scrupulously involved, swelled the amount in favour of the Liberal Government to eleven and a half millions. Mr. Glad- stone went on to claim the Egyptian and South-African expen- diture of the present Government as an obligation handed down to them from their predecessors. But without taking that into account, the financial comparison between the two Governments is remarkable enough, and favourable enough to the present Administration.
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