he lightens our pockets, it may
be worse next year and thereafter unless we have a care. This man has
never uttered a soothing phrase since he took office. He has made no
attempt to furbelow our finances. He is not even concerned about the
precise political effect of his taxes and tariffs. We never had a
Finance Minister who so disregarded the Gladstonian principle, that if
figures cannot lie they may at least make interesting romances of the
truth. In the two years that he has been budgeteering, this dapper,
tailored man with the sailor hat and the truculent jaw and the heavy
outskirts to his eyes has treated a budget as though it were a Santa
Claus stocking to be talked about a long while in advance, so that when
it comes it may be all the more significant.

Such budgets as he gives us are not the work of a true Conservative.
They bear no interesting bigotries of the party. They deal only
secondarily with tariffs. I believe Sir Henry knows that most people
regard a tariff as a very oblique way of reaching the pocket. People
compute tariffs and argue about them. Only the farmers can make them
into frightful realities. Nobody understands a tariff anyway when it
comes to the schedule. Its chief use is for winning and losing
elections.

But Sir Henry's admonishing finger goes up, and we are hushed to see
what is the really cruel thing he intends to show us next, that will
hurt just like a thumbscrew. He smiles and flips down a long scroll
of--direct and drastic taxes quite shocking to contemplate.

"This is going to hurt you all, good people," he says. "But I may as
well be honest about it. I am not a financial Christian Scientist.
You will all feel better after you are properly hurt."

Thus far we remember chiefly how it hurt. We are still hoping to feel
better.

Drayton had some grounding in practical finance long before he took any
of the detail jobs that have had so much to do with computations and
costs. We are reminded of a little episode of his early youth in
Toronto.

Harry Drayton and Frank Baillie were schoolboys together. They lived
on the same street. A neighbour was about to have an auction sale of
his goods, but looking over the lot he made a present of a punching bag
to Harry and Frank, no doubt because he foresaw that they would both
have strenuous lives. The boys thanked him and took away the bag. On
the way home Harry said to Frank:

"Do you really want a share in that punchi