a war which rendered the highways of the ocean
insecure the rise in prices would be such that all food taxes would
have to be swept away at once by any Government which desired to use
the whole vigour of its people in prosecuting the war. This year, with
its trade depression and its excellent maintenance of the revenue,
has seen the vindication of free trade as a revenue-producing
instrument; next year will see its triumph.

I have no apprehensions about the Budget which is now before the
Committee. As Mr. Gladstone said, in introducing the Reform Bill of
1884, what is wanted to carry this measure is concentration and
concentration only, and what will lose this measure is division and
division only. And I venture to think that it will not only be a
demonstration of the soundness of the economic fiscal policy we have
long followed, but it will also be a demonstration of the fiscal and
financial strength of Great Britain which will not be without its use
and value upon the diplomatic and perhaps even upon the naval
situation in Europe.

The right honourable Member for East Worcestershire[17] said this
Budget was the work of several sessions, if not indeed of several
Parliaments. The statement is exaggerated. The proposals outlined do
not in any degree transcend the limits of the practical. A social
policy may be very large, but at the same time it may be very simple.
All these projects of economic development, of labour exchanges, of
insurance for invalidity, and unemployment, which depend on money
grants, may require very careful and elaborate administrative
adjustment; but so far as Parliament is concerned they do not impose
difficulties or make demands upon the time of the House in any way
comparable to those which are excited by the passage of an Education
or a Licensing Bill, and I see no reason whatever why we should not
anticipate that in the course of this session and next session we
should be able to establish a wide and general system of national
insurance, which, more than any other device within the reach of this
generation of the workers of our country, will help to hold off from
them some of the most fatal and most cruel perils which smash their
households and ruin the lives of families and of workmen.

On many grounds we may commend this Budget to the House. It makes
provision for the present. It makes greater provision for the future.
Indirect taxation reaches the minimum. Food taxation reaches the
min