A RECORD REVENUE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1090, 31 March 1911, Page 6

A RECORD REVENUE.

TWO HUNDRED MILLIONS. By Telegraph-Press Ajsociation-Conrricht London, March 29. With three weeks to go to complete tho financial year ending on March 31, the revenue, for the first time in British history, has exceeded £200,000,000. THE FINANCES OF GREAT BRITAIN. AN ENORMOUS GEOWTn. The Chancellor of the Exchequer estimated that the revenue and expenditure lor tho year expiring to-day would compare as under with the figures for last year:— 1910-11. 1909-10. £ £ Avenue 109,791,000 131,697,000 Expenditure 171,857,000 157,9-15,000 In an .interesting review of the public finances of Great Britain, published in I the American Review of Eeviews" last year, Mr. Frederic Austin Ogg said:— . 'British fiscal history since 1815 falls into two principal periods, divided roughy by the year ISOO/ The first was distinctively an era of retrenchment and reform; the second has been that of enormously increased expenditure, augmented indebtedness, and fresh taxation. Between 1815 and 18S5 the transactions of the Exchequer were on a scale far surpassing anything known prior to the irench wars, but compared with tho=e with which the Englishman of to-day is iamiliar they appear petty enough. Except during (he Crimean War, the largest item handled was regularly the interest on the public debt. As late as 18-11, at the accession of the ministry of Robert leel, the aggregate national expenditure was but £53,750,000. Under Gladstone's tenure of the Exchequer, in 1553, it was .£55,500,000. Eighteen vears later, during Gladstone's first Premiership, it was ,£09,500,000, and in 1880-81 it stood at £80,900,000, or not much over half what it is to-day. During this period the outlay upon tho army, and navy grew but slowly. In IS4I the cost of both was onlv =£15,500,000, and until tho eighties the military outlay rarely exceeded fifteen millions and the naval ten. "In the period covered principally bv the two Salisbury Ministries of 1880-92 and 1895-1900 there came a profound change, in the direction chief!v, of a very great increase of national expenditure, entailing not only a checking of reform, but the adoption of radical, and sometimes questionable, policies respecting taxation and the national debt. In ISSO-81 the public outlay was .£80,900.000; in 18858G it was if 58.773.000; by 1893-94 it had risen to £91.303,000; by 1895-90, to £97,761,000; in 1890-97, for the first.time in an era of peace, it passed the hundredmillion mark; and in 1893-99, on tho eve of the Boer War, it stood at £108,150,000., The Cost of Defence. "Tho foremost factor in this remarkable record was tho rapid growth of outlays on the army and navy consequent upon a revival of Imperialism. The increase upon tho army was comparatively slow, the total military outlay being, in 1579-SO. £15,025,000; in 1884-85, £18,600,000; in 1891-95, only £17,899,000; and in 1898-99, .£20,815,000. With the navy it was otherwise. During tho earlier nart of the century, when France was England's principal Continental rival, the customary British policy had been to maintain a naval establishment 5 per cent, more powerful than that of the French. Until 18S5 tho vote for the navy -was regularly much smaller than that for tho army. Then came a change. In ISS4-S5 a series nf bold strokes devised by Bismarck brought to tho German Empire a colonial dominion comprising an area of a mil/'lion square miles and a nopulation of fen or twelve millions. The realisation that Germany, not content with her marvellous industrial development, proposed to attain the status of a great colonial and naval Power imparted to British Imperial policy a stimulus whose effect was immediately, apparent. The twoPower naval standard was instituted and expenditure uuon tho Admiralty began to soar. In ISBS-S6. tho outlay went beyond thirteen millions. Tn 18SS-S9 it all but reached seventeen millions; in 189590 it was £19.724,000; in 1597-98. £24,068,000; and in 1898-99, £26.000,000. In the space, therefore, of thirteen years the cost, of the navy was practically doubled, and since 1895 the outlay upon the naval establishment has regularly exceeded that upon tho army."