The Daily News. SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1913. JOHN BULL'S BUDGET.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 6, 7 June 1913, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1913. JOHN BULL'S BUDGET.

Jphn Bull, in the year 1913-14, expects to pay his way with the Bum of £195,and to have a small surplus of £185,000. And this colossal sum is to hi raised by existing taxes. 'No new taxes are to be imposed. Such is the gist of the Budget which the Chancellor of the Exchequer explained to the House j of Commons last month, fuller particulars of which are now available from the Home papers. Fifty years ago, said Mr. Lloyd George, the expenditure was seventy millions, or £2 8s 3d a It is now 105 millions, or £4 6s 3d a head. Fifty years ago armaments cost £28,285,000. To-day they; cost £74,544,000, an increase of £46,000,000. It Mr. Lloyd George's term at the Treasury "this most sterile increase" has been fifteen millions. The remarkable inequalities in the holding of property which exist in Britain to-day was shown by the figures of the death levies last year on property valued at. £276,000,000. There had been 425,000 adult deaths. But one-third of all those millions had belonged to 292 people, and two-thirds to no more than 4000, while 355,000 people had died without a farthing of benefit to the State by way of death or succession duty. Here is a statement which shows how the nation spends its money: Debt charges £24,500,000 Road Fund 1,340,000 Local Taxation 9,065,000 Consolidated Fund . 1,704,000 Amy ... 28,235,000 Nayy "" 40,309,000 Civil Service 54,988,000 Customs, Excise, Inland Revenue 4,533,000 Post Office 24,366,000

Total .......£195,640,000 The Telegraph wants to-know, in what sort of a year, if not now, can we expect to look for aome reduction in taxation. "In a year of 1 such prosperity as the Chancellor himself vehemently declares to be unexampled in our history we have only just managed to make ends meet by withholding a considerable sum which should, in the normal course, have gone to the reduction of debt," says the Telegraph. "Is thab a condition of affairs upon which we are bound to felicitate the Government? Our expenditure is growing faster than our revenue. Mr. Lloyd George tells the country he will have to find seven and a-half millions more this year than last year; he admits that he can discern no prospect of a decrease in expenditure; but he anticipates—upon grounds which are a complete mystery to everyone with business experience—that our already abnormally swollen revenue is to be swollen yet further in the coming year. That is "not the opinion of the commercial world," adds the Telegraph, "in which it is believed that the cre3t of the wave has been reached; but even if for one more year the Government could manage to struggle through, by luck and by further raids on the Old Sinking Fund, what would be the prospect then? The plain fact is that, at a. time when the country is heavily burdened with taxation, we are ; spending all we have got, mortgaging a future and very doubtful increase. If ihi heavy load of taxation is not to be lightened after such a year as that just concluded, what prospect is there of its ever being lightened in Britain?" The Times agrees with the Telegraph that "a turn in the tide is already visible. The sign that we have reached and a little passed the climax.is that orders have lately ceased to come in. It will not affect revenue now, or perhaps for some months, but we shall be surprised if it does not do so before the end of the financial year." Another complexion is put upon the Budget by the Daily Chronicle, which says: "For a Chancellor of the Exchequer to introduce four Budgets in succession without a single new tax would at any time be a remarkable record; to do so in the face of a national expenditure leaping up toy something like seven millions a year is little short of a . miracle. It has been made possible by' the Budget of 1909. The great battle of that year, so far as it turned on money, turned on very large sums. Mr. Lloyd George avowed it. He said that in view of the great Navy expansion, the cost of old-age pensions, and the expected cost of National Insurance, a large and expanding new revenue was; needed, and that if sought where he sought it, mair'.y in the pockets of the rich, it could, without any blow to the country's trade and prosperity, he found. The Budget of 1909, about which so much ink was slung and breath wasted, has proved in its practical working the most gigantic success known to modern political history. If the country's taxation has risen, its taxable capacity has risen much more," says the Chronicle. "There is no better single gauge of that capacity than the receipts from income-tax. A penny income-tax in 1801 yielded £S7o,000; to-day it yields three millions. That is, while' national expenditure lias risen by 180 per cent., taxable capacity, as gauged by income-tax, lino risen by 242 por cent. The difference between these figures gives ground for tlic confidence with which, in spite of rising Budgets, the Chancellor surveyed ,the future." Britain's national debt in 1861 was £821,000,000. To-day it is ,£06,1,000,000.