The Wanganui Chronicle. "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." TUESDAY, MAY 29, 1923. A CHANCELLOR’S BLUNDER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18791, 29 May 1923, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." TUESDAY, MAY 29, 1923. A CHANCELLOR’S BLUNDER

“I know of no office, public or private,wrote Gladstone to a friend, in the last year of his life, “which demands so many and such rare qualities in its holder as that of Chancellor of the Exchequer. lie must have the skin of a rhinoceros, the patience of Job, the mathematical brain of a ! Wrangler, the tact of an Ambassador, and an absolute indifference, at least assumed, to public opinion. I know,” he adds, ‘ ‘ of no other post that is at once so harassing, so responsible and so ungrateful. I have held it six times, and I speak of what I know.” ■And in Gladstone’s day, when the British Chancellor had to budget for a revenue of much less than £100,000,000, his task was simplicity itself compared with that of his successor of today, who must provide a national income ten times as great. In order to do this he must make a legion of enemies by cutting down expenditure with a ruthless hand; resisting the strongest pressure to sanction demands for new extravagance; and imposing, or adding to, unpopular taxes. If, perchance, his anxiety leads him to give the taxation screw too hard a turn, so that much more money than is needed is wrung from the pockets of the taxpayers, woe betide his reputation. That ill fate seems to have overtaken Sir Robert Horne, the Eight Hon. Stanley Baldwin’s predecessor in that high and onerous office. English files just to hand show that the accounts of the financial year which ended on 31st March last disclose a surplus of £101,515,848. This immense sum is the measure of the over-taxa-t’on to which the nation has been subjected during the past year. It is also the measure of the colossal miscalculation made by the late Chancellor, Sir Robert Horne, in his Budget Estimate for 1922-23. Such a miscalculation is without precedent. Thirty years ago Sir William Harcourt held up his hands in pious horror when the national expenditure in one year reached a total of £100,000,000. Those were the days when the Chancellor of the Exchequer was filled with righteous emotion as he contemplated a surplus of one or two millions. To-day, when Budgets reach the dimensions of nearly a thousand millions, the surplus is as great as the national revenue was a generation ago, and, in proportion, is at least fifty times heavier than any surplus in the past. This year’s enormous surplus means that Sir Robert Horne raised that amount of revenue more than was necessary to meet the expenditure of the year. In other words, he overtaxed the country. The totals of revenue and expenditure, compared with the year that ended on March 31, 1922, arc: — 1923. 1922. Revenue .. .. £914,012,452 £1.124,879,873 [Expenditure .. 812,496,604 1,079,186,627 Surplus .. .'. £101,515,848 £45,693,246 One of the most astonishing features is that property and income tax yielded £50,000,000 more than Sir Robert Horne estimated it would yield in his Budget speech last year. This is equal

to about Is in the pound, reckoned in terms of income tax. Under normal circumstances, and in accordance with legal procedure, this world’s-record surplus should all go to the reduction of Britain’s national debt; but in the circumstances it is not surprising that the announcement 'of its magnitude provoked a wide-spread demand that the bulk of it should be applied to the reduction of taxation. Neither is it surprising that a recent Chancellor should have exclaimed, “The work and worry of it all is enough to break down a strong man in twelve months.” It is evident that in the dual role of Prime Minister (to which he has just succeeded) and Chancellor, Mr Stanley Baldwin will have a tremendous burden to carry until the Chancellor-elect, Mr Richard McKenna, is sufficiently recovered in health to be able to take up his duties.