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discussion to-day. I only mention it because if in any address I 
make 1 do not mention economy, I observe it is said that I do not 
care about it, and apparently I am not interested in that, and it 
is supposed 1 am never turning my attention’ to it, or that the 
Government is either. But I come to the other side altogether of 
your argument—fund the floating debt. If the public would give 
me the money, I will try that way. Beyond that what can I do 
to improve credit, or check inflation? I have already stopped 
borrowing for any purposes except refunding. There is nothing I 
can do but to pay off the debt, and in particular to pay off this 
floating debt which is the greatest anxiety to the Exchequer, out of 
all proportion to the part which it makes of the national debt; and so 
leave the money market in a proper position to serve the interests 
of the trade and commerce of the country. But before I can touch 
the funding debt I have to take up obligations of longer date to the 
tune of something like £160,000,000—o0bligations falling due this 
year, though they were obligations entered into for a term of years; 
or again, obligations of the Government which are tendered in 
payment of Excess Profits Duty, or in payment of Death Duties, 
and so forth. In those circumstances, for eighteen months I have sat 
in this office, and from the very day I entered it I have been criticised 
for not doing enough to reduce the national debt. I could not do 
anything to reduce it last year. I did not dare to put a bigger 
burden on the country with the conditions to which you and I alike 
looked forward at the beginning of last year. This year we have 
turned the corner. We have stopped borrowing. Even without 
new taxation I had got that £160,000,000; but not a penny really— 
an odd 4,000,000 if all my estimates are realised—of that to deal 
with the floating debt. So I was obliged to seek further means. 
You really set me an insoluble problem when you say reduce 
the debt, and at the same time say of every tax that I propose, that 
I should do something else. Deputations come to me one after the 
other in relation to every tax, each saying the other is all right, but 
what you propose for us will really kill us and we cannot stand it. 
I do hope you will be a little more optimistic, and take a little more 
courage, and that you will not allow yourselves to despond. After 
all, whatever may be your opinion of this Budget, the prospects 
to-day are better than they looked to us twelve months ago, or at 
the time of the last Budget. That I say to you as a preliminary. 
I must say to you quite frankly and quite plainly that I cannot at 
this stage of the proceedings recast my whole Budget. I am not 
here to pretend to you that the Excess Profits Duty is an ideal tax, 
or to pretend that 1 have changed in any way my opinion of this 
tax. I stated it quite clearly. I admit the tax is open to all the 
criticisms that I made, and I daresay to other criticisms made by 
other people which I have not made, although my own criticisms 
were brief but fairly comprehensive. (Hear, hear.) I admit all 
these objections. At any time between the end of the last Budget 
and the time when I had made up my mind what was required for 
this Budget, and had taken the decisive steps, I would gladly have 
considered and tried to work out any reasonable alternative that was 
brought to me for getting the same money from the same sources. 
But none was. You have largely modified the proposal which the 
Federation made to me when they came to see me a little while ago. 
A flat rate on profits on Schedule D taxed a great number, not