The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

POST.—Speaking a few days ago of the Army
and Navy Estimates, we said that we felt no alarm
at the amount of expenditure) which they involved.
What we said of that portion of expenditure we
say still more emphatically of the general and
entire expenditure of the empire. Of the many
Fears which create nights of puzzled worry, and
days that produce consequen',iat publications of
prophecies, essays, and petitions amongst a parti
cular class of political economists and the statesmni,
of parochial vestries, there is none more illogical
nor built on narrower basis than the Fear of Ex-
penditure. There are not a few of these people :
of whom some are under a persuasion that a coon-
try, ancient, and complicated in its systems of long
growth, can be administered to in accordance with
the Principles of abstract dogmas, and of whom
others believe that all knowledge of finance is to be
gathered in the counting-houses of traders, and all
capacity for managing the resources of a great em-
pire is to be obtained by practice in the manipula
tion of a 'wish rate. The one class generally emits
pamphlets or papers at social science gatherings,
and the other takes pleasure in giving voice to the
political ideas of financial reform associations. Both
are rather active just now ; the latter the more so of
the two, for its task is the easier. To acquire suffi-
ci oit to take a degreein the art of loose agitation not
a hard matter, and requires nothing like the applica-
tion and labour undergone by a graduate who pants
to become an acrobat of the Alhambra, or a conjuror
who occupies St. James's Hall and the wondering
attention of Christmas and New Year holiday-
makers. The process of graduation is very simple.
Nothing more is necessary than to fix, after the
manner of some great prototype, as Mr. Cobden,
upon two particular periods, one of smelt expendi-
ture and another of larger ; buy, for three half-
pence a piece, the abstracts of revenue and expen-
diture of each intervening year at Hansard's ;
put the figures at the bottom of the columns in a
string ?ike the blown birds' eggs of a schoolboy, or
the names and titles of a petty German prince ;
commit the figures to memory, and give them forth
dressed up in phrases which may be obtained in
abundance from among the properties of any plat-
form, and the master of which demands no greater
mental effort than is made by an average preacher
of sermons every Sunday; add to these acquisitions
a strong voice, and the thoughtless iteration of a
parrot, and you have a model speaker on financial
reform of perfect efficiency, and as invulnerable to

,he lance Of truth or the sword of reason as our

friend the parrot. Indeed, nothing would stop such
a man but treating him as the overwearied do the
persistent bird, namely, throwing a cloth over him,
and enveloping him in the darkness of night.
With political economists of this description we
will not attempt to deal. But it may not be useless
at this moment to say a few words about this bug-
bear expenditure to those who, from dislike to
troublesome examinations, or from facile belief in
the pedlar, might not distinguish paste from dia-
monds, or aluminium bronze from gold, and be
cheated into faith by their Autolycus as easily as
the Corydons and Phi!Uses of " Winter's Nigbt
Tale." It is perfectly true that the expenditure of
the country hes, in the last 20 years, increased with
a steady rapidity, and in a large ratio, It amounts,
no doubt, to what, in the unmeaning economical
jargon of the day, is called war expenditure ; a mode
of phrasing which really expresses nothing but a
barren fact—a fact from which, presented naked,
there can be evolved neither truth for the present
nor warning or guidance for the future. The ten-
dency of expenditure depends not upon its amount
merely. It is beneficial or detrimental, it aids pro-
gress or leads to ruin, just as it is the result of• bold
and thrifty foresight, or of impulsive or timid ex-
travagance. Parsimony deserves the epithet of reck-
less as often as expenditure. We were, for instance,
parsimonious in a high degree in Mr. Cobden's mo-
del financial year, the year 1835; and never was
parsimony so extravagant, and never were its ulti-
mate results more costly. In that year, 1835-6, the
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in deference to
a cry for what was deemed to be economy, cut down
expenditure largely, and in so doing silenced the op-
position of a loud, if not strong, party. Of income
little thought was taken. The desirable was con
sidered to be effected when expenditure was by
any means brought below it. We had a surplus,
and the country gave itself credit for thrift and
foresight. But what was the nitimate result of the
fear of expenditure that was operative in 1835 ?
From 1837 to 1842 what ought ever to be the rela-
tive positions of income and expenditure were
inverted ? Expenditure wert first, and for five
dreary years Income panted and laboured after it,
horse
in a dismounted sportsman after a runaway
in a ploughed field ; and the further the two went
the further was lucerne behind, till in 1842
were so far apart that we hats an annual that Nor deficit
the
iy
the least remarkable nor the least alarming feature
of that period of financial desolation. Concurrently
with the deficits taxes were angrnented, while, not-
withstanding their augmenastion, their produce
became less. The resources sf the country were
strained, yet income dwindled The wealth of the
country diminished. The
years, as they rolled on,
gathered nothing. The expesditare of the country
in that epoch which the Coben school pine after
was less by twenty millions tian it is now, and yet
the nation was paralysed, and had planted it foot
helplessly on the path that leads to insolvency:
We had been recklessly extravagant in economy.
Let the admirer of the then system of finance
tarn his attention from that period to the year
that we have now entered lwre. What does he
see ? An expenditure large in the abstract, no
doubt.---larger by twenty minims than it was twelve