THE OPENING OF THE BUDGET
1
“Young man, what are your dreams?” If the question were put to a
newly-elected Member of Parliament, young and ambitious, as he stood
at the Bar of the House of Commons between his sponsors awaiting the
invitation of the Speaker to come to the Table to be sworn, he would
probably admit--if he could be induced to answer, and if he answered
truly--that, while his first design was naturally on the Premiership,
should he fail to get that shining post, he would not object to be
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The office carries a salary of £5,000, and a house in historic Downing
Street, No. 11. There is also a gorgeous robe of black silk, heavily
embroidered in gold lace. It is never worn in the House of Commons,
and outside it is worn only when the Chancellor of the Exchequer sits
for his portrait to photographer or painter, or presides over the
Court appointed for the annual nomination of Sheriffs for England and
Wales. This robe used to pass down from Chancellor of the Exchequer to
Chancellor of the Exchequer for a consideration, like the furniture
of the official residence in Downing Street. When Gladstone followed
Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1853, these supreme
political protagonists haggled through the post with some heat over the
price that was to be paid for the succession to these effects.
There is a passing reference to the matter in Morley’s _Gladstone_
(1903); but the correspondence is given fully in Buckle’s _Disraeli_
(1914). Gladstone, in his first letter to Disraeli--addressing him as
“dear sir”--after dealing with the question of the furniture, adds:
“There is, I believe, a robe which passed down under some law of
exchange from one Chancellor of the Exchequer to another, and I shall
be very happy to receive it from you on the ordinary footing, whatever
that may be.” Disraeli was so annoyed by Gladstone’s suggestion that
the furniture--which Disraeli had bought from his predecessor in
office, Sir Charles Wood--should be revalued and taken over by the
Office of Works, instead of being sent a cheque for £307 16s. 6d.,
as he had requested--that he dropped into the third person form of
address, closed the correspondence, and entirely ignored Gladstone’s
repeated request for a decision as to the passing of the robe. “The
robe,” says Buckle, “descended, or was believed by Disraeli to descend,
from Pitt. Disraeli was very proud of the association, and could not
bring himself to give Gladstone the option of purchasing what he
himself had bought from Wood.” Buckle adds: “He wore it again during
his two subsequent tenures of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it
remains as an heirloom at Hughenden Manor.”
But the main glory of the office is--to use the old parliamentary
phrase--“the opening of the Budget,” when the Chancellor of the
Exchequer makes his comprehensive statement to the House of Commons
every April, dealing with the income and expenditure of the Kingdom for
the ensuing twelve months. The balance sheet of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer is based, as regards revenue, upon the returns from existing
taxation, and new taxation--if any is proposed--for the current
financial year, ending March 31st, and as regards expenditure, upon the
Estimates supplied by the heads of the different spending Departments.
2
Disraeli was prouder, it is said, of being Chancellor of the Exchequer
than of being Prime Minister of England. That, however, is doubtful.
He showed unexpected capacity as Finance Minister, but his temperament
found its completest expression in the dignity, power, and influence
of the Premiership. The Exchequer was the first office he ever filled.
When it was offered to him by Lord Derby, the Prime Minister, in
1852, he was reluctant to take it, as he confessed it was the one
branch of Government business of which he had no knowledge. Derby’s
reply was: “You know as much as Mr. Canning did. They give you the
figures”--and that settled it. Old Lord Lyndhurst remarked in a letter
of congratulation to Disraeli: “You will, I am sure, evince to the
world that addition and subtraction are not the only qualifications
for a Chancellor of the Exchequer”; and he did, though the Derby
Administration were defeated on his Budget and resigned.
3
The greatest Chancellor of the Exchequer was undoubtedly Gladstone,
“the man who set figures to music,” as somebody remarked. He was the
one statesman for whom the post had an irresistible charm. He told
Sir Henry Taylor in 1864 that for nine or ten months of the year he
was always willing to go out of office. “But,” said he, “in the two
or three that precede the Budget I begin to feel an itch to have the
handling of it.” During those two or three months every Chancellor
of the Exchequer lives, moves and has his being in an atmosphere
of figures. Gladstone introduced or opened as many as thirteen
Budgets. The first of the series was the Budget of 1853, when, in his
forty-third year, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Government
of Lord Aberdeen. The Duke of Argyll gives a graphic account of how
Gladstone explained the proposals of this Budget at a meeting of the
Cabinet. “He came into the room,” the Duke writes, “with a large, flat,
shallow official box, very old and shabby, covered with drab-coloured
leather. He sat on a chair nearly fronting the window, whilst we all
sat in a kind of loop around him. Opening the box on his knee, so that
its lid stood upright and afforded a rest for any paper placed upon
its edge, he began a conversational exposition, which endured, without
a moment’s interruption, for more than three hours.” A speech of more
than three hour’s at a Cabinet meeting! What speculations must have
been indulged in at the clubs that evening as to the meaning of this
abnormal sitting of the Ministers in council! The Opposition newspapers
asserted, no doubt, that Gladstone’s scheme of taxation was fiercely
contested. “Not one of us,” says the Duke of Argyll, “could think for a
moment of interrupting him.”
But it is not always that the objections and doubts of Ministers
in regard to the Budget are thus silenced by the magic of a great
financier. Indeed, Gladstone himself declared that no Chancellor
of the Exchequer should attend a Cabinet discussion on financial
proposals without a letter of resignation in his pocket. Conflicts
are inevitable, perhaps, between him and his colleagues who are in
charge of the spending Departments. The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s
desire is for economy. He protests that he cannot meet the claims of a
colleague without imposing fresh taxation. The Minister is concerned
almost wholly for success in office. He declines to accept a reduction
of the expenditure which he holds to be essential to the efficient
working of his Department. The difference can be settled, if it is
amenable to settlement at all, only by the Prime Minister. He possesses
the controlling power in the Cabinet, and in the interest of harmony
and stability he exercises it in the investigation and settlement of
differences between Ministers. If no settlement is possible, then the
Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Minister concerned resigns.
In the House of Commons Gladstone spoke for close on five hours in
explanation of the proposals of his first Budget, exactly the same
time that Disraeli had taken explaining his the year before. It was in
this Budget that Gladstone extended the income tax to Ireland for the
first time, and provided that the imposition of the tax over the United
Kingdom should be limited to a period of seven years. For two years
it was to be sevenpence in the pound; for two years more it was to be
sixpence; for the remaining three years fivepence; and after that the
tax was never to be heard of again. What an example of the futility of
prognostication in political affairs! The income tax is the mightiest
of all engines for the raising of revenue, and seems destined to endure
for ever. But let us not prophesy, unless we can see the completion
of this human scheme of things. Gladstone’s speech, however, was a
mighty oratorical achievement. And yet thus modestly is it to be found
recorded in his _Diary_, under the date Monday, April 18, 1858:
Wrote minutes. Read Shakespeare at night. This day was devoted
to working up my papers and figures for the evening. Then drove
and walked with C. (Mrs. Gladstone). Went at 4½ to the House.
Spoke 4¾ hours in detailing the financial measures, and my
strength stood out well, thank God. Many kind congratulations
afterwards. Herberts and Wortleys came home with us, and had
soup and negus.
It took Gladstone four hours to explain the Budget of 1860. The note
in his _Diary_ in reference to this speech discloses the nature of the
refreshment from which he obtained sustenance in the great mental and
physical strain of a long speech. He writes: “Spoke 5-9 without great
exhaustion, aided by a large stock of egg and wine. Thank God! Home at
11. This was the most arduous operation I have ever had in Parliament.”
I have often seen from the Reporters’ Gallery the curious vessel in
which Gladstone carried his favourite refreshment of an egg beaten
up in sherry. It was a short but wide bottle, of the kind in which
unguents or ointments for the hair are usually sold. Producing it from
the inside pocket of his frock-coat and placing it on the table beside
the dispatch box--which already contained his notes--before rising to
make his speech, he would resort, perhaps, three or four times during
the oration to this old pomatum-pot--thus turned to a strange and
mighty use--for the glow and the ardour which his voice, so lubricated,
gave to his flowing periods.
Disraeli made no secret of the fact that it was brandy and soda that
he fortified himself with on Budget nights. Sir William Harcourt
found water sufficient to sustain his energies while unfolding his
Budgets. Goschen used to introduce his Budgets on port. I remember an
amusing incident during his Budget speech in 1890. That year was one
of commercial prosperity, and so great was the concurrent consumption
of beer and spirits, from which, of course, the State derived a
considerable revenue, that Goschen humorously expressed the hope that
it would not be known as “the drunken year.” Just then, by an awkward
turn of his elbow, the Chancellor of the Exchequer upset the contents
of the glass containing his refreshment, and immediately the pungent
aroma of port pervaded the Chamber. The awkward pause which Goschen
made in his speech, while he dried his soaking documents with a piece
of blotting-paper, was filled up by the humorous sally of an Irish
Member named Edward Harrington: “The House will soon be as drunk as the
year.”
4
History, perhaps, will record that the first momentous Budget of the
twentieth century--a century which is destined, I think, to see many
such Budgets--is that which Mr. Lloyd George, as Chancellor of the
Exchequer for the first time, introduced in 1909. It was remarkable
for its wide development of our fiscal system, and the novel reliefs
from taxation which it afforded. Duties were imposed on unearned
land increments, and a special abatement of £10 was given to payers
of income tax on £500 and under for every child up to sixteen years
of age. Mr. Lloyd George’s speech occupied four hours and a half in
actual delivery. The physical effort was too much for him. He became so
exhausted that in the middle of the speech he asked in faint tones for
the indulgence of the House; and on the suggestion of Mr. Balfour, then
Leader of the Opposition, there was an adjournment for half an hour to
give him a rest. The Budget was thrown out by the House of Lords. The
Liberal Government thereupon appealed to the country, and being again
returned to power, they were enabled to carry the Budget triumphantly
through the new Parliament in 1910.
But the associations of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and the
Budget are not all so dazzling. There is a most pathetic line in Mr.
Winston Churchill’s biography of his father. “He is the only Chancellor
of the Exchequer who never introduced a Budget.” As early as December,
1886, Lord Randolph Churchill, just appointed Chancellor of the
Exchequer in the first Unionist Government under Lord Salisbury, laid
before the Cabinet his proposals for the Budget he was to introduce
more than four months later in April. He only gained the half-hearted
consent of his colleagues to the draft of his scheme of taxation. “They
said nothing--nothing at all--but you should have seen their faces!” he
remarked on his return to the Treasury. He gave directions that all his
figures and calculations should be gone over again with a view to their
being carefully checked. “There are all the materials of our Budget,”
said he, handing over his box to Sir Algernon West, then Permanent
Secretary. “They are unpolished gems. Put the facets on them as well as
you can, but do not speak to me on the subject again until the end of
the financial year.” Long before the end of the financial year (March
31)--indeed, before that very month of December was out--Lord Randolph
Churchill, seeing that the Cabinet would not sanction his proposed
reduction of the estimated expenditure upon the Navy, resigned, and the
first Unionist Budget was opened in the following April by Goschen.