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 and Means. It is to this Committee that the Chancellor of the Exchequer submits his budget every year, on or soon before the fifth of April, the date at which the national accounts are made up, the financial year closing on the thirty-first of March. In order to prepare his budget, the Chancellor must of course have early knowledge of the estimates made for the various services. Several months, therefore, before the estimates are laid before the House in Committee of Supply, the various departments are called upon by the Treasury to send in statements of the sums required to defray the expenses of the current year, and these estimates are carefully examined by the Chancellor, with a view not only to exercising his duty of keeping the expenditures within the limits of economy, but also to ascertaining how much revenue he will have to secure in order to meet the proper expenditure contemplated. He must balance estimated needs over against estimated resources, and advise the House in Committee of Ways and Means as to the measures by which taxation is to be made to afford sufficient revenue. Accordingly he calls in the aid of the permanent heads of the revenue departments who furnish him with “their estimates of the public revenue for the ensuing year, upon the hypothesis that taxation will remain unchanged.”