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206 Budget. The advantage of entrusting the local governments with large departments alike of revenue and expenditure, and so giving them an interest in their economical administration, has been so triumphantly established by subsequent experience that the originators of the system have not, perhaps, received all the honour they deserve for their courage in venturing upon so bold a departure from the existing system. The area both of revenue and expenditure, which is now subject to provincial control, has increased from a few hundred thousands of pounds to many millions, and it tends continually to increase with the growth of confidence in the system which its successful working has engendered.

The result of these heroic remedies was that Mr. Laing found himself in the enjoyment of a surplus, which he proposed to employ partly in more liberal grants to public works and to education, partly in still further lowering the duties levied on Manchester goods, and partly in the release of the lower class of contributors to the income-tax — those whose incomes ranged between £20 and £50 per annum from liability to that impost. This exemption affected some 500,000 or 600,000 contributors, and the Finance Minister was able to point with satisfaction to the circumstance that, while Lord Canning had closed his administration with the exemption of five millions of tax-payers from liability to license tax, his successor was inaugurating his with a corresponding concession to the largest and neediest classes upon whose incomes it