Page:The English Constitution (1894).djvu/69

 Rh balance was absolutely greater than the sum of the entire expenditure of the twelve months preceding.” But this history before the war is nothing to what has happened since. The following are the surpluses of revenue over expenditure since the end of the civil war:—

No one who knows anything of the working of Parliamentary Government, will for a moment imagine that any Parliament would have allowed any executive to keep a surplus of this magnitude. In England, after the French war, the Government of that day, which had brought it to a happy end, which had the glory of Waterloo, which was in consequence exceedingly strong, which had besides elements of strength from close boroughs and Treasury influence such as certainly no Government has ever had since, and such perhaps as no Government ever had before—that Government proposed to keep a moderate surplus and to apply it to the reduction of the debt, but even this the English Parliament would not endure. The administration with all its power derived both from good and evil had to yield; the income tax was abolished, with it went the surplus, and with the