when all kinds of specious arguments could be and were put forward for a policy more comfortable to the tax-payer, has raised her financial reputation higher than it ever was before; and it is interesting to note that when a Labour Government was in office, its Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Philip Snowden, talked with all the earnestness of a bank chairman about the importance of maintaining British credit, and brought in a sound Whig Budget which might have been opened by Mr. Gladstone. It is, however, also important to remember that the Labour Government was in office but not in power, since it had not a majority of the House of Commons behind it.
When we come to look at British or any other Government debt or any other security, with that coldly sceptical eye that should be turned upon it by the investor, the real question that we have to ask about it is what is the income behind it, out of which we can rely on the debtor's being able to meet the interest and pay the debt when and if due for redemption. And it is rather disconcerting to find how much uncertainty there always is, though the degree of uncertainty varies, in answering this question.
Concerning the British Government, for example, we know that during the last com-
