pleted financial year it collected a revenue of £799½ millions, and paid in expenditure £795¾ millions, of which £312 millions went in interest on debt and £45 millions in debt redemption. But if we want to know what is the real margin of security—how many times over our interest is covered, as an industrial prospectus would put it—we very soon find ourselves in the region of guess-work.
Statisticians are most ready to oblige with estimates of the aggregate income of the citizens of the country, the whole of which, according to the principle of jurisprudence laid down by Austin, the Government has the right to appropriate for the public purse. But we know very well that there are limits beyond which no Government can go in taxation, and we also know that nobody can say with any approach to exactitude what those limits really are, because they vary according to the mood of the tax-payer and his willingness to part with his income to meet a national emergency.
All that we know or think that we know on this point about England is that:—
1. Owing to a certain blind commonsense which is the priceless asset of her public finance, there never, unless the whole character of the nation changes, will come a time when her statesmen will lay on her back a debt that she
