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316 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES

fleet to keep pace with foreign fleets..,..;..totaI over 40
million £. As I have often insisted, therefore, I see
no way by which, in fact, charges of 40 million £ ea~h
for Army and Navy are to be avoided in future, and
practically we may consider ourselves fortunate if the
charge should ever again be less than about loomillion
£ in all.
These are very different figures indeed from the 20
to 30 millions which were tl1e occasion of the lively
debates· of forty years ago. But we have travelled far
from that time, and that is all that can be said.

Analysis of Growth of Revenue.
Analysing the growth of revenue in detail, we may
notice the following points:
I. No part of the increase of revenue since 186 I can
be ascribed to the imposition of new taxes or the in-
crease of existing taxes. The increase in all, comparing
190 I with 186 I, is from 70 million £ to 130 million .l.;
but the whole of this extra 60 million £ is due exclu-
sively to the larger yield of existing taxation, and not
to any new burdens. This appears clearly from Table
XII I. in the appendix, summarizing the well-known
table in the Statistical Abstract, which gives the taxes
repealed or reduced, and imposed or increased in each
year, with the estimated loss or gain to the exchequer
in a complete year, and other particulars. There have
been many ups and downs in the tax list in the inter-
val, but finally the reductions all told amount to 7 I
million £, and the increases to 62.6 million £, leaving
a net reduction of 8.4 £, which ought to be added to
the increase of revenue above stated to show what the
real growth has been. The growth must have been
even larger. A reduction or increase of the same rate
of tax, when revenue is growing rapidly, is necessarily
representeeJ "by a smaller amount of taxation in an
earlier than in a later period. When reductions take
place, therefore, in the earlier part of the period over