ABSTRACT
CLASSIFICATION OF EXPENDITURE.-The sources to which the Tokugawa Shogunate resorted for its annual revenues were such as were covered in the foregoing chapter. We have now to look into the ways in which the revenues thus acquired in rice and money were spent. In those days the Shogunate had no guiding principle nor any definite policies in finance. As a matter of fact, no budget was ever prepared, but each of the different departments spent as much as it found necessary at any time. Even what was spent was not recorded. Rice and money were taken into the treasury as they came, so to speak, and were spent likewise. It was about 1718 that the Shogunate, for the first time, began controlling at one specific office the revenues and expenditures of its different departments and put them definitely on record. But even at that time there was no annual budget. In 1750 Hotta Masasuke, lord of Sagami, who had been stationed at Osaka Castle representing the Shogunate, was transferred to Edo, and was named a Cabinet Minister. Later he was made the senior member of the Cabinet, when, for the first time, he ordered budgets to be prepared which were to be strictly adhered to. Even for civil engineering works, the repair of ships, and such kinds of work, it was ordered that not only specifications, but estimates should be presented before the work was started. This means that 150 years after its beginning, the Tokugawa Shogunate for the first time had definite regulations for its financial affairs. But even in those days the items of expenditure, called" Regular Expenditures," once decided on, were repeated annually without change until forced into it by changed circumstances. There were many items of what may be called extraordinary expenditure which were very elastic and often the cause of misdemeanours or corruption among the Shogunate officials. It may be said, indeed, that the financial condition of the Tokugawa Shogunate always depended largely upon the expenditures under the heading of " Extraordinary."
