ABSTRACT
War and distress approaching to famine are events that do recur, and though it is not possible to forecast their effects on public expenditure for short periods, they ought to be taken into account in the general financial scheme. The refined financial mechanism, by which public borrowing is carried out, enables ‘extraordinary’ expenditure for a short period to be transformed into ‘ordinary’ expenditure for a long one. The technical administration of revenue and expenditure is likely to suffer while under the control of an untrained democracy. But allowing all this, the real enemy of sound finance is ignorance on the part both of rulers and ruled, and this is unfortunately too common under all forms of government. The rapid development of financial study in recent years has led to a careful examination of the more backward divisions of the subject, in order to bring them into scientific form.
