‘Gladstonian’ Budgetary Orthodoxy and a Preference for ‘Reproductive’ or ‘Remunerative’ Works

Cain and Hopkins argue that British investors required colonial governments to adhere to a ‘Gladstonian’ budgetary orthodoxy composed of balanced budgets and a regime of low taxation.... The City preferred to finance ‘reproductive’ or ‘remunerative’ works: infrastructure projects which would generate additional revenues.... Canada’s economic boom caused Ottawa’s purse to swell, and justified expanding expenditure. The Times commented in 1900, ‘Canada, a young and imperfectly developed country, is committed to a large capital expenditure, to a great extent in reproductive works’.

--Andrew Dilley, Finance, Politics, and Imperialism: Australia, Canada, and the City of London, c.1896-1914, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 79-80.