Budget, from the same source as the French bouquette, means a small bag, and has been used metaphorically to express a compact collection of things, as a budget of news, a budget of inventions, and the like. Water-budgets or buckets were a very honourable blazon on a coat-armorial, as being generally conferred in honour of some valiant feat for supplying an army with water.
The term 'The Budget' is in Britain, from long usage, applied to that miscellaneous collection of matters which aggregate into the annual financial statement made to parliament by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It contains two leading elements—a statement how the nation's account of charge and discharge stands in relation to the past, and an explanation of the probable expenditure of the ensuing year, with a scheme of the method in which it is to be met, whether by the existing or new taxes, or by loan. The statement of the budget is always an important, sometimes a very exciting occasion; as, for instance, Sir Robert Peel's adoption of an income-tax in 1842, and his legislation for free trade in 1846. Mr Gladstone's eight budgets (1859-66), when Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord John Russell's government, have always been considered as models of financial exposition. Their principal object was to carry on the remission and reduction of indirect taxes commenced by Sir Robert Peel. Mr Goschen's budget of 1888 was also memorable. Specimen budgets of the chief countries will be found under the names of those countries, as at GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, &c.; see also REVENUE.