Work
Substantial sums of money had to be issued to officers such as the Treasurer of the Navy and the Paymaster-General of HM Forces. The auditors were responsible for seeing that these officers expended the money issued to them for the purposes intended.
The system operated was defective. The auditors did not audit the actual expenditure of the departments administering the army and navy. Nor was there any mechanism for ensuring that accounts were presented and passed promptly. Indeed the system actually encouraged abuses. The officers accounting frequently had large sums of money in hand, which they were able to invest until it needed to be spent. Thus a person no longer in office, but with a balance in hand had no incentive to pay it back in to the Exchequer. Furthermore, an ancient Statute (51 Henry III, c.5) required that accounts should be cleared in order. This meant that work on auditing a later officer's account could not even begin until that of his predecessor had received its acquittance (Quietus).
The result was that Henry Fox (Lord Holland from 1763), who had been Paymaster-General of Forces between 1757 and 1765 did not have his accounts audited until 1778, 23 years later, during which time he was estimated to have received £250,000 in interest.
Read more about this topic: Auditor Of The Imprests
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem not printed on paper,... in the poet’s life. It is what he has become through his work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince’s gallery.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... the novel, as a living force, if not as a work of art, owes an incalculable debt to what we call, mistakenly, the new psychology, to Freud, in his earlier interpretations, and more truly, I think, to Jung.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that if you are here the authorities of the universe put you here, and for cause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so long as you work at that you are well and successful.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)