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thereof, shall be allowed, but that the same shall be held void and of no effect, except a dispensation be allowed of in such statute, and except in such cases as shall be specially provided for by one or more bill or bills to be passed during this present session of Parliament.

XIII. Provided that no charter, or grant, or pardon granted before the three-and-twentieth day of October, in the year of our Lord One thousand six hundred eighty-nine, shall be any ways impeached or invalidated by this Act, but that the same shall be and remain of the same force and effect in law, and no other, than as if this Act had never been made.

(6) A.D. 1700. ACT OF SETTLEMENT.

12 & 13 WILL. III. c. 2.

1. That whosoever shall hereafter come to the possession of this Crown shall join in communion with the Church of England as by law established.

2. That in case the Crown and Imperial dignity of this realm shall hereafter come to any person not being a native of this kingdom of England, this nation be not obliged to engage in any war for the defence of any dominions or territories which do not belong to the Crown of England, without the consent of Parliament.

3. That no person who shall hereafter come to the possession of this Crown shall go out of the dominions of England, Scotland, or Ireland, without consent of Parliament.

4. That from and after the time that the further limitation by this Act shall take effect, all matters and things relating to the well governing of this kingdom, which are properly cognisable in the Privy Council by the laws and customs of this realm, shall be transacted there, and all resolutions taken thereupon shall be signed by such of the Privy Council as shall advise and consent to the same.1

5. That, after the said limitation shall take effect as aforesaid, no person born out of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, or Ireland, or the dominions thereunto belonging (although to be naturalised or made a denizen-except such as are born of

1 Repealed in the first year of George I.'s reign.

English parents), shall be capable to be of the Privy Council, or a member of either House of Parliament, or to enjoy any office or place of trust, either civil or military, or to have any grant of lands, tenements, or hereditaments, from the Crown, to himself, or to any other or others in trust for him.

6. That no person who has an office or place of profit under the King, or receives a pension from the Crown, shall be capable of serving as a member of the House of Commons.1

7. That, after the said limitation shall take effect as aforesaid, judges' commissions be made quamdiu se bene gesserint, and their salaries ascertained and established; but upon the address of both Houses of Parliament, it may be lawful to remove them.

8. That no pardon under the Great Seal of England be pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons in Parliament.

APPENDIX B.

THE AUDIT DEPARTMENT AND THE PROCESS OF MAKING PAYMENTS BY THE TREASURY.

"English

[Extract from an article in the Daily News on the "Treasury and the Exchequer," forming one of the series on Politics and Parties."]

"The office of Comptroller of the Exchequer, at the retirement of its last occupant, Lord Monteagle, was consolidated with that of Auditor-General, who now bears the title of Controller and Auditor-General, and whose department, in Somerset House is known as the Exchequer and Audit Office. The duties of the Exchequer, which takes its name from the chequered tables on which, in the pre-arithmetical period, calculations were made, are the custody of the public money and watchfulness over its proper application. It receives the gross revenues of the country, which, after the deduction of certain charges, are paid to the account of her Majesty's Exchequer at the Banks of England and of Ireland. When votes of supply have been taken in the House of Commons, the Exchequer

1 Repealed in the fourth year of Anne's reign.

department is authorised to make advances to the Treasury for the sums of money required, which it does by granting it credits on the Exchequer accounts at the Bank, which credits must not, however, exceed the ways and means voted by the House of Commons. If this condition is not complied with, it is the duty of the Exchequer to suspend or refuse the grant. These grants need to be confirmed at the close of the Session by the Appropriation Act. In the event of that measure not passing in the same Session the votes of the Commons are void, and require to be renewed in the next Session of Parliament, in order that legal appropriation may take place. When these credits have been issued, the Treasury makes transfers to the PaymasterGeneral's account in the Bank, in order that he may make the proper payments to the several branches of the public service. At this point the Audit Department of the associated Exchequer and Audit Offices steps on the field. The money has been granted for specific objects; in the person of the PaymasterGeneral it reaches the person who is the instrument of distribution for those objects. It is necessary to provide a check upon its improper application. It is needful to see not only that the money voted for public purposes shall be applied to public purposes, or, in other words, to guard against fraud and embezzlement, but to take care that the money voted by Parliament for one public purpose shall not, under any supposed pressure of necessity or expediency, as interpreted by an official who thinks he knows better than the House of Commons, be applied to another, and, in his view, more urgent public purpose. It is the duty of the Bank, on receiving from the Treasury orders to transfer money to the Paymaster-General, to communicate with the Auditor-General, in order that he may have the information necessary for properly checking the accounts. The PaymasterGeneral is at liberty to use all the money which comes into his hands as one fund, without reference to the origin and appropriation of particular portions; but this is simply as a matter of account, and to avoid the accumulation of useless balances. Every month, however, the Pay Office is required to adjust its accounts, and to submit to the Treasury a statement of them, showing the credit standing to each vote; to the purposes of which the sum specifically voted will finally be appropriated. The process is simply that which is adopted in banking houses, where it is not the habit to keep each investor's money in a heap by itself, and to add deposits or to make payments from it, but

to treat the deposits collectively as a fund, and make the separation a matter of book-keeping and of balances. The duty of the Audit Commissioners is to examine the accounts of the several civil services-for the Army and Navy are still improperly excluded from this independent investigation of their expenditure-and to see whether the expenditure alleged has actually taken place, whether it has been sanctioned by the proper departmental authority, and whether it was authorised by precedent. The report of the Audit Office is submitted to gentlemen who must rectify any irregularities, and who will make such remarks as may seem desirable before the House of Commons, by whom it is referred to a Standing Committee of Public Accounts. Thus those questions of public expenditure which originate in the House of Commons return to it again in the last resort for revision."

APPENDIX C.

THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND THE UNDER-SECRETARIES OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

[Extract from an article in the Daily News on the "Foreign Office," forming one of the Series on "English Politics and Parties."]

"The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as the successor of the Secretary for the Southern Department, has a certain undefined precedency over his fellow Secretaries, with the exception of him of the Home Office. Practically, although, as in other cases, a great deal depends upon individual taste and party convenience in the distribution of the seals, his place is the most important and dignified of them all. The direct relations in which it brings its occupant with the Sovereign and with foreign Powers; the fact that its tenure makes him for the time being the representative of England to the world at large; the amount of important and confidential business which has to be transacted, with only the conditional and retrospective control of the House of Commons; the momentous issues of peace and war,

or of easy or constrained relations with foreign powers; the moral influence which may be wisely exerted in behalf of freedom or good government abroad, and which a hasty word or a querulous despatch may throw away or convert to evil; and the bearing of all these things upon commerce, make the office one of the most difficult that can be exercised. The Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs is of greater moral responsibility, if degrees can be admitted in matters of this sort, and of less direct and longer deferred Parliamentary responsibility, than any other under the Crown. From the nature of the case diplomatic correspondence and negotiations have often to be kept secret until the business is settled or the enterprise has failed. In the easily invoked interests of the public service questions are left unanswered to which the Minister, if he is to be believed, is burning to reply; papers are kept back which he is eager to lay before the House; discussions are deprecated which, if his duty allowed, he would be the first to invite. If things prove in the end to have gone wrong, Parliament has the consolation of passing a vote of censure, which will not set them right. In other words, it may cry its eyes out if it chooses over spilled milk. As to do this would be to present a somewhat undignified spectacle to the other nations of the world, this luxury of woe, or of merely vindictive punishment, is not usually indulged in; and a retrospective vote of censure comes as little within the ordinary reckoning of a Minister for Foreign Affairs as direct Parliamentary interference during the course of a negotiation. What he has to fear is

adverse opinion, when the truth comes out, directed and informed by searching and unsparing criticism. His personal discredit, and that of the Government to which he belongs, in the case of error or misconduct, are usually a sufficient inducement to vigilance.

"These peculiar conditions of the office render the character of the person filling it a matter of more than ordinary moment; and since it came into separate existence it has been held probably by a greater number of men of high eminence than any other political post save that of Prime Minister. Mr. Fox, Lord Liverpool, Lord Wellesley, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Canning, Lord Dudley, Lord Aberdeen, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Russell, Lord Clarendon, Lord Derby, and Lord Granville have been among its occupants, all of them men of the first political eminence, eight of them Prime Ministers, and the rest either the actual leaders of their party in one or the other House, or conspicuous and influential in it.

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