The Press.
London, England, 1857-05-23 00:00:00

PUBLIC AUDIT.

WE have endeavoured in a series of articles
on the question of Audit and Control of
Public Monies to induce the public to give
attention to it ; and the Committee now
sitting will, we doubt not, thoroughly inves-
tigate the subject., and suggest a course which
will lead to greater simplicity, in order to
satisfy the public mind, which is daily becom-
ing more unsettled. The ignorance of the
present system of control and audit is manifest
in the Government itself. Even the President
of the Council a few days since stated in the
House of Lords that " with regard to appro-
" priating the monies of one department for
" the purposes of another," that was simply
impossible, as it would not be allowed by the
Audit Board. Now, we believe that Lord
GRANVILLE was formerly her Majesty's Pay-
masterl-General. and ought, it is presumed, to
have made himself acquainted with the
laws regulating the appropriation of public
monies; but both he and Lord STANLEY
of ALDERLEY, another ex-Paymaster-General,
had to be set right by Lord MONTEAGLE,
the present Comptroller-General of the Ex-
chequer, who stated that there was no audit
whatever applicable to any of the Civil Service
votes ; " that the whole of the Civil Estimates
" of the country which were carried on by the
" Treasury were entirely out of the control of the
" Auditors, and under no circumstances what-
" ever would Civil Estimates, such as those
" they were discussing, be submitted to the
'• Board of Audit." Lord MONTEAGLE, the paid
Comptroller•-General of the Exchequer, stated
this ex-cathelra, and then the President of
the Board of Trade, in justification, stated
that the head of no Civil Department would
" apply such sums, except with the sanction of
the Treasury." Of course not! But we should
like to know under what authority the Trea-
sury can misappropriate moneys for other
purposes than those directed by Parliament.
Well may Lord Msr.siEssuaY complain of the
expenditure in St. James's-park ; but we per-
ceive by the votes that Sir FRANCIS BARING,
the chairman of the Public Moneys Committee,
has taken up the question of this doubtful
expenditure. We may be thankful that our
public functionaries have proved themselves
so trustworthy, and that we have had no cases
of fraud during the last few years of extra-
ordinary expenditure; but the Government is
entitled to no credit for this.

We maintain that the Treasury itself must
be brought more immediately under the con-
trol of Parliament, in the manner pointed out
by us last week ; and although the Committee
may ere long close its labours and recommend
some alteration of the existing practice, we
shall not rest until the Public Auditors are
vested with greater powers, embodying the
simultaneous control over the appropriation

of the grants of Parliament, and held respon-
sible to Parliament for a prompt audit and
report upon every public account. Until this
is done no confidence can be placed in any
system or set of men, be it ever so well
arranged on paper, or be they ever so nume-
rous or able.

THE PROBATE AND DIVORCE BILLS.
THE attempts which have been made to reform
the Ecclesiastical Courts have been so nume-
rous of recent years that we shall not en•
deavour to count them. To what are we to
attribute these repeated failures ? Is it to the
fault of our legislators, or to the intrinsic
difficulty of the subject? We may lay the
blame, we believe, partly upon the one, and
partly on the other. The subject is one of
acknowledged difficulty, and the plans hitherto
brought forward have been notoriously ineffi-
cient. We have simplified the procedure in
the common-law courts; we have attacked
with success the abuses of chancery, but those
of the ecclesiastical tribunals have hitherto

defied all attempts at reformation. Lord
CRANWORTH, however, does not yet despair.
He is determined to refute the now prevalent
notion that, in spite of all that has been said
and promised, the courts of Doctors' Com-
mons bear a charmed life. He has reproduced
his measure of last session, with some amend-
ments it is true, but still with the inherent
defects which we pointed out when it was
first introduced. Let us briefly see what
these are.

No system has ever been devised so
admirably adapted for the elucidation of
truth as the institution of trial by jury,
accompanied, as it necessarily is, with the
examination of witnesses in open court.
We do not say that the procedure in
the Ecclesiastical Courts tends exactly to the
opposite result; but when we look at the
lengthy and complex mode of piending which
they have adopted, and at their singularly in-
efficient practice of examining witnesses, not
in presence of the judge and counsel and an
attentive audience, but by means of written
interrogatories to which they have abundance
of time to prepare their replies—and which
they give, moreover, without the wholesome
dread of a personal cross-examination—we
cannot but admit that such a system must be
attended with abuses of the grossest kind.
In order to provide nn effectual remedy for
these, it has been suggested by the most com-
petent authorities that the forms of procedure
of the common-law courts should be substi-
tuted for those now practised at Doctors'
Commons. Lord Cakxwoirrii hits ostensibly
adopted this suggestion in his new Bill ; at
all events he provides that the rules of
evidence observed at Westminster shall be
observed in the trial of all matters of fact in
his proposed new Court of Probate ; and he
provides further that any issue of fact may be
sent for trial to a common-law court. But while
making this concession to his opponents he
still proposes to preserve the general system
of " procedure and practice " adopted in the
Ecclesiastical Courts. It appears to us that
these provisions are so inconsistent and con-
tradictory, that they must effectually neutralise
each other. It is an attempt, in short, to
combine two systems essentially distinct, and
governed by wholly different rules. Lord
CRANWORTH has perceived this difficulty, and
he therefore proposes to delegate to the judge of
the new court power to amalgamate, as he best
can, the tedious, expensive, and un-English
system of procedure at Doctors Commons,
with the simple and expeditious practice of the
common law. This is a task which, in our
humble opinion, is beyond the reach of any
judicial ability to accomplish. Lord CRAN-
WORTH having conceded thus much, had better
have conceded all, and substituted at once
the procedure of the common law for that now
practised in the Ecclesiastical Courts. As it
is, should his Bill be carried, he will erect a
hybrid tribunal, which, while it must injure
existing interests, will no less surely fail to
satisfy the public.
There is another point in the Probate and
Testamentary Bill deserving of attention. It
gives to the proposed new court the must