struck on the thirty-first of every March is of the most definite sort. It deals only with the actual receipts and disbursements of the completed fiscal year. At that date all unexpended credits lapse. If the expenditure of certain sums has been sanctioned by parliamentary vote, but some of the granted moneys remain undrawn when April comes in, they can be used only after a regrant by the Commons. There are, therefore, no unclosed accounts to obscure the view of the auditing authorities. Taxes and credits have the same definite period, and there are no arrears or unexpended balances to confuse the book-keeping. The great advantages of such a system in the way of checking extravagances which would otherwise be possible, may be seen by comparing it with the system in vogue in France, in whose national balance-sheet “arrears of taxes in one year overlap with those of other years,” and “credits old jostle credits new,” so that it is said to be “always three or four years before the nation can know what the definitive expenditure of a given year is.”
For the completion of this sketch of financial administration under the Commons it is of course necessary to add a very distinct statement of what I may call the accessibility of the financial officers of the government. They are always present to be questioned. The Treasury depart-
