Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress

Mr. Sanford to Mr. Seward.

No. 390.]

Legation of the United States, Brussels, November 16, 1866.

Sir: In connection with my despatch last year (No. —) detailing the system and functions of the court of accounts of Belgium, and previous reports upon the revenue systems of this country and of France, I have the honor to transmit herewith, in translation, copy of a remarkable discourse, delivered on the 3d instant before the court of accounts of France, by Count de Casabianca, imperial attorney general, and which the author has been so kind as to send me, being a comparison of the French and English budgets. I think it may be consulted with profit at the Treasury Department.

I also annex, in order to complete these studies, (so important for us while advising a suitable system for the collection, disbursement, and control of our revenue,) translations of discourses by the same distinguished official, before the same court, in 1864 and 1865, the one giving the history and attributions of the French court of accounts, the other being a comparison of the same with the court of audit of Great Britain.

I have the honor to be, with great respect, your most obedient servant,

H. J. SANFORD.

Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.

P. S.—The two supplemental discourses will be sent forward next week.

[Translation.]

In the solemn sitting which last year inaugurated the continuance of your labors, we compared the privileges of the English court of accounts with that in which you are interested yourselves. We propose to continue to-day the camparison of the English budget with our own. It will not be going out of the sphere of your functions, because they are not limited by the settlement of accounts which it is the duty of the agents of the treasury and the ministers to present to you every year. You examine and approve, according to your judgment, the receipts, expenses, and debts of the state.

The annual report which you address to the Emperor also contains the entire budget and its numerous tables, which you do not accept as correct until after you have been assured by long investigation of its rigorous exactitude.

We will take for the terms of comparison, not a budget in actual exercise, because that would only rest upon presumptions, but a realized budget, which can only have for its foundation an absolute certainty. We will choose the budget of 1863. We will only at the present time examine the receipts. The amount of those which belong to France, having been already received by the treasury, cannot be afterwards varied. As to the expenses, it is our task to attend to the appreciation of them when they have received a legal sanction. The bill which ought to rule them definitively was presented to the legislative body on June 13, 1863: it has not yet been voted, but doubtless will be at the commencement of the approaching session, besides, the subject is too great to be completely discussed in a single sitting. The English financial year does not begin like ours, with the ordinary year, but commences the 1st of April and ends 31st March. We will compare the French budget of 1863 with the English budget, which opened the 1st April, 1863, and closed 31st March, 1864. We do not hesitate to recognize the fact that owing to their prosperity and power to commerce and industry, our neighbors beyond the sea have long before ourselves applied to the administration and inspection of the public revenues order and regularity of accounts, conditions indispensable to success in all great commercial or industrial enterprises.

They have also been the first to publish and put in practice the fundamental principle that no tax can be levied without the consent of the contributors or their deputies assembled in parliament. This principle is thus stated in the 14, 15, 16, and 20, of Magna Charta, granted by King John in 1215 :

“Art. 14. We promise never to make any levy or impost, either for right or sentage, (which was a tax payable to the King by the possessors of fiefs to exempt them from military service and their vassals from rendering public services,) or any other tax, without the consent of the commons of our kingdom, if it be not for the redemption of our person, or to make our eldest son a knight, or to marry once our eldest daughter; in all which cases we will only levy a moderate and reasonable tax.

“Art. 15. It will be the same in respect to subsidies which we may levy on the city of London, which will enjoy its ancient rights and customs whether on land or water.

“Art. 16. We accord to all other cities, towns, boroughs, and villages, to the barons of the Cinque ports, (which are in the county of Kent, and the government of which are the right of barons,) and to all other ports the enjoyment of their ancient rights, customs, and privileges, and to return members to the council to regulate the amount which each ought to furnish, the three cases of article 14 excepted.

“Art. 20. We promise also not to give to any lord whosoever the right to levy any sum upon his vassels and tenants, unless it be to deliver him from prison, to make his eldest son a knight, or to marry his eldest daughter, in which cases he may levy only a moderate tax.”

Edward the First, in his statute of Tallagio non concedendo, published in 1306, confirmed in these terms the principle established in Magna-Charta: “No tax or levy may be made or raised in our kingdom by us or our heirs without the will and consent of the archbishops, bishops, counts, barons, and delegates of the free boroughs and cities, in parliament assembled.”

Notwithstanding these edicts, the English people have been compelled several times to display as much energy as constancy to free themselves from the arbitrary taxes of the kingdom. This contest did not cease until the end of the 18th century, under the ministry of Pitt, when the financial administration of the three kingdoms was definitively established; that of France was then in a chaotic state, but was reorganized upon entirely new basis twenty years later by Napoleon I—subsequent governments have introduced numerous improvements into it. We have to examine whether, such as it actually exists, this administration protects the interest of the state and of the tax-payers, more or less than the English method.

I know of nothing better to elucidate a question so important and complex than the comparison of the two budgets; but as each budget, embracing the whole public service, represents the entire government, it appears to us indispensable to precede the examination of the English budget with some general outlines of the government of a country which, although so near to our own, is yet imperfectly known in France, or misapprehended.

We need not observe that we employ the word England in its largest sense, as the synonym of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, comprising England, properly so called. Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. England is divided into counties, districts, and parishes.

In an administrative point of view, cities and boroughs, which, by virtue of a charter or an act of Parliament, have the power of self-government, and are thus constituted municipal corporations, are exceptions to general law of the counties. The principal functionaries of the counties are lord lieutenants or governors, sheriffs, and justices of peace. The first two alone hold their powers direct from the Crown; they receive neither salary nor indemnification.

The lord lieutenant is always chosen from amongst the chiefs of great families, who possess large landed estates in the counties; he unites to the chief command of the armed force the ancient officers of custos rotolorum, or keeper of the records of the courts of justice. He nominates the captains of the yeomanry, a kind of national horse guards, and the officers charged with levying the militia.

The sheriff was anciently elected by the free tenants; he is now nominated by the sovereign in council from a list of three candidates, who are designated every year at Michaelmas by the great dignitaries of the state, and the members of the high courts of law assembled in the exchequer chamber; his functions obligatory and his term of service for one year. Placed at the head of the civil government, he maintains public peace, presides at elections, and prepares jury lists.

The justices of the peace, whose number is unlimited, and who also exercise their functions gratuitously, are nominated by the lord chancellor, upon the proposition of the lord lieutenant; they can only be chosen from amongst proprietors of the county whose annual revenue exceeds £100 sterling; they maintain, in concert with the sheriff, the public peace, see to the good condition of the roads and bridges, and also of the asylums for pauper lunatics, and they are charged with the administration of the prisons.

They assemble quarterly to try civil and criminal cases, passing judgment upon all business which special laws have given into their jurisdiction. Under their orders are coroners, magistrates, (who examine into deaths by violence, proceeding by means of inquests instituting criminal prosecutions if necessary,) constables or police officers, commissioners of markets, and other civil officers of the county.

The various functions accumulated in the attribution of the justices of the peace demonstrate that in England the principle proclaimed by the constituent assembly in 1789, and maintained by all our constitutions as one of the most essential guarantees of civil liberty, the principle of the separation of the administrative from the judicial power, is not observed.

The districts are administered by bailiffs, who are named by the justices of peace at their quarterly sessions.

The parishes are administered by the vestry, which is composed of those who pay poor rates.

The cities and boroughs which have municipal corporations are administered by a mayor, aldermen, and town councillors; these latter are elected at an annual meeting of the citizens, the mayor and aldermen by the town council. The mayor, who is re-elected every year, and the aldermen, whose powers last for six years, must exercise the functions of their office under penalty of a fine of £100 sterling for the first, and £50 for the latter. We shall see further on what are the financial results of this organization, adapted to the traditions, necessities, and customs of a people governed since centuries by a territorial aristocracy.

We will now consider the most important features of the English financial system.

Since the suppression in the reign of Queen Anne of the office of lord high treasurer, the administration of the finances is confided to two ministers, the first lord of the treasury or premier, and the chancellor of the exchequer. These functions have sometimes been discharged by the same person, as in the instance of Sir Robert Peel, in 1834.

The first lord of the treasury, president of the councils of the ministers, of the court, and of the treasury, only intervenes in questions of the highest importance; he abandons all the details of the administration as well as the general presidency of that court to the chancellor of the exchequer.

The chancellor of the exchequer prepares the budget, presents it to the House of Commons, where he sustains it in debate, and causes it to be put in execution; he has for coadjutors the three junior lords and two under secretaries, all members of the court. The treasury is divided into several sections, representing the various taxes, the customs, exercise, stamps, post office, and Crown lands, each having a special council and president which meets daily, excepting Sundays, and which is necessarily consulted upon all business pertaining to it.

The comptroller general of the treasury is one of the highest in the administration of the finances; appointed by the Crown, he cannot be revoked save on a proposition from the two houses.

In order the better to secure his independence, his salary is not subject to the annual vote of the legislature. No payment on account of the state is allowed to be made at the Bank of England, nor distribution of moneys for the public service, or order for payment delivered by the treasury, can be made without the supervision of the comptroller general, to whom the Bank of England remits a daily statement of all the sums paid and received by the treasury, and position of the credits open on each account. The comptroller is also bound to render an account to the treasury at the end of each week of these various operations; he also signs and delivers exchequer bills the emission of which have been authorized by the House of Commons, and provides for their repayment.

The audit office, the functions of which we explained last year, completes the whole organization.

But how does it extend its action over all the three kingdoms ? By means of what agents, following what regulations, are the taxes received and payment effected to meet the requirements of the treasury ?

In England, as in France, the taxes are divided into two categories—direct or personal “assessed taxes” and indirect.

Commissioners are appointed by act of Parliament yearly in every district. They have no fixed salary, but only receive remuneration for their travelling and other incidental expenses. They choose in each parish assessors, whose services are annual and gratuitous; if any refusing the office, he is fined by the commissioners £40.

The assessors rate the inhabitants for the sum assigned to the parish, according to a statement prepared by the commissioners, of which a duplicate is transmitted to the exchequer. The amount to be furnished by the locality and by individuals is fixed according to revenue; but in default of a cadastre, that which is necessarily arbitrary in the assessment is controlled by that deep sentiment of justice and that constant probity which characterizes public and private acts in a country where any transaction causing discredit leads to isolation and ruin. Moreover, there is a remedy against unjust or exaggerated charges, both for the parishes and the tax-payers, in the courts of justices of peace at the quarter sessions.

A dangerous right is conceded by the English law to the commissioners and assessors— that of increasing the principal of the tax by additions, which are neither carried to receipts or payments in the accounts sent to the treasury—the object being to supply any deficiency in the collection and by reason of repayments accorded to the tax-payers, and to preserve the interests of the parish, which is responsible to the state for the whole sum attributed to it. “Non valeurs” are not admitted in England.

This excess is especially profitable to the assessors themselves, who find in it an ample remuneration for their trouble, for which but a nominal gratuity is awarded.

The assessors prepare the lists and post a copy on the door of the parish church, with a notice that all persons who consider themselves overcharged must present their appeals before the commissioners on the day when the lists are submitted to the latter for confirmation.

On the appointed day the assessors hand the lists to the commissioners, headed with the names of two collectors of known solvency, who have been chosen from among the inhabitants of the parish.

These collectors must serve under penalty of £100. For refusal, they must also give bonds.

These collectors post anew the approved lists on the door of the church. The tax is not, as in France, payable by twelfths, but at two equal distant periods, viz., on 25th March and 29th September. The contributors who are in arrear are notified by the collectors at their houses, verbally or in writing. After four days’ delay, the collectors have the right, upon the express authority of the commissioners, to seize the goods of the defaulters and sell them at auction. If insufficient to meet the tax, the collectors may, after a second delay of ten days, cause their arrest and imprisonment until payment is made, without the benefit of bail, which is allowed to all other debtors.

The peers of England alone are exempt from imprisonment for non-payment of taxes.

Need we recall the fact that in France the direct taxes are made and divided according to certain bases which have no room for arbitrary action.

The legislative body by its votes fixes the annual contingent of each department, (except for the license tax, which, although direct, is a tax pro rata;) then the division is made according to the cadastral revenue by the general council among the arrondissements; among the communes by the councils of the arrondissements, and among the tax-payers by the comptrollers of direct tax, assisted by assessors, repartileurs.

A formal provision of the budget, reproducing an article of the penal code, forbids them to add any sum whatever to the rate thus determined upon, under penalty of prosecution as extortioners.

The tax-payers receive at the beginning of each year a printed notice indicating the sum to be paid, and the bases of assessment. Three months are allowed for claims to be made thereupon to the council of the prefecture, which decides subjects to appeal to the council of state. In default of payment of the twelfths due after three degrees of prosecution of trifling cost, the collector may, as in England, seize and sell the personal property of the individual in arrears; but the suit cannot go further. The government in France never deprives of their liberty those who do not pay their taxes, nor make the communes responsible, for the amounts not paid are classed among the “non-values.”

The indirect taxes are paid in France, as in England, into the hands of special agents for each administration.

Nothing can be more simple and certain than the French system for payments of the receipt from taxes into the bureau of the treasury, and their transmission to those legally entitled to receive them.

Seven thousand collectors are appointed by the minister of finances. Two hundred and eighty-two special and eighty-nine general collectors, called receivers, are appointed by the Emperor; and all are required to give security in money deposits. The taxes collected are placed at the disposal of the central administration within a fixed period, which generally does not exceed ten days’ delay. Eighty-three payers, also appointed by the sovereign, residing in the capital of each department, pay all public expenses under orders from the directors of payments, at the minister of finances. This service has been still further simplified by uniting the functions of receiveurs general and paymaster in the hands of treasurers or paymaster general, recently instituted.

What the treasury does in France by its own agents is abandoned by our neighbors to the Bank of England. Since 1694 this vast establishment has enjoyed the privilege of centralizing in its bureaus the product of the taxes levied for account of the state, and of paying its disbursements upon drafts made by the commissioners of the treasury and approved by the comptroller general.

In those counties where the bank has branches, its clerks attend the collectors on their circuits and receive from them the amount collected, giving a simple receipt for the same. In general, all the officers charged with the collection of public revenues pay in or transmit to the bank the total of their funds within twenty days after the receipt, except a reserve, which varies from £4,000 to £40,000, the direct payment of costs and prosecutions, of salaries of special employés, of pensions of assistance granted, of material, &c., within limits fixed by the treasury.

The army and navy have each a paymaster general, assisted by numerous clerks, who receive for their disbursements credits upon the Bank of England from the chancellor of the exchequer not exceeding the sums voted by the house of commons.

Do these operations, so multiplied and various, conducted by agents, nearly all appointed for a year, who are not regularly compensated, whose functions are compulsory, do they offer the guarantees which the management of sums reaching yearly to the amount of several millions would seem to require ? We ought to believe it, seeing that, during so many years, this system has been maintained and practiced by statesmen of consummate ability, governing a great nation whose finances augment constantly in prosperity.

We are, however, not the less convinced that for any other people this system would be a cause of disorder and ruin. It appears to be not without its inconveniences, even in England. President Marquis d’Audiffret, Senator, thus expressed himself in his remarkable treatise on the financial system of France:

“The English government has preferred confiding to banking and business combinations the execution of its public services, and the receipt, transfers, and disbursements of all the state revenues are confided to the central action of the Bank of England and its branches. This connection between the general interest of the treasury and the interest of the commerce of the country often bring the one in collision with the other, producing mutual injury. Order in the finances, that first condition of economy, of good administration, and of public credit, must especially suffer from this impolitic association of two services of incompatibility, by reason of the diversity of their nature and purpose. Thus, the rapidity and brevity of the forms and writings of a purely industrial establishment could not be made to conform to the requirements and rigorous exactness and regularity of a financial comptabilite, and the real position of the exchequer can never be shown with the clearness and exactitude in the accounts of the bank.”

A single fact will show the whole extent of this disorder. There are 1,400,000,000 francs (£58,000,000) unaccounted for with explanations or proofs of employment in the movements of the funds relating to the sinking fund of the debt. So grave a fact suffices to demonstrate that England has no control over the public purse, and has not yet been able to throw light upon the general situation either on the credit or debtor side of the treasury.

Very considerable advances appear ordinarily to be made in aid of the state, whilst the revenues realized throughout the kingdom are continually accumulating in the hands of the bank and its branches to a yet more considerable amount, thus procuring the use of funds without limit because unperceived at all the several bureaus which have obtained the management of them. The habitual fluctuations in the movement of capital, the abrupt and important variations of the rate of discount, occasion frequent monetary crises, which are the common subject of complaints and reproaches from merchants and manufacturers, and even from members of Parliament, against the management and accountability of banks.

We therefore do not envy England the possession of a system of circulation and credit which doubtless answers the requirements of its peculiar position, but which brings with it such numerous abuses, such grave embarrassments for the government and for private individuals, and sacrifices for the state the more onerous because impossible for it to moderate them or to measure their extent.

We here terminate the examination of the administrative and financial institutions of England.

We now propose, first, to examine the two budgets, and we will commence by showing the differences which exist in their fundamental principles.

In France the legislative body discuss each year all the articles of the budget and votes all the sections of it. It is not so in England, for nearly one-half of the budget, under the title of consolidated funds, is neither discussed nor voted by the House of Commons. Upon 1,699,000,000 francs, the amount Of expenses carried to the budget 1863, 824,000,000 were classed among the consolidated funds, which provide not only for permanent and fixed expenses, but also for others essentially variable, under the following titles: Interest on the funded debt; the Queen’s civil list and pension of the royal family; civil and military pensions; salary of the president of the House of Commons and of the serjeant-at-arms.

(These two are comprised on the same category; that of the sergeant-at-arms, who executes the decisions of the presidents, is 30,000 francs.

Income of the lord lieutenant of Ireland, of the comptroller general of the treasury, and of the commissioners of the audit office.

The income of the lord lieutenant of Ireland is 500,000 francs. The commissioners of the audit office, who have a fixed stipend and enjoy a permanancy of office, are four in number. The other officers belonging to this court charged to verify accounts, and to present their reports upon them are however revocable, and the amount of their salary is voted every year by Parliament.)

Emoluments of the magistracy. The diplomatic service. Upon these 824,000,000 of francs placed thus beyond the legislative jurisdiction are also several other disbursements which we will not enumerate.

There exists between the two budgets a second difference not less important, viz: that in England the state only contributes a very small proportion to the cost of the internal administration of benevolent establishments of public worships.^*

The state takes no part in the repair or construction of railways, which are entirely the property of private companies.

These branches of the service are remunerated with the produce of local taxes, which amount to several hundred millions. But if the budgets of the two governments differ under the double aspect of legislative control and public service which are under their charge, we shall find differences not less essential in the verifications after the close of the session to prove the results.

You are aware how carefully it is ascertained in France that all the sums due to the state have been paid into its bureaus in conformity with the prescriptions of the budget, and the laws, decrees, and ministerial instructions. A commission composed of the councillors of state, members of this court, and inspectors general of finance, examine all the operations of the treasury. On your part, not only you examine the accounts which all the officers charged with the management of the revenues of the state, collectors and paymasters, are required to submit to you twice a year, within fixed periods and under heavy penalties for delay; you pass judgment also upon the accounts which each minister presents to you of the receipts and disbursements of his department, and upon the general statement of accounts published by the minister of finances. You declare in solemn assembly whether the accounts are or are not in conformity with the decisions which you have pronounced upon the individual management of the collectors and paymasters of the treasury. Finally, a law regulates definitively the budget of the past fiscal year.

The practice in England is totally dissimilar. The ministers do not produce any accounts before the audit office, the jurisdiction of which is confined within very strict limits. That court merely examines the management of the comptroller, under the power conferred upon them by a formal act of Parliament for that purpose. The treasury has the right to verify the other operations by its officials. The audit office cannot, like yourselves, present as a whole, in united form, the total receipts and disbursements of the year. Lastly, the budget of the fiscal year which has expired is not regulated definitively by a special law.

They proceed in this wise: the accounts which at all times have specially attracted the attention of the House of Commons, and which almost exclusively gave rise to discussion, are those of the army and navy. These have been placed, by the laws of 1832 and 1846, under the inspection of commissioners of the audit office, and who personally, in the offices of those ministers, follow day by day all the operations on the registers, and compare the amounts and employment of the expenses with the vouchers. Their reports, after being discussed and approved at the audit office, are sent to the treasury, at the latest, on the 1st of July the year following that in which the budget has been realized. The treasury transmits these reports to the House of Commons at the opening of the session. A law of 1861 has extended the method of control to the administrations of customs, of the post office, and of internal revenue.

The chancellor of the exchequer, on his part, presents to the House, before the presentation of the budget, a detailed and complete statement of the receipts and disbursements of the past fiscal year, and if he has a surplus which has not been employed in the reduction of the debt, he carries it to the budget of the following year.

This statement is not voted upon, but Parliament has a right of inquiry, and makes use of it whenever the interests of the state appear to have been neglected.

We may still better appreciate the two systems by comparing the two budgets, and will confine ourselves at this time to the examination of the receipts. We have already explained the motives which have determined us to reserve for subsequent discourse the comparison of the systems of disbursements.

The revenues of the state, whether in France or in England, proceed almost entirely either from direct or indirect taxes.

direct taxes.

These direct taxes in France are, as you know, four in number, to wit:

The real estate (foncier) tax, which comprises properties in both lands and buildings; the personal tax, and that on personal property; the tax on doors and windows; and that on business, (patents.) The total product of the same received by the state in 1863 was 311,180,000 francs, ($62,236,000,) including 2,377,000 francs, ($4,754,000,) the amount of the tax upon horses and carriages abolished in 1865.

The sums carried to the account of the English budget of the same year, as the result of direct taxes, amounted to 314,397,000 francs, ($63,879,400.)

We will now give some very brief explanations respecting the original and present position of the taxes. The real estate tax (foncier) was established in 1688, soon after the expulsion of the Stuarts. It was fixed in 1798 at 50,000,000 francs by Pitt, who accorded to the landed proprietors the right to redeem it by means of transfers of three per cents. This operation was burdensome for the state, but it allowed the disposal of a capital of 660,000,000 francs at a time when all resources were needed to support the expenses of the war with France. This tax yields only 28,184,000 francs, ($5,637,000.) There being no cadastre, the distribution is necessarily arbitrary. The tax on inhabited houses dates from 1694, and has been several times remodelled and reduced. In 1863 it produced 22,460,000 francs, ($4,492,000.) Taxes upon luxuries, to wit: upon male servants, horses, carriages, coats of arms, hair powder, etc., which produced in 1863, 28,709,000 francs, ($5,742,000). The income tax is the most important of the direct taxes which weigh upon England. Pitts, who created it in 1798, profited of the animosity which was entertained in his country against France, and of the necessity of procuring subsidies for foreign armies, to obtain the passage of the bill The income tax was, however, abolished by Parliament in 1815, and only consented to its re-establishment in 1842 to cover a deficit of 250 millions, ($50,000,000,) which had accumulated during the previous five years. It is only regarded even now as provisional, and is voted for one year. The basis of the tax is evidently defective, for the tax-payer himself fixes the amount on tax by a sworn statement, and the state has only against the bad faith of the interested party the nearly always illusory recourse of a secret inquiry, and a fine for concealment should the declaration prove to be false. The income tax has brought into the English treasury in 1863, 232,881,000 francs, ($46,576,000.)

Independently of these taxes, there exists, also, in England various local taxes, which are in fact direct taxes, because they are imposed and collected in the same manner as direct taxes. Several of them are for payment of services, which in France are included in the state budget.

indirect taxes.

Indirect taxes are those which in both countries bear principally upon articles of consumption, and constitute for their treasuries the most important resource. They produced in France in 1863, 1,255,000,000 francs, ($251,000,000,) and in England 1,364,000,000 francs, ($273,000,000.)

Table of comparison.

France.

	Francs.
Customs and salt	195,429,000
Registration and stamps	408,605,000
Spirituous liquors, imposts, tobacco and gunpowder	578,432,000
Post office	72,950,000
	1,255,416,000

England.

Customs	580,800,000
Stamps	232,925,000
Excise	455,175,000
Post office	95,250,000
	1,364,150,000

We will only present upon these various taxes some very brief observations, as we have already done on the direct taxes.

customs.

The total produce of English custom duties exceed those of France by 385,000,000 francs, which is easily accounted for. In the first place, the English customs comprise tobacco, sugar and wines, which come wholly from abroad, whereas these duties in France are collected almost entirely by the special department for indirect taxes and tobacco. In the second place, the foreign commerce of England was, in 1863, and still is, much more considerable than that of France. The English imports were in 1863, 4,297,000,000 francs, and the exports 6,454,000,000; in all, 10,651,000,000 francs. The imports of France, notwithstanding the vast impulse given to its commerce by the new system inaugurated in 1860, was only, during the same period, 3,236,000,000, and its exports 3,526,000,000 francs, in all, 6,762,000,000. This difference necessarily reproduces itself in the revenue from customs.

registry and stamps.

The stamp duty was imported from Holland into England, and dates from 1671. It was at first only applied to legal documents, but was successively extended to duties upon inheritances, sales, exchanges, donations, and upon all other civil or commercial transactions. It has also been applied to nearly all professions, imposing on them a stamp analagous to our tax on business. Public functionaries, even, are bound to pay a tax, proportioned to their remuneration, for the seal upon their commissions.

The duties upon inheritances are levied after the will has been proved by an ecclesiastical court, a necessary condition to their validity, or in case of decease ab intestate, after the court has named a curator, charged provisionally to administer upon property of the deceased. This tax is not less than that in France, but it is only levied upon personal property, real estate being exempted, a privilege which could only exist under an aristocratic government. On the other hand, as the property in the soil is concentrated in the hands of 50,000 to 60,000 families, whereas France has upwards of eight millions of proprietors, it follows that the sales and other contracts relating to real estate are much less numerous than with us.

These are the causes of the difference which exists in the amount of the taxes collected under the French system of registration and that in England of stamps. This difference amounted in the budget of 1863 to 175,000,000 francs less for the latter than that of France.

The payment of this tax is guaranteed in England not only by heavier fines than in France, but still further by the absolute nullity of those titles which have not been stamped within a fixed period. Our legislators have never admitted that the respect due to contracts should be sacrificed to fiscal interests.

wines and divers imposts, tobacco, &c.

The excise has a great analogy to our administration of indirect taxes, both for the article on which they are imposed as well as for the mode of collection. It was also imported from Holland by Cromwell. Its application, like the stamp duties, was at first restricted to a small number of articles, but has been extended in proportion to the requirements of the treasury, and, by the successive augmentation of the taxes, has become one of the most fruitful branches of the public revenue. If it produced in 1863 less than the same tax in France, ($24,600,000 less,) it is solely because the tax on tobacco is collected in England by the custom-houses. This tax produced in France in 1863, 845,295,200.

post office.

This branch of revenue produced in England $4,400,000 more than in France, which is due especially to the immense number of letters sent and the large number of post office orders, which the commercial and manufacturing relations require in a country whose manufactures exceed those of France by about three-quarters.

The stamp upon letters was reduced in England in 1840 to one penny, (ten centimes,) and ten years later in France to twenty centimes, (four cents.)

Our neighbors repress frauds on the post office by excessive fines. The employés who steal money enclosures are punished with death, and those who exact a higher rate than the tariff, with transportation.

The secrecy of letters is religiously respected, except in some rare cases dictated in the interest of the state. Letters are even then only opened upon the formal order of one of the ministers of state, in the presence of a justice of the peace. Nevertheless, the custom-house may open letters by the direction of a magistrate, if it suspects that they contain contraband articles.

To these direct and indirect taxes just enumerated are to be added the receipts which bear in both budgets the title of “miscellaneous revenues.” We have deducted those which are merely accidental. The amount of receipts under this head were in France $8,800,000, and in England, $7,140,000.

The general total of taxes paid in France is $313,200,000, and in England, $335,600,000 ; and as, according to the last census, taken in 1861, the population of France was 37,386,000 inhabitants, and that of England 29,307,000 only, it results that the quota of each individual in France was $8 37, and in England, $11 46; the difference, $3 04, is in reality much greater, if we take into account the English local taxes destined for departments of the public service, which are nearly all in France provided for by the government. These taxes have been valued at $85,000,000 by the chancellor of the exchequer in one of his speeches in the House of Commons.

To the revenues from taxes are to be added those from crown lands, which in France are $10,600,000, and in England are $1,520,000. This enormous disproportion proceeds from the fact that the Crown lands in England are only composed of certain domains which belonged originally to the Crown, and which were detached on the accession of George III. The forests which form part of them contain only 40,000 hectares, (90,000 acres,) while those of France exceed one million hectares, (2,400,000 acres.) The total revenue of the government in France is $323,800,000; in England, $337,000,000.

If to this detailed account of receipts we had been able to join a statement of disbursements, and to show the employment of the credits opened at each department, it would be very easy to explain to you the cause of results so different which the two budgets present. Whilst the English budget shows a surplus of $15,612,800, which for the most part was employed in reducing the funded debt, there appears, on uniting our ordinary and extraordinary budgets, a deficiency of $4,506,200, which will increase our floating debt whenever the legislative body has sanctioned the bill regulating definitively the year’s budget.

We must also admit than this deficiency would have been more considerable if the eminent minister who presides over the direction of our finances had not been able to secure some exceptional resources for the treasury.

Do these results, apparently so disadvantageous for us, proceed from superiority of institutions, or of administrators ? Assuredly not; they have for their sole cause the enormous subventions which are borne by the tax-payers of England, which exceed ours by more than $100,000,000.

Ought we not, also, in comparing the two budgets of 1863, take into account the increase of expenses occasioned by the maintenance on a war footing of our army by land and sea ?

This state of things will soon end, and our finances will return to their normal condition, when we shall not need to envy England her surplus receipts.

Ought we not, also, in this parallel, to take into account the magnificent future which the railways are preparing for us? The sums granted to the railroad companies, in larger and larger proportions since the re-establishment of the empire, have allowed them to establish and work more than 13,000 kilometres, which have contributed to augment individual wealth by more than $6,000,000,000, and the public revenue by over $80,000,000.

The day will come when these railroads, complete and free from all debt, will become the entire property of the state, and will then be able to produce more than enough to pay the interest on the public debt, and to extinguish the capital. Ought we, then, to regret that we have not followed the example of our neighbors, whose government preferred to renounce these immense advantages, and to abandon the construction and possession of the railways to private enterprise ?

We have achieved our task within the limits in which we had proposed to restrain ourselves. The exhibition of the English financial institutions and their working furnishes us one salutary instruction, namely, that these institutions may suit the English people, but are not adapted for ourselves. They wound the principle of equality, so deeply rooted with us. Nearly all of them founded during feudal times, they still preserve its traces and perpetuate power and property in the soil in the same families. Everywhere are met the privileges of birth and of wealth. Sometimes they even affect individual liberty, in cases where it is respected by our laws. Thus, as we have said before, if a tax-payer omits to pay his impost within certain fixed periods, the treasury agent, after some days’ delay, may cause him to be imprisoned, unless the debtor is a member of the House of Lords.

The tax on inheritances is one of the most productive sources of revenue of the state. Real estate, however, is exempt; otherwise this duty would reduce the enormous hereditary fortunes, whose landed revenue is counted by millions.

With regard 10 controlling the administration of the agents of the treasury, it is lawful for it to leave this care to its own employés, or even to absolve them from any verification. If the audit office discovers, in the accounts which are referred to it, ministerial requisitions which are irregular or improper, it is forbidden it to make them known to the sovereign or to Parliament. Its decisions do not become executory unless a court composed of cabinet ministers consent thereto.

How little do these functions resemble your own! No depositary of the public property can escape your control; even the ministers themselves can dispose of no credit upon the treasury without rendering account thereof to you. Your decisions, as soon as they are pronounced, constitute a judgment, and the execution of them is obligatory. In line, every irregularity in the financial acts, as stated in your report to the Emperor, which is printed and distributed to all the members of the senate and of the legislative body. The independence which you enjoy, gentlemen, is also a powerful incentive to display an ever increasing activity in the exercise of your arduous exercise.

The judicial year which has now nearly closed, and the labors of which it is our duty to retrace to you, offers us a new proof of your constant solicitude. You have rendered 294 decisions more than in the preceding year; in all, 2,405. The accounts which you have examined are superior in number by 91 to those upon which you sat in judgment in the year 1864-‘65. This progress is most remarkable in the communal and hospital accounts; nevertheless, to fulfil the task which is imposed upon you, renewed zeal will become necessary, on account of special accounts prepared exceptionally for the operations complement to the session of 1864, by virtue of Article VI of the decree of 27th of January last. These accounts, numbering at least nine hundred, are the result of a transitory measure, and will not be renewed.

The court pronounced, on the 25th August last, before the term prescribed by the decree of 31st May, 1862, its general confirmatory declaration upon the accounts of the session of 1864. It has also pronounced seven general declarations upon accounts of business relating to the government.

The most important of your acts, that which ought to complete your labors, the report to the Emperor, would not have been submitted to your deliberations, but for an event as unfortunate as unexpected. One of the magistrates charged with collecting the materials for this report has been suddenly called away, at the time when he was just prepared, by his conscientious researches, to fulfil this delicate mission.

(Here follows biography of M. Thomas, the deceased.)

After this discourse, the first president ordered, in the name of the court, that the state of the labors of the third quarter of 1866 should be transmitted to the minister of justice, to be by him brought to the knowledge of the Emperor.

Discourse pronounced by Senator Count de Casablanca, imperial attorney general.

(Translation.)

Court of Accounts, Sitting of November 3, 1864.

Gentlemen: At the moment when a new judicial year is commencing, before speaking of the task which it imposes on you, we deem it advisable to cast a rapid glance on the past; we shall there meet with valuable recollections.

The institution of a magistracy intrusted with the care of exercising a severe control over the receipts and expenditure of the state is as ancient in France as the monarchy itself. The functionaries who filled this high mission were originally attached to the person of the King; they walked in his suit, and formed part of his council. The period when their residence was fixed at Paris, and when they formed a distinct court, which preserved its primitive denomination of chamber of accounts, is not known. All that has been ascertained is that it was anterior to the fourteenth century.

The following is contained in the preamble of the letters of declaration of Louis XI, published February 26, 1464:

“The management and police of the common weal of our kingdom consists chiefly in justice and in financial matters, for which matters to be conducted and administered under the monarchy and rule of our Crown, wherefrom they depend and derive, were anciently established two supreme courts, separated one from the other: that is to say, our court of Parliament for the aforesaid justice, and our chamber of accounts for the said finances.”

This chamber had for its first presidents the most considerable personages; among others, Jacques de Bourbon, great-grandson of St. Louis; Gancher de Chatillon, constable; Jean de Trie and Robert Bertrand, marshals of France; Enguemand de Courcy; Waleran de Luxembourg, Count de Saint Pol; Henri de Tally, one of the ancestors of the great minister; Pierre d’Oacole, chancellor of France.

Several kings, especially Philip de Valois, Charles V, Charles VI, Louis XII, attended and took part in its deliberations, and consulted it on the most important questions of government. Thus the publication of the treaty of Bretigny, by which Edward, King of England, renounced all pretensions to the Crown of France, and restored King John to liberty, on payment of a ransom of three millions of golden crowns, took place only in virtue of a decision of this chamber. To it was intrusted the execution of the wills of Charles V and Charles VI.

It registered the marriage contracts of the kings, treaties of peace, the decrees appointing chancellors, keepers of the seal, and high officers of the Crown, the edicts of creation and suppression of offices, of grants of privileges to towns, establishing hospitals and religious foundations, letters of naturalization, of nobility, of creation of estates into dignities.

It received the oaths of allegiance of bishops, and pronounced the sending into possession of their temporalities.

It decided in a sovereign manner concerning all disputed questions relative to public taxations, municipal taxation, and property of which it kept the title deeds in its archives. Nevertheless, its jurisdiction was limited by that of the eleven other chambers of accounts, which were successively instituted in the provinces.

But these great judicial bodies, notwithstanding the splendor which surrounded them, and the extent of their prerogatives, were unable to remedy the defects of the financial system; they had but an insufficient action over the accountants, who not being subjected to rigorous rules for the production of vouchers, easily escaped their control. The consequence was, that when this court, created by the Emperor Napoleon the First, and installed in 1807, by the arch treasurer of the empire, replaced the offices of accounts abolished in 1790, it found in the management of the old depositaries of the finances of the state and of the municipalities an inexplicable confusion, and Immense arrears, which extended to more than half a century.

Invested with less numerous and less brilliant attributions, but better defined than those of its predecessors, free and independent in the exercise of a more real authority, the new court fully justified by its first acts the expectation of its august founder.

To judge in prescribed delays, and without hindering the action of those who had ordered them, the accounts of all those who had been charged to receive and employ the resources of the state, and of the municipalities of which the budgets had been approved by imperial decrees:

To find out in a yearly report addressed to the Emperor all the infringements on the laws and regulations committed in the administration of finances, and all the reforms of which that administration could be susceptible :

Such was the programme expressed by the law of September 16, 1807, and the organic decree of the 28th of the same month.

This programme, so simple in appearance, presented in its execution the most serious obstacles. It was necessary at first to regulate the past, and the task appeared so arduous that it was proposed to the Emperor to cover by a general amnesty all the managements prior to 1789. This measure had been applied several times under the monarchy in similar circumstances. The court observed, with a respectful firmness, how dangerous it would have been to follow that example, to inaugurate the return to order by an excessive indulgence towards negligent or unfaithful accountants. It resolutely accepted the heaviest share of the burden by undertaking to clear former accounts of administrations, leaving to the ministry of finance to liquidate individual managements. Before the expiration of the term which it had fixed at five years, its laborious mission was terminated, and in virtue of its decrees, considerable recoveries had been operated by the treasury.

Nothing could be more remarkable than the first reports of the court to the sovereign, whose inquiring genius never attempted a financial question without sifting and enlightening it. In these reports the court energetically defends its attributions against the heads of the great directions of the empire, who strove to remove their expenditure from its control, or to render it illusory by merely establishing them by accounts, accompanied by their signature. It claims with energy the accounts of the paymasters of the army, of the military divisions and the maritime districts, the communication of which was refused to it. It lays the bases of a new system of accounts, and proves that it is necessary to submit each yearly account to two verifications applied, the former to the management, the latter to the exercise, to unite in their ensemble, and to compare correlative facts, when they are entirely concluded. It requires that the entrance of the funds into the treasury and their outlay should only take place in virtue of regular vouchers, establishing in an incontestable manner the rights of the state and those of the creditors. It has constantly reproduced the expression of the latter desire, until it was satisfied by the decree of September 14, 1822.

Need we prove how much the court has contributed to all the improvements which have been introduced into public accounts ? Is it not in consequence of the requests it has so frequently renewed n its yearly reports; is it not under the presidency of one of its most eminent chiefs,¹ and with the co-operation of several of its members, that were prepared the ordinance of May 31, 1838, and the decree of May 31, 1862? Models of order and perspicuity should have reproduced and classed all the financial regulations applicable to the acts of the different administrations of the empire. To complete this work, one of the most difficult and important of our legislation, nothing remains but to revise the regulations concerning the accounts of each ministerial department, and to reduce them as much as possible to uniform prescriptions. This revival is being prepared at the present moment by a committee, in which you are as largely represented as in the preceding committees. It will soon have completed the particular regulation of the ministry of finance.

After having thus recalled the legislative labors which have reformed and improved your statutes, and which are, to a considerable degree, due to your suggestions, we shall present an abridged statement of your judicial labors accomplished in the year which has just closed; we shall next call your attention to what you have yet to do.

From November 3, 1863, to October 31, last, you have pronounced 2,123 decrees and 6 general declarations of conformity—1,237 decrees concerning the accounts of the treasury, and 866 those of municipalities, charitable institutions, and other public establishments.

The year 1862 has been, like the preceding, the object of a two-fold verification—by the examination of every individual management, and by that of the accounts of ministers. You have established the conformity of the results of your decrees with the corresponding operations comprised in the ministerial accounts. You have not only been attentive to the rigorous observation of the laws and regulations: you have also held the balance equal between the treasury and the interested parties. Whenever a regulation has been overlooked or an error has been committed in the receipt or the employment of the public money to the detriment of the state or of private individuals, the reporting magistrate has proposed, and the court has pronounced, an injunction, either for the performance of the legal prescriptions or for the recovery or reimbursement of whatever has been insufficiently received or too much paid by the accountant. You have even pocketed the latter when he had made a mistake to his own disadvantage. He has only obtained a final discharge after having satisfied all your injunctions, saving in that exceptional case which we shall soon have the occasion of mentioning to you.

We have thought proper to state the number of injunctions mentioned in the decrees which you have given in your last judicial year, and of which the following is the statement:

Accounts of the treasury	7,656
Matter accounts	352
Special accounts	690
Municipalities	5,268
Charitable institutions	2,138
Total	16,104

What proof can be more evident of the unceasing care with which you have proceeded to those long and wearisome investigations ?

As to the importance of the sums which you have verified we shall confine ourselves to mention the treasury accounts and those of the municipal receipts and of the receipts of the works of the city of Paris. The former, which include all the receipts and the expenditure of the state, amounted, for the year 1862, in receipts to two billion one hundred and seventy-eight million nine hundred and seventy-one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three francs, and in expenditure to two billion two hundred and twelve million eight hundred and thirty nine thousand three hundred and twenty-seven francs. The receipts of the city of Paris during the year 1861, carried to the account of the municipal receiver, amounted to the sum of two hundred and one million seven hundred and seventy thousand nine hundred and sixty-six francs; the expenses to two hundred and twenty-six million five hundred and twenty-six thousand and fifty-three francs; the amount of receipts due to the fund of works to two hundred and seventy-nine million fifteen thousand one hundred and fifty-three francs, and that of expenditure to two hundred and seventy-nine million nine hundred and seventeen thousand and twenty-three francs, including the movements of the treasury.

What was the number of documents of which you have been obliged to perform the examination in order to be able to decide with entire knowledge upon these gigantic figures after examining their minutest fractions?

The enumeration has been made of all the papers which were produced in support of the management for 1861, and which were all deposited and registered. The number amounted to fourteen thousand eight hundred and ninety-six. It has resulted from an approximative calculation, but made with the most scrupulous attention by examining several bundles belonging to the different accountants’ offices, that the number of documents contained in each bundle may be reckoned at twelve hundred and sixty. Multiplying by that figure the fourteen thousand eight hundred and ninety-six bundles existing in the office, we find for the year 1861 an approximative total of eighteen million seven hundred and sixty-eight thousand nine hundred and sixty papers.

It is evident that the same result, or nearly the same, will be obtained for the year 1862, when the same elements of appreciation shall have been collected.

The report addressed by the court to the King in 1818 states that the number of papers which served for the control of the year 1817 amounted to seven million five hundred and eighty-one thousand.

The public report of 1848 contains a detailed statement of the bundles concerning the year 1847. The total amounts to nine thousand five hundred and seventy-six, which, multiplied by twelve hundred and sixty, raises the number of papers to twelve million sixty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty.

This difference in the number of vouchers produced for the year 1817, 1847, and 1862 is explained—

By the successive increase of the receipts and of the expenditure of the treasury.

By the increase of the revenues of several municipalities and public establishments, which have become, in the interval, accountable to the court.

And by the control which has been attributed to it over matters pertaining to the State.

These judicial labors, of which persons even strangers to the court may now form an exact idea, were completed in a year, and before the 1st of September, the delay prescribed by article 445 of the imperial decree of May 31, 1862. It was in the solemn sitting of the 13th of August last that you pronounced the general declaration of conformity which sums up all the treasury accounts of 1862, and you have thus given certain bases to the bill giving a definitive regulation of the budget of that same year, a bill which the legislative body will sanction in its next session.

Nevertheless you have still to perform a duty connected with the exercise of one of your principal prerogatives. In this vast financial machinery, which several thousand agents are putting in motion incessantly on the entire surface of the empire, it cannot be expected that acts will always be strictly in conformity with the laws, decrees, and regulations. If the infringement proceeds from the accountants only, you require its being repaired; but if the payment has been made in virtue of a requisition, his personal responsibility is disengaged, and by deciding on his accounts you pronounce his liberation.

As to those who order the payments, they are not placed under your jurisdiction. The organic law of September 16, 1807, has forbidden you to exercise any judicial action over them, lest your control should become an obstacle to administration. But this same law requires you to point out the infringement in the yearly report which you address to the Emperor, and of which a subsequent law—that of April 21, 1832—has ordered the printing and the distribution to all the members of the legislative assemblies.

This is a sanction which has no less power than that of your decrees, and which protects the rights of all. The report brings, moreover, to the knowledge of the Emperor the views of reform and improvement in the different parts of accounts which the court, from the general result of its labors, may think fit to propose.

The project of this report upon the accounts of 1862 has not yet been able to be submitted to your deliberations, but nothing has been neglected to collect its elements, which consist, as you know, of the observations gathered by the reporting magistrates, and admitted provisionally by the chambers. Now the last general accounts and summaries relative to the treasury accounts only reached the court in the course of the months of July and August of the present year. The reporters and the chambers have emulated in zeal to hasten the judgment on them. As soon as it was delivered, the master counsellors delegated by each chamber have collected all the observations referred to in the public report, and have communicated them to the particular committee formed in accordance with article 22 of the law of September 16, 1807. This committee has had several meetings, which have only ceased at the commencement of the vacation period, and which will be immediately resumed. Everything makes us hope that the report will be voted and presented to the Emperor in the course of this month.

With respect to the verifications of a preparatory nature relative to the budget of 1863, your labors are more advanced than those of last year. At the present time you had only examined 152 treasury accounts concerning the year 1862, whereas you have pronounced on 180 similar accounts for 1863.

You are likewise in advance for the accounts of municipalities and public establishments. You have verified 71 more than on the 1st of November, 1863. Such is not the case for matter accounts, the difference in loss being 35.

Thus is established, to the advantage of the present year, a definitive supply of 64 accounts examined, including the accounts of the public treasury.

You may also congratulate yourselves with having, after several years of continual efforts, brought to light the municipal accounts of Algeria, which, at their origin, presented such numerous irregularities.

We feel a lively satisfaction at having no other recommendation to make to the referendars and auditors than to display this year the same zeal and the same activity as during the preceding year.

Discourse pronounced by Senator Count de Casabianca, imperial attorney general.

(Translation).

Court of Accounts, Sitting of November 3, 1865.

Gentlemen: Last year, at the same time, on presenting you the statement of your labors we recalled to you the origin of our institution, as also the successive improvements introduced into the system of public accounts, due in a great measure to your co-operation, and often even to your suggestion. We thus showed that you had completely realized the conception of the Emperor Napoleon I, your immortal founder, by a severe control, embracing, in their totality and in their innumerable details all the receipts and all the expenditure of the state, of the municipalities, of charitable institutions, and leaving, nevertheless, entire freedom to administrative action. We purpose to-day to display still further the importance of your attributions and of your acts, to compare them to those of the court of accounts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, which first gave Europe the example of order and religious respect of every engagement connected with the management of finances, the principal elements of her prosperity and greatness. We shall establish this parallel upon official documents only.

That court was instituted under the denomination of audit office during the reign of George III, in 1785. It consists, at present, of a president and three commissioners, or auditors, assisted by 113 officers, a number about equal to that of the members of our court. The president and the commissioners alone are named for life. Appointed by letters patent of the sovereign, they can only be dismissed on a formal request addressed simultaneously to the Crown by both houses of Parliament. In order better to secure the independence of these magistrates, their salary, like that of the ordinary judges, is raised from the consolidated fund, which is not subject to the yearly vote of the legislature, and which includes the interest of the national debt, the civil list, as well as several other permanent expenses unsusceptible of reduction.

The inferior officers attached to the court may, on the contrary, be dismissed. The House of Commons votes every year the credit for the payment of their salaries.

Auditors named by the colonial secretary of state are, moreover, intrusted with the examination of accounts in such of those colonies as, having no legislative assembly, are dependent on the government of the mother country.

Above the audit office sits, with the authority of a supreme tribunal, the board of treasury, which consists of the first lord, who is the head of the cabinet, of the chancellor of the exchequer, of the postmaster general, of the three junior lords, who are members of Parliament, and of two assistant secretaries.

The original constitution of the audit office presented serious imperfections and numerous deficiences. It had only partly done away with the obsolete forms established in barbarous ages, when accounts, written in Roman figures, were drawn up in a language mingled with Saxon and Latin words, and were controlled by means of cuttings made on pieces of wood brought together, and known by the name of tallies. These strange forms were preserved in some exchequer offices as late as 1834. No term was assigned either to the reporters or the judges. Their attributions being ill-defined excluded from their control some of the most important public services, particularly those of war and of the navy. In 1806 the ministry was compelled to declare to Parliament that expenses amounting to the enormous sum of thirteen billions three hundred and fifty millions had remained without being examined. The war and navy budgets since 1782, the costs of the expeditions to Holland and Egypt, the subsidies paid to foreign armies had never been the object of any inquiry. It is but fair to observe that arrears extending to a not less remote period existed also in France at the same time, and that, in order to fill them up, your predecessors, when they first entered on their duties, were obliged during five consecutive years to unite their efforts to those of the agents of finance department.

The British Parliament was deeply moved by these disclosures. A state of things which put in jeopardy at the same time the interests of the treasury and those of accountants required a speedy and energetic remedy. An act of July 22, 1806, raised the number of commissioners to ten, empowered them to be assisted by all the clerks whose co-operation might be useful to them, increased their powers, extended their jurisdiction, and decided that in future the verification of all accounts should take place in the year immediately following. Nevertheless experience proved that these measures were incomplete. In 1831 fresh abuses were discovered in the administration of the navy. For several years considerable sums voted by Parliament had been diverted from their destination. An act of William IV, published on the 1st of June, 1832, on the motion of the ministers and with assent of both houses, placed the navy accounts under the immediate control of the audit office.

The commissioners, members of that court, were charged to proceed yearly to the examination of these accounts in the offices of the department itself, to state the employment and the amount of expenses, by comparing the vouchers with the registers, and to address detailed reports to the treasury, which was to communicate them to Parliament. These regulations were applied to the administration of the war office by an act of August 6, 1846, and to those of the customs, the post office, and the house revenue by another act of August 6, 1861, which thus fixed the jurisdiction of the audit office, and extended it to the principal branches of the public service. Such is the legislation which regulates this court. It remains for us to define its attributions; this we shall do soon by comparing them to those with which you are yourselves invested.

The first observation which is suggested to us by the parallel between the British and French courts of accounts refers to the composition of their members, especially as concerns the life duration of their functions. As we have already said, the president of the audit office and the three commissioners who co-operate in the judgments are alone appointed for life The other officers, inspectors, or examiners, intrusted with the task of examining and verifying accounts and the wording of reports, are appointed by the treasury, or the three commissioners, who have the power to dismiss them. Some of these functionaries are only temporary. Their number varies according to the requirements of the control. In France, on the contrary, as every one knows, security against dismissal protects not only the presidents and master counsellors, but also our eighty-four referendary counsellors, who have to perform a task similar to that of the British examiners. This essential difference is explained by the circumstances which attended the creation of the two courts.

When, in the beginning of the present century, the commander-in-chief of the victorious armies of Italy and Egypt was called, with the title of First Consul, to the supreme direction of public affairs, he found the finances in a frightful disorder. The funds of the state were given over to plunder; the treasury, laden with an enormous debt, notwithstanding the recent suppression of assignats, contained only 400,000 francs in its coffers, while those of Great Britain were overflowing with cash. The First Consul applied all the resources of his genius to supply France with a financial system which might enable her to struggle with her rival with the power not only of arms but of capital. After having employed several years to fix the basis and the collecting of taxes, to render as safe as rapid a circulation of the sums received on account of the State, he felt the necessity, in order to put a term to the misappropriation and irregular employment of the public money, of submitting every accountant to an unceasing and rigorous control. He wished, at the same time, that all abuses in the management of finances should be annually pointed out to him, with such reforms as practice should have shown to be advantageous. This twofold mission could only be performed by a body enjoying a great authority and an absolute independence. It was with this view that, when he became Emperor, he created, in 1807, the court of accounts, which he surrounded with all the prestige of a supreme court, and of which he declared the members appointed for life. This guarantee, acknowledged as necessary for judges, was not less so for reporting counsellors, whose duty was to call the attention of the court to all infringements on the laws and regulations committed by those who ordered the payments, without even excluding the acts of ministers themselves. The purpose which the Emperor had in view (the restoration of the finances) was ere long attained. A few years had hardly elapsed when, already under a direction no less able than energetic, France recovered from her disasters wealthy and prosperous, was able to provide for all the wants of the public service with the same punctuality as England, and without being obliged, as the latter, to have recourse to loans.

The Duke of Gaëte, in presenting to the Emperor, on the 30th April, 1811, the accounts of the administration of finances, expressed himself as follows: “The financial years 1806, 1807, 1808, and 1809 are paid, or have sufficient means to cover all their expenses. I do not fear to say that history does not offer an epoch in which the finances of a great empire were in so prosperous a state. Your Majesty’s treasury is always in abundance, it pays all its expenses to the day, and is in want of no immediate credit for its receipts.” It results from this report that a sum of more than five hundred millions had been devoted in four years to extraordinary public works, without any increased taxation or augmentation of the national debt, and yet it is to be remarked, that out of a budget which, until 1811, never amounted to a billion, the war and navy department took every year more than five hundred millions. The sums proceeding from contribution raised in foreign countries were employed only for the maintenance of armies outside the French territory. Thus the government had been able with the sole revenues of the empire not only to balance the budgets, but even to close them all with a surplus.

The court of accounts had contributed, in the measure assigned to it by the organic law of 1807, to this great work—one of the most admirable of a reign so fruiful in wonders.

Let us now return to a more remote period; let us see what was the situation of the finances of Great Britain when the audit office was instituted in 1785.

The prodigious development of industry and commerce had considerably increased both public wealth and private fortunes; the credit of the state had become immense, since a solemn declaration of parliament in 1706 had placed all engagements contracted by the Crown, with the concurrence of both houses, under the guarantee of national faith. These engagements had always been scrupulously fulfilled, while in France the creditors of the monarchy beheld at frequent intervals their claims arbitrarily reduced, or the payment of them suspended. If the conversion of rents had been accomplished in London in 1717, 1729, and 1755, and if the interest of the national debt had been gradually reduced from six per cent. to three per cent., it was with the option left to the bearers of stock to have their capital refunded entire. A few of them accepted this offer. A sum of eighty-seven millions five hundred thousand francs enabled the exchequer to satisfy all the demands of reimbursement, and it obtained that sum without any trouble by means of a loan at three per cent.

Later on, to meet the expenses of the American war, England obtained more than three billions from a new issue of stock, at a time near that when the impossibility of covering a deficit of fifty-six millions was one of the principal causes of the overthrow of the French monarchy.

One can understand that in such circumstances the British government did not feel the want of taking, for the control of public receipts and expenses, the same precautions which the Emperor Napoleon the First had taken, after the revolutionary anarchy and the dilapidations that had become so common under the directory.

Such, no doubt, was the motive why the audit office has not obtained for all its acts the same authority as our courts. Also it has been said, not without some foundation, that it was less a real court than an examining office destined to prepare the supreme decisions of the court of treasury. There exists, indeed, a striking contrast between the powers exercised by the commissioners of the audit office, when they proceed to inquire into affairs, and those which are assigned to them as judges. In the former case, they have the right of summoning accountants before them, of calling and questioning under oath all persons whose depositions may enlighten their deliberations, of condemning to fines, and even imprisonment, such as do not appear, or refuse to answer. We have already said that they have free access to government offices, both those of the ministers and all great public administrations. The act of August 6, 1861, imposes on administrators the obligation of presenting them on a day fixed beforehand, a yearly account indicating by chapters the sums which Parliament has allotted to each special service, and the use which has been made of them. They are bound to produce before the commissioners all the vouchers and documents of which the communication is required of them. The commissioners follow, day by day, on the registers, all the operations which may lead them to discover the excess of expenditure over the credits allotted by Parliament. They must lay their report before this court, at the latest, on the first of July which follows the close of the financial year, fixed on the 31st of March. This report, after having been discussed and approved by the audit office, is transmitted to the treasury, which communicates it to the House of Commons.

Independent of the treasury as long as they inquire, the commissioners of the audit office cease to be so in almost every case when they judge.

And, first, it is the treasury which determines the extent of their jurisdiction with respect to persons charged with the public receipts and expenses, whose accounts have not been referred to them by a formal act emanating from the House of Commons. In default of this special designation, the treasury itself examines the management of its accountants, unless it delegates this task to the commissioners of the audit office, which it generally does. It has, moreover, an exorbitant right, which it has possessed from time immemorial, and which has never been contested—the right of dispensing accountants from all verifications.

As to the judgments pronounced by the commissioners of the audit office, we must distinguish between preparatory judgments delivered only for inquiry, and final judgments.

Preparatory judgments cannot be appealed against; they have the authority of a thing judged; for, in this respect, the audit office knows no other hindrance than the enactments of the statutes on which its organization reposes.

Definitive judgments are of two kinds: they pronounce the discharge of accountants, or they declare them to be debtors. The former are pronounced without appeal; but in a country like England, where the deep respect for institutions allows even vain formalities to submit when they have had the sanction of ages, these judgments must be validated in the following manner: they are transmitted to the treasury; at the top of the account an approbation is inscribed in the form of a declaration; three of the lords, members of the court, affix their signatures thereto; they are read in special sittings, which are held every year in January and July, and at which the president and the four commissioners of the audit office are present; this declaration is either presented to the chancellor of the exchequer, who also signs it, and then only the accountant is sheltered against all prosecution. If, on the contrary, the judgment rejects the articles of expenditure, the interested party has the right to appeal to the court of treasury, which can set aside the decision come to in the first instance, and of which the decree closes the suit.

Such are the chief attributions of the audit office. In comparing them with yours, the first thing that strikes us is a singular anomaly in the powers conferred on it. Sometimes the audit office has rights which you have not. It penetrates into the offices of the ministers, and of the general directions; it examines their registers; it proceeds to the minutest investigations, even before the closing of accounts; it has the right of inquiry. Sometimes it is only the delegate of the treasury, which names and revokes all its members, with the exception of the president and the three commissioners; which increases or diminishes the number of those answerable to it; sanctions all its decisions, and reforms them in many cases. Now, the treasury is only a fraction of the ministry in a government in which all the ministers are bound together by the strictest solidarity. The consequence is, that dispensers of the state money, of which the employment is only examined by their own mandataries, the ministers, are their own judges. It is true, that the House of Commons, which allots them this money, and distributes it between the different departments, exercises a high control over all ministerial acts; but the isolated control of legislative assemblies is necessarily incomplete, because it can never bear on details. Besides, that of the House of Commons is but partial; this house does not vote the consolidated fund, which, in 1863, exceeded the figure of seven hundred and fifty millions; it does not regulate realized budgets.

Why do these institutions, in which administrative functions are often confounded with judicial functions, maintain themselves in Great Britain? Because those ministers, those lords of the treasury, are the chiefs of a powerful and venerated oligarchy, almost always possessors of an immense territorial fortune fixed on their families, whose ancient interests have never ceased to be blended with those of the state. The confidence which they inspire, even to their political adversaries, is justified by the ever-increasing prosperity and the profound security which England enjoys under their administration. Nevertheless, had we not determined to avoid all irritating comparisons, it would be easy for us to prove that this system of accounts has cost our neighbors several hundreds of millions turned aside from the public coffers, without there having been any possibility of following the traces of these deviations, or discovering their authors; and that, even quite recently, depositaries of public moneys have been able to keep them for many years, and to employ them for their own purposes. These abuses have entirely ceased in France since the law of September 16, 1807, has appointed you the guardians of the fortunes of the state. Your jurisdiction is neither undetermined nor variable, like that of the audit office. All the agents of the treasury indistinctly, receivers and payers, are bound to lay their accounts before you twice a year at fixed periods; the documents which they have to produce in support of every article of receipts and expenditure—the formalities imposed on them—afford the mathematical certainty that they have received the total produce of taxation, and that they have only disposed of them in favor of the proper claimants. You are therefore not obliged, like the commissioners of the audit office, to make up for the insufficiency of written proofs by the verbal explanations of accountants, and the often deceitful declarations of witnesses. If you are unable to hinder government authorities in their action, or to compel them to admit you into their affairs, or to communicate their registers, you appreciate their acts with the independence of a sovereign court which depends on the law alone. Your decrees, to be enforced, require no other sanction than that which you give them yourselves. They are assailable only before the council of state by contentious forms, and only for excess of power, or violation of the law. If it is your duty to discharge accountants for irregular payments effected in virtue of formal requisitions of the orderers of payment, you direct attention to these infringements in the annual report which you address to the Emperor, and which is distributed to all the members of the legislative assemblies.

You do not confine yourselves, like the members of the audit office, to examining individual questions; each minister is obliged to present you the account of the receipts and expenses of his department, and the minister of finance, a general account, comprising every fact relating to the financial administration of the empire. You assure yourselves of the correctness of these accounts by a decisive test. You only examine them after having decided on those of the accountants; you establish whether a perfect agreement exists between the partial results of your decrees and the sums stated in the ministerial accounts Then only you pronounce, in a solemn sitting, your general declaration of conformity, which enables the legislative body to vote, with perfect knowledge of the case, the final regulation of the budget.

Your control extends also to the material riches accumulated in our naval arsenals, in the war stores, and in all the industrial establishments belonging to the State; it is also exercised over the finances of the municipalities and charitable institutions of which the revenue exceeds thirty thousand francs; the finances of those the revenue of which is inferior, are regulated by the councils of prefecture; but you decide, by way of appeal, in the recourses which interested parties make before you against the decisions of those councils.

Never, in any country, under any government, was the management of public money and of the movable property of the state surrounded with more solid guarantees.

The incontestable superiority of our institution, which several decrees have improved while respecting the basis of the law of September 16, 1807, will be displayed still more evidently by the statement of your numerous labors.

We shall only present you with a concise summary of those accomplished in the course of the past judicial year.

You have pronounced, from November 3, 1864, to October 31, 1865, 2,131 decrees and 7 general declarations of conformity; 1,157 decrees concerning the treasury accounts, and 603 concerning those of municipalities and public establishments. You have examined, to the minutest fractions, the receipts and expenditure of the year 1863, which amounted to four billions and a half. Among the municipal accounts which you have examined are those of the municipal receipt and exchequer of the Paris works, the total receipt and expenditure of which amount to the sum of nine hundred millions, including the treasury operations. You have also controlled the accounts of the different ministerial departments. All these united labors required the examining of more than eighteen millions of vouchers. In the solemn sitting of August 18 last you pronounced your general declaration of conformity on the financial year of 1863, thus anticipating the term fixed for the 1st of September by the decree of May 31, 1862.

All the preparatory elements for the report which you have to address to the Emperor on the said accounts have been already collected and classed by the master counsellors delegated by each Chamber. They have been laid before the special committee instituted in conformity with the 22d article of the organic law of 1807. This committee met several times before the opening of the vacations. It is about to resume its labors, and, without doubt, it will be able to present you with the final project before the expiration of the delay which was recently fixed for the 1st of December, by agreement between the minister of finance and the court.

In comparing the ensemble of these labors with those of the preceding year, we may be allowed to declare that you have continued to display the same zeal and the same activity. The number of accounts examined between November 3, 1864, and October 31, 1865, exceeds that of the previous year by 57.

We should have wished to have been able to lay also before you the statement of the labors of the audit office during the same period. We have searched for this document in vain, and we have reason to believe that if it exists it has not been made public. We have been even unable to ascertain the number of the accountants answerable to the audit office. We are aware, however, that the accounts of the treasury are the only ones deferred to it; its jurisdiction does not extend to the receivers of local taxes, so numerous in England, and forming a second budget of which the figure exceeds seven hundred millions. We are therefore justified in saying that its examinations are far from having the same importance as yours.

Thus our system of accounts and the organization of the court have to fear no comparison with the similar institutions of Great Britain.

1. The state only contributes to the repair of religious edifices the clergy being paid with the revenues of their livings, and the produce of tithes and of public works.
1. The Marquis d’Audiffret, senator, honorary president of chamber, reporter of the two committees which prepared the projets of this ordinance and of this decree.