Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/747

Rh, the Treasury authorizes the Inland Revenue and Customs officials to levy the modified rates in a manner that seems to them most expedient.

Any surplus of income over expenditure for any year is devoted to the diminution of the public debt, but so carefully and with such system is the business of collecting and of its expending revenue conducted by the British Government, that except under very unusual conditions, the two accounts, separately aggregating at present about $450,000,000 per annum, balance each other with almost marvelous closeness. Thus, for the fiscal year 1893-’94, a period of great fiscal disturbance and trade depression, the revenue collected and expended was within one half of one per cent, in a total of $450,000,000, of the budget estimate, while the amount of revenue paid out to meet expenditures was about one quarter of one per cent less than the estimates; the whole constituting a most striking testimonial, first, of the solidity of the British financial system, and, secondly, of the great sagacity and experience of the able permanent officials on whom the financial administration of the greatest empire and government of the world mainly depends.

Recognizing also that a rigorous supervision of the governmental estimates and warrant for expenditures by the House of Commons is not possible under the circumstances of parliamentary life, an audit department of the civil service has been created, whose business it is to examine the accounts and vouchers of the expenditures in every branch of the public service; and in addition to this, the House of Commons at every session appoints a public accounts committee of its members, consisting of experienced business men, whose duty is to supervise the work of the audit department. Under such a system extravagance, not to speak of peculations, in respect to the public funds is impossible; and general recognition of this fact goes far to explain why the House, irrespective of any political differences of its members, readily grants the sums of money asked by the existing ministry.

There is another feature of the parliamentary government of Great Britain which is well worthy of serious attention on the part of the American public and its representative law makers; and that is, that by a standing order of the House of Commons no member of the House, unless he is charged with the administration of a department, and therefore with the duty of framing the fiscal estimates of such department, can, however eminent, influential, and capable he may be, on his own authority propose in Parliament to grant any sum of public money, however small, to any object, however deserving. The theory of this is, that the Government, which is the ministry in power, is entirely