th
this interest. Is this collusion from its want of rigor and strictness
and great regularity of form? The reverse is true. They have in the
Exchequer brought rigor and formalism to their ultimate perfection. The
process against accountants is so rigorous, and in a manner so unjust,
that correctives must from time to time be applied to it. These
correctives being discretionary, upon the case, and generally remitted
by the Barons to the Lords of the Treasury, as the test judges of the
reasons for respite, hearings are had, delays are produced, and thus the
extreme of rigor in office (as usual in all human affairs) leads to the
extreme of laxity. What with the interested delay of the officer, the
ill-conceived exactness of the court, the applications for dispensations
from that exactness, the revival of rigorous process after the
expiration of the time, and the new rigors producing new applications
and new enlargements of time, such delays happen in the public accounts
that they can scarcely ever be closed.

Besides, Sir, they have a rule in the Exchequer, which, I believe, they
have founded upon a very ancient statute, that of the 51st of Henry the
Third, by which it is provided, that, "when a sheriff or bailiff hath
begun his account, none other shall be received to account, until he
that was first appointed hath clearly accounted, and that the sum has
been received."[38] Whether this clause of that statute be the ground of
that absurd practice I am not quite able to ascertain. But it has very
generally prevailed, though I am told that of late they have began to
relax from it. In consequence of forms adverse to substantial account,
we have a long succession of paymasters and their representatives who
have never been admitted to account, although perfectly ready to do so.

As the extent of our wars has scattered the accountants under the
paymaster into every part of the globe, the grand and sure paymaster,
Death, in all his shapes, calls these accountants to another reckoning.
Death, indeed, domineers over everything but the forms of the Exchequer.
Over these he has no power. They are impassive and immortal. The audit
of the Exchequer, more severe than the audit to which the accountants
are gone, demands proofs which in the nature of things are difficult,
sometimes impossible, to be had. In this respect, too, rigor, as usual,
defeats itself. Then the Exchequer never gives a particular receipt, or
clears a man of his ac