MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, he rose to ask the right hon. Member for Radnor (Sir George Lewis) to inform the House why the Commissioners of Audit Account of the Expenditure on the Army and Navy in the year ending the 31st of March, 1856, was £1,156,509 more than the Treasury Account of the said Expenditure presented to this House? There was £6,000,000 sterling voted on the credit of accounts furnished by the Treasury, but the statement of expenditure only amounted to £4,200,000. He had applied to the Treasury for information on this point, but had been unable to obtain any satisfactory answer. It might be said that the accounts were furnished to the Audit Commissioners; but the accounts of the Treasury were not sent to the Audit Commission for seven or eight months after they were made up, and the report of the Audit was not supplied to the House of Commons for several months after that. The course of proceeding in this respect was most unsatisfactory—they voted away the money of the public without having any account of the mode in which it had been expended. He would call the attention of the right hon. Baronet to the fact that in the year alluded to £1,140,000 had been expended without the House having any knowledge of the mode and objects for which it had been 259 paid—and what was still more extraordinary was, that neither the right hon. Baronet nor any Member of the Government appeared to have discovered the fact. He wished to impress upon the Government the necessity of making arrangements for furnishing the House with an accurate account of the public expenditure. To such knowledge the House was in every way entitled, and if more care were devoted to the communication of it the discrepancies to which he had called attention would not have occurred.
SIR GEORGE LEWISsaid, he hoped he should not be considered as interfering with the duties of the Secretary of the Treasury in answering the question which had just been proposed. His hon. Friend (Mr. Williams) seemed to have thought that as he was responsible for the administration of the finances for the year in question, it was his duty to answer the question; but the matter was so simple that it was immaterial from which side of the House the answer was given. It was impossible that the two sums to which the hon. Gentleman had referred, should coincide in any year. If any previous year were referred to, and the corresponding returns were examined, it would always be found that there was a material difference between the two sums, and the case would be the same in any future year. The reason was, that one was the account of the issues from the Exchequer during the year, the other the appropriation account of the expenditure for the year, made about a year and a half afterwards, when accounts from foreign stations have been received, and when the expenditure for the Army and the Navy has become precisely known—the Treasury account was a cash account, simply exhibiting the expenses of the Army and Navy during the year, while part of the issue might be in respect of the expenses of the previous year. If he might employ a familiar illustration, he would call attention to the fact that in estimating the expenditure of any private family they would look, not merely to the payments made within the year, but to the expenditure incurred within the year, and which, however well regulated the family, would not be defrayed till the following year. It was impossible, therefore, that the two sums to which the hon. Member referred could ever coincide.
§ SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBYsaid, he thought the House might learn from the statement of the right hon. Gentleman 260 what sort of Returns were laid before them. The fact was, that the Treasury accounts, so far as they related to the expenditure, did not give the real expenditure of the year—they gave it up to the time they were made—but, if any one wished to know the exact sum, he must wait twelve or fifteen months. The quarterly accounts of expenditure were really of no value as showing what was the actual expenditure for that period, and the House would do well not to rely too much upon them.