"Proper Trust of Liberty": economical reform, the English constitution and the protections of accounting during the American War of Independence, The

Accounting History,  Feb 2008  by Funnell, Warwick

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4. For a discussion of the 'dignified' and the 'efficient' parts of the English Constitution see Dicey (1926).

5. For a detailed list of the various officers who depended upon the King for their maintenance (de procurationibus) see Liber Niger Scoccarti (Bfock Book of the Exchequer) cited in Stephenson and Marcham (1937, pp.65-70).

6. After a request for additional funding in 1760, a consequence of the Seven Years War then in progress, this opportunity again arose in 1777 during the War of Independence.

7 Although the term "civil service" was used in the late eighteenth century, Wright argues it was only with the appearance of pubhc offices with uniform conditions of service and appointment from the mid-nineteenth century that the civil service began to assume its modern form (Wright, 1969, pp.xxiii-xxiv; Chester, 1981, Preface; Report from the Commissioners on Fees and Gratuities, BPP, 1806, VII, p.51). Cohen (1965, pp.47,51) suggests that it was the introduction of a system of audit in the late eighteenth century to provide regular information to parhament that was the 'necessary prelude' to the development of the modern civil service.

8. The Paymaster General, a senior government official first appointed in 1662, was the army's banker. He received from the Exchequer money voted by government for military purposes and used this to meet military expenditures.

9. Lord North was Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1775 and 1782.

10. Not until the sunender of General Cornwalhs and his army to the American forces in October 1781 did the government finally grasp that the war was effectively over for the English. On 27 February 1782, with the public alienated from Lord North's administration by their incompetent mihtary and financial management of war, a motion was passed in the House of Commons to end the war and to seek peace (Keir, 1934, p.368; Plumb, 1%3, p.137).

11. On the 20 March 1782 Lord North resigned as prime minister and was replaced by Lord Rockingham on 27 March, after 16 years in opposition. He held office very briefly until his death on 1 July 1782, when he was replaced until February 1783 by Lord Shelburne, a favourite of the king, who held government for three brief months before being replaced by the Fox-North coalition with the Duke of Portland as Prime Minister, whose grasp on government was to be similarly tenuous when it was dismissed in December 1783 in favour of William Pitt. He remained in office until 1804 (Lucas 1913, pp.143,154; Keir, 1934, p.374; Binney, 1958, pp.266-8).

12. Irrespective of Burke's dismissal of patronage as a constitutional evil, Foord (1947, p.484) and Harling (19%, p. 15) have suggested that at a time when governments were weak it may have been that the use of patronage to buy influence provided the only sure means available to governments to secure the majorities that they needed in parliament to implement their policies Unfortunately, complained Horace Walpole (1717-97), George III had used the patronage available to him to "buy dear the most worthless" (Hodgart, 1963, p.235). In the absence of strong political parties that could discipline their members to ensure that they supported government decisions, it was accepted by even the most radical critics of Lord North's Government and of George III that the use of patronage, whether the awarding of profitable offices, titles or contracts to supply the army and navy, provided the means by which some certainty could be injected into the business of government.