THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM. 81 



The Governors were expected to send to the Colonial Office 

 quarterly, or if that were impossible, yearly accounts of the ex- 

 penditure under the last head. 1 By this means any financial 

 excesses or improper payments might be checked, for the 

 Treasury, when the bills were presented for payment, appealed 

 first for the advice of the Colonial Office. This was one of the 

 reasons why the irregularities of communication were con- 

 sidered so regrettable. 2 The Secretary of State in a despatch 

 of 1812 dealt with the whole financial position very severely. 

 " Although," he wrote, " bills have been presented for payment 

 dated the nth March, 1811, I have received from you no in- 

 formation in regard to any payments which have been made in 

 the Colony subsequently to 3Oth September, 1810. . . . From 

 that period . . . notwithstanding the accounts you then trans- 

 mitted of the flourishing state of the Colony, the expenditure 

 has continued to increase. 



" In giving my opinion to the Lords Commissioners of the 

 Treasury that the bills which had been presented for payment 

 should be accepted, I have been governed solely by a consider- 

 ation of the hardship which individuals would sustain and the 

 additional expense to which Government might be eventually 

 liable had they been protested." 3 



No Secretary of State was likely to go further than this. 

 Rebuke and reproach, and as a last resort perhaps recall, were the 

 only weapons of financial control so long as the Governor was 

 honest and the calls on the Treasury not absurdly extravagant. 

 " It is impossible," wrote the Minister in the despatch just 

 quoted, "for me to point out what expenses have been un- 

 necessarily incurred, or in the execution of what services re- 

 trenchments might have been made." He could only enjoin 

 rigid economy in general terms, and urge that in undertaking 

 public work " your first object should be to make the colonial 

 revenue applicable to that part of the expenditure of the 

 Colony which now falls so heavily upon the Treasury of this 

 country ". 4 Nor were such works to be commenced " without 



1 D. 20, 4th May, 1812. Liverpool to Macquarie. R.O., MS. a Ibid.. 



3 Ibid. The despatch is signed by Lord Liverpool, then Secretary of State 

 for War and the Colonies, but was probably written by Robert Peel, then beginning 

 his illustrious career as Under-Secretary. 



4 D. 21, sth May, 1812. R.O., MS. 



6 



