THE IMPERIAL SYSTEM 87
practice. As there was no budget of specific votes or sanctions for each of the services the audit and account was simply concerned with noting whether record was kept of all the money that was received and paid through the public treasury. It is evident that in the absence of an appropriation budget the primary object of all State accounts and audit, namely check on the spending authority to abide by the sanction, was never achieved. The Provincial Governments, extravagant in their demands, were also careless in the matter of expenditure. So long as the Government of India remained without an appropriation budget and a centralized system of audit and account, it continued to be only a titular authority in the matter of financial control, and the provinces, though by law the weakest of authorities in financial matters, were really the masters of the situation.
To its inability to curb the extravagant habits of the provincial authorities generated by a financial irresponsibility on the part of the Provincial Governments and inefficiency on the part of the Central Government must be added the general spirit of apathy which marked the Executive Council of the Government of India in matters of finance. While it was true that nothing could be spent from the revenues of India without the specific vote of the Executive Council, it does not appear that the Council from its way of working could have taken any keen interest in promoting economy in expenditure. The Council acted collectively, and there was no distribution of executive work among the different members which composed it. With the exception of the Department of War and Legislation the whole work of the Government was brought before the Governor-General and his Councillors. As a result of its collective working
“every case actually passed through the hands of each member of the Council, circulating at a snail’s pace in little mahogany boxes from one Councillor’s house to another.” [1]
Under such a system nobody was a Chancellor of the Exchequer to urge economy, because everybody was supposed to be one. The result was that finance in being everybody’s business
1 W. W. Hunter, Life of Mayo, Vol. I, p. 190.