All the accounts which could
answer any Parliamentary end were refused, or postponed by previous
questions. Every idea of prevention was rejected, as conveying an
improper suspicion of the Ministers of the Crown.
When every leading account had been refused, many others were
granted with sufficient facility.
But with great candour also, the House was informed, that hardly any
of them could be ready until the next session; some of them perhaps
not so soon. But, in order firmly to establish the precedent of
PAYMENT PREVIOUS TO ACCOUNT, and to form it into a settled rule of
the House, the god in the machine was brought down, nothing less
than the wonder-working LAW OF PARLIAMENT. It was alleged, that it
is the law of Parliament, when any demand comes from the Crown, that
the House must go immediately into the Committee of Supply; in which
Committee it was allowed, that the production and examination of
accounts would be quite proper and regular. It was therefore
carried that they should go into the Committee without delay, and
without accounts, in order to examine with great order and
regularity things that could not possibly come before them.
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