1821 April 25

First Lines

Constitutional Finances

Law concerning Finance — Financial Department of Government

The financial department is that

by which is performed the extraction

custody and expenditure of such money and money's worth as is

employed or professed to be employed in the public service: viz. in

the several other departments — in this and the several

other branches of the public service.

Whatsoever be the public function by the exercise of which service is

rendered or pretended

to be rendered to the public, or to any part of it,

money, or money's worth, or both, are, in a quantity more or less

considerable, necessary to be employed and disbursed on the occasion

of its being rendered: the financial branch is thus a branch which

intertwines itself and runs through the several

other branches of the public service.

This branch of Government has for its proper end that

branch of good economy which consists of appropriate

frugality.

In every department of the public service, good management has two perfectly

distinguishable branches: the first peculiar to itself being correspondent

to the particular nature of the service: the other common to it with all

the others: this universally applying branch of good management is

frugality.

Considered in another point of view the peculiar and

characteristic branch here spoken of may be stiled the positive

branch: this, which is common to all, the negative branch. The dictates of

frugality are conformed to in so far as, without preponderant prejudice to

good management in other respects, money and money's worth is avoided

to be disbursed or consumed.