Note 63 — LUNÆ, 14° DIE JUNII, 1784.

By an act of Parliament, the Directors of the East India Company are restrained from acceptance of bills drawn, from India, beyond a certain amount, without the consent of the Commissioners of the Treasury. The late House of Commons, finding bills to an immense amount drawn upon that body by their servants abroad, and knowing their circumstances to be exceedingly doubtful, came to a resolution providently, cautioning the Lords of the Treasury against the acceptance of these bills, until the House should otherwise direct. The Court Lords then took occasion to declare against the resolution as illegal, by the Commons undertaking to direct in the execution of a trust created by act of Parliament. The House, justly alarmed at this resolution, which went to the destruction of the whole of its superintending capacity, and particularly in matters relative to its own province of money, directed a committee to search the journals, and they found a regular series of precedents, commencing from the remotest of those records, and carried on to that day, by which it appeared that the House interfered, by an authoritative advice and admonition, upon every act of executive government without exception, and in many much stronger cases than that which the Lords thought proper to quarrel with.