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He was then, and he for some years previously had been, Treasurer of the County of Berkshire, Massachusetts. An accusation of a very serious nature was brought against him. He was charged with having applied the public funds to his own use, and with having falsified entries in his books in order to cover up his malversations. It is difficult to get at the exact truth in the matter. Mr.
He was still more troubled when the estates demanded that the deputies, under the title of reformers, should traverse the provinces as a check upon the malversations of the royal officials, and that twenty- eight delegates, chosen from amongst the three orders, four prelates, twelve knights, and twelve burgesses, should be constantly placed near the king's person, "with power to do and order everything in the kingdom, just like the king himself, as well for the purpose of appointing and removing public officers as for other matters."
Then there was the story that he frightened the Kaiser into giving his consent to the truce by proving to him that the fortresses upon which he relied were not in good defensible condition, his commissaries having placed the funds in their pockets that should have been devoted to the purchase of stores, a story that wears a very probable air, in view of the discovery subsequently made of the malversations of some of the highest persons at Vienna, and which had much to do with the suicide of the Minister of Finance.
He had already ruined and lost the ancient Colony of Acadia, through his defrauds and malversations as Chief Commissary of the Army, and instead of trial and punishment, had lately been exalted to the higher and still more important office of Royal Intendant of New France.
The malversations of public functionaries are tolerated so long as they do not directly touch the higher powers. Officials of every degree hold out their hands for a present. The Government rather encourages the system than the reverse. It is just so much knocked off the salaries.
However gross their blunders, or glaring their malversations, they are secure from censure; because to punish them would be to say that they had erred, and to say that they had erred would be to impeach the infallibility of the Pontifical Government. A treasurer who enriches himself and robs the exchequer may be promoted to the cardinalate, but cannot be censured.
Besides Mr Warner, many other ministers, who had taken refuge in foreign countries, were called home, and it began openly to be talked that King James would to a surety be set aside, on account of his malversations in the kingly office in England, and the even-down course he was pursuing there, as in Scotland, to abolish all property that the subjects had in the ancient laws and charters of the realm.
"Nothing but deceit is lurking in the Spanish proposals," he said. "Every man here wonders that the English government does not comprehend these malversations. Truly the affair is not to be made straight by new propositions, but by a vigorous resolution of his Majesty.
The equites were not only left in possession of the tribunals, but their power as jurymen was considerably increased, partly by a stricter ordinance regarding the standing commission especially important to the merchants as to extortions on the part of the public magistrates in the provinces, which Glaucia carried probably in this year, partly by the special tribunal, appointed doubtless as early as 651 on the proposal of Saturninus, respecting the embezzlements and other official malversations that had occurred during the Cimbrian movement in Gaul.
It put an end to the pernicious power of the landed gentry, who hitherto raised the rates for all local services, dispersed patronage and were guilty of many misdeeds and malversations, as well of being prolific in every conceivable form of abuse which a rotten and corrupt system could lend itself to. To this the Local Government Act of 1898 put a violent and abrupt end.
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