into the Exchequer, the Treasury, acting under the authority of the Public Accounts and Charges Act, 1891, allows the Department, instead of paying such receipts into the Exchequer, to use them to defray the expendit- ure of the year so far as they suffice to meet it.
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Parliament, on being shewn that the Department re- quires to spend a certain sum but that receipts from fees, etc., will amount to a smaller sun, grants the difference, together with authority to use the sum received from the fees, and therefore the Department is limited to the gross expenditure from the sums granted and the fees, and is financially in exactly the same position as if they had asked Parliament for the whole sum and paid the fees into the Exchequer. The practice has varied from time to time, but the system of appropriation in aid, operating as I have described, removes 211 chance of the Crown re- ceiving moneys which will not be under the control of Parliament. (See May's Parliamentary Practice, Thirteenth Edition, page 396, et seq.)
For all these reasons, I am of opinion that, once Parliament has sanctioned the Army for a period of one year, there is no statutory limitation on the right of the Crown, acting under its prerogative of command and dis- position of the Forces, to make it a condition of the supply of troops for a particular purpose that a charge shall be made for them.
(b) In regard to the suggested influence of the Crown's discretion by considerations of the possibility of the receipt or denial of money.
On this matter there is little direct authority, the assumption that the Crown is entitled to make a stipu- lation that when a Government steamer assists a merchant- man it shall be reimbursed all expenses arising from damage to the Government steamer, is to be found in the case of the "Lustre" (3 Haggard, page 154), in which Sir John Nicholl, in the course of his judgment, said: "It is a mistake to suppose that the public force of the country is to be employed gratuitously in the service of private individuals merely to save them from expense". This was clearly a case where the discretion whether the Government steamer would or would not be employed in a particular matter of salvage, was decided upon an express stipulation that the owners and underwriters would be answerable for certain payments. So also in the "Ewell Grove" (3 Haggard, page 209), later authorities and statutes as to salvage, such as the case of the "Ulysses", do not, in my view, affect the principle.
If the argument of the Appellants here were right, such a consideration was improper, for, as was stated by Lord Stowell, in the "Mary Anne"(1 Haggard, page 158): "There is an obligation upon King's ships to assist the merchant vessels of this country". In that case, salvage remunera- tion was claimed after service had been rendered, but in the "Lustre" a stipulation for payment to cover damage was made before the commander exercised his discretion to allow the use of the ship.
In Chitty on Prerogative of the Crown, 1820, page 6, it is said: "In the exercise of his lawful prerogatives an undoubted discretion is, generally speaking, allowed to the King"; and at page 44: "The King is at the head of his A Army and Navy, is alone entitled to order their movement,
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