16 NINETEENTH REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS the service of the respective Boards, but also as being practically entrusted with a large share in the management of the business of the Department in his own person.
From the circumstances under which the office has been executed in Ireland, the devolution of authority to the Secretary, individually, has prevailed for many years to a very extensive degree, and a system of administration has in consequence arisen, which appears to be objectionable, not only as being incompatible with the due superintendence of the Department, but also as being contrary to the intention of the Legislature at the original formation of the office.
23 & 24 Geo.
3.
The statute, by which the Post-office of Ireland was established, simply enacts
that there shall be a person from time to time appointed as the master of such office, and that there shall be a Secretary and other officers, therein named, without any declaration as to the respective powers or duties of such officers.
In the absence of any definition on the subject, it may perhaps be assumed as the intention of the Legislature, that the duties of Secretary should, in character, be similar to those of officers standing in the same relation to other public departments; but whatever may have been the original intention, we think there can be no doubt of the fact, that the office of Secretary to the Post-Office has assumed a character essentially different from that which belongs to the same office under other Boards, and that in consequence either of the nature of the appointment to the superior offices, or of the manner in which the functions belonging to those offices have in general been executed, the effect has been to throw the actual discharge of the business of the Department in a great degree into the hands of the Secretary, not as the substitute merely of his superiors, but as the person primarily entrusted with the administration.
The Commissioners of Fees and Gratuities, in their Report of 1810, have stated that, in consequence of the frequent absences from Dublin of the Postmasters-Ninth Report of General, the business of the office was for months together " wholly under the Commissioners of « control of the Secretary, whose orders on the daily reports made to him of the Fees and Gratm-„ ^gj^j^ transactions of the office are acted upon and held as valid as those of ies, 9, p.
•
« ^ Postmasters-General.
To him it belongs, during their absence, to maintain " the discipline of the office, and to see that the officers of each department are " attentive in the discharge of their several duties; to take care that the revenue " is duly collected, and faithfully accounted for; and upon his discretion depends " the amount of a great portion of the contingent expenditure, he being the sole " judge of the propriety of incurring the expense and of the reasonableness of the " charge.
In like manner, in the absence of the Secretary, similar powers are " exercised by the Chief Clerk in his office."
Ibid.
p.
26.
On this statement the Commissioners remark, that " to impose such a weight of
" responsibility upon the Secretary, was certainly never intended by the original " constitution of the office."
The above extracts, it will be observed, refer to the state of the Department in regard to its principal officers, as it existed at a period more than thirteen years prior to the date of our examinations ; we are, however, satisfied that a reference to those examinations, and to the other documents which we have cited in a former part of this Report, will afford abundant evidence that the statements above quoted, as to the manner in which the duties of Postmaster-General and Secretary respectively were discharged, and as to the effects produced on the business of the Department by that system, are equally applicable to the state of the Post-Office of Ireland in No8^?73.'i7"-
1^3 as they were in 1809.
The examinations also of the two Postmasters-
General and of the Secretary taken in 1826, will show that no material alteration in the manner of discharging the duties of those offices had taken place up to that time.
LTnder these circumstances, we have only to express our entire concurrence in the opinion of the Commissioners of Fees and Gratuities as to the objectionable nature of the system of administration thus described; although we should at the same time state our conviction that no responsibility or blame can in this respect fairly attach to the individual by whom the office of Secretary has been held during the whole of the period to which the above description applies.
We have reason to know that Sir Edward Lees-has for many years strongly felt the inconveniences of the system ; and the difficulties under which he has been placed in the execution
