ABSTRACT
The decision, made in 1835, to subject municipal corporations to the elective audit was perfectly natural, and chapter 3 draws attention to the fact that it may be seen as the local authority equivalent of the amateur/shareholder audit. The elective audit was also the only feasible option at that time. A professional audit would have been impractical due to the lack of professionally qualified personnel, while any attempt to introduce a government audit would have been stoutly resisted. Moreover, a centrally controlled audit would have been difficult to justify in view of the fact that municipal corporations were at that time almost entirely self-financing. As time went by conditions changed; the rising flow of finance from central government to municipal corporations increased the case for a centrally controlled audit to monitor the use of public money, while the fact that municipal corporations began to undertake trading activities strengthened the case for a commercial audit.
