AUDITOR

One who examines and verifies the accounts of officers and others entrusted with money. The term is derived from the Latin audio, I hear: probably from the ancient practice of delivering accounts viva voce. Receivers-general of fee-farm rents, . are termed auditors. Officers with the same title are a igned by courts of law to settle accounts in actions of account, . The auditors of the exchequer were officers appointed to take the accounts of receivers of public revenues. The present board of commi ioners for auditing the public accounts, exercising the duties formerly divided between various officers of th^ excliequer, was constituted in the year 1806. In Germany the junior legal functionaries are termed auditors. Its most usual sense seems to have been originally given to the word in France, where the members of the Chambres des Comptes were divided into conseillers-ra4itres, and conseiUersauditeurs. [s. 120]