DORSEY v, HAMMOND. 467

of the court. He is stationed near to the Chancellor, and, when
any calculations or statements are wanted, all the pleadings, exhi-
bits and proofs are put into his hands, so as to enable him fully to
investigate, and put the whole matter in proper order as required.
As an incident to every reference of a case to the auditor, he is
thereby virtually, if not expressly, as under a commission to audit
accounts, authorized to take any testimony deemed requisite in
relation to any account which may be necessary or which the par-
ties may desire to be stated by him.(c) But, if it be necessary to
collect proof from a distance, the parties may either have a regular
commission, or be allowed, by a common order, to have it taken any
where within the State, before any justice of the peace, on giving
notice to the opposite party. All the materials, from which the
auditor makes his calculations and statements preparatory to a final
adjudication upon the matters in controversy, are thus, by various,
cheap, and contemporaneous movements, brought together at one
place, and before an officer conversant with the rules and prin-
ciples by which the case is to be decided, by a court constantly
stationary and always accessible. With such facilities, where the
parties are themselves diligent, there can be no unreasonable delay,
nor any difficulty, but what arises out of the peculiar ambiguity
of the proofs, or the real complexity of the case.

The costs of the court are no more, in any case, than a just com-
pensation for the labour required. The auditor's fees are consid-
ered as a part of the costs; and, as such, are always included
in every general award of costs against a plaintiff or defendant;
and the payment of them may be enforced, against the party
properly chargeable, in the first instance, in the same summary
manner as any other costs.(d) But in some cases it becomes a
matter of doubt who is properly chargeable, in the first instance,
with the auditor's fees. The law declares, that they are to be
"paid by the party desiring such account to be stated." Upon
which it has been held, that in all cases where an account is
necessary in any manner to ascertain the claim of a party, he alone
is chargeable, although he may not have specially desired the
account; and in all other cases, where a party particularly instructs
the auditor to state an account in a certain way, he alone is
chargeable, upon the ground of its having Been specially desired

(c) Prac. Reg. 309.—(d) Denny v. Wallace & Davidson, MS. 1800; Farrow v.
White, 1 Jac. & Walk. 623.