Mitt Romney offered a chilly endorsement of the idea of auditing the Federal Reserve Monday.

Speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire, Mr. Romney said he was for an audit, but he added that he didn’t want to sacrifice the Fed’s independence or hand over control of the central bank to Congress in the process. The qualification puts him closer to the Fed’s own position on subjecting itself to outside scrutiny.

“The Federal Reserve should be accountable and we should see what they’re doing,” Mr. Romney said when asked at an event in Goffston, N.H., whether the Fed should be audited. He said yes to the question on audits but later added, “I don’t want to have Congress run the Fed, by the way…I want to keep it independent. There are very few groups that I would not want to give the keys to, one of them is Congress.”