personality of the maker of the transaction as the marker they would be destined to replace.

The comptabilistic system making use of such stamps rather than of marks would be applied to defered payments as well as to current payments, it could be thus used in every case.

The principle of the account-book consists naturally in the book forming a real account with debit and credit—like all accounts in ordinary book keeping,—in which is inscribed in a way which would be regarded as valid, having legal force the sums corresponding to the transactions effected either by being written out at full length, with the signature, or by marking in figures, and indicating at the same time the personality of the party making the transaction, or by means of stamps as we have just seen, or finally by some other way.

Directly we leave the principle above mentioned to look at some intermediary form of its application, a host of combinations offer themselves. The use of stamps for example would permit doing away with the debit side in the account books. The buyer in this case detaches, from his account-book, which becomes now only a credit account book, the stamps corresponding to the extent of the transaction, and he sticks them in the account book of the seller, which is also only a credit one: the credit of the seller increases, that of the buyer diminishes, that is all. If the buyer does not stick his stamps in the account-book of the seller, these stamps can circulate, they would be analogous to bank notes which have been endorsed by writing upon them the name of the first party holding them.

SOCIAL COMPTABILISM
(COMPLEMENTARY NOTE)

By Ernest SOLVAY

In the last number of these Annals[G], I explained in a manner which I consider definitive, the theoretical conception of comptabilism.

To this point of view it seems to me necessary to add a few words in order to throw light on certain points which the first article did not sufficiently bring out.

We have seen what is the use of money and to whom it is of use, we have considered if it was indispensable. Gold and silver are not a «real commodity» except when they take the form of useful objects, utensils, works of art, etc., the possession of which produces enjoyment. Turned into coin, they lose this character, they become an instrument, an instrument recognised so far as indispensable for obtaining a real commodity, be this commodity material or moral, by an operation which I have designated under the general term of «transaction». Money is not then a commodity in the true sense of the word; on the contrary it is generally obtained by the surrender of a commodity.

It is solely in order to accomplish the «operation» of transaction that money is needed, because this is the method, the means, the instrument which custom has consecrated; and if another practicable method, means or instrument were found in order to accomplish this operation money would no longer be indispensable. Now, this is what comptabilism does.

It is essential to note here that the comptabilistic unities, francs, marks, pounds, etc., would be derived from securities, and not, as with money by the surrender of commodities, that in consequence these unities would no longer have a value by themselves, but simply by the things which they represented.

But apart from that, they could be with held or parted with, they could be borrowed or lent, with or without interest, directly from man to man, or by the medium of banking houses, exactly as in the case of money.

And in fact, if the force of habit required, nothing would prevent their being called money of account or comptabilistic money, since apart from what has just been said as to the way of obtaining them and their nature, nothing would be altered in the current methods, everything would remain as to day both in the organisation of business and of society. And all that might have been said, written or thought until now in an opposite sense to the fore going considerations should be held as contrary to the reality of the facts resulting from comptabilism.

The conception of the comptabilistic system is one quite other than that of the monetary system. There is not the smallest trace of this second conception in the first; it becomes necessary to leave entirely the one to understand the other. In a word the two conceptions mutually exclude each other; the one is based upon exchange, the other upon accounts, and the two systems derived rest thus on two essentially different principles.

The examination of the theoretical side of the comptabilistic system could not be undertaken through the ideas, nor from the point of view derived from the monetary system. It is necessary first of all to accustom oneself to think and speak of business, finances, etc., abstraction being made of every idea of money and to persuade oneself that transactions—and by transactions I understand every operation, whatever it may be, which gives rise at present to the use of money or its equivalent—when finally analysed, only modify the ratio of fortunes. If these ratios could be continuously recognised and fixed, could be officially registered, money would lose its use. Indeed, money put in circulation by whatsoever an operation is only a means of granting to the one who receives it, the power to acquire subsequently its equivalent, the other who has given the money having diminished by this much this power as far as he is concerned.

Now the comptabilistic system in officially registering this power, acquired on the one hand and diminished on the other, permits the afore mentioned ratios being fixed, and realises entirely the part played by money. Therefore it can entirely be substituted for the monetary system. And let it be said, in its favour, that the power registered in this system cannot itself be lessened by the fact of the fluctuations in price of the metal, as actually now takes place. Moreover, the necessity which exists at this present moment of surrendering commodities to procure the monetary instrument indispensable in transactions, would disappear.

It is evident that it might have been possible theoretically to pass directly from the regime of barter to the application of the comptabilistic system, and if one admits that the conception of this system could have been produced at this far distant epoch, and have been thus used from the commencement,—which in the presence of the laws of evolution of the human mind, could only be a pure hypothesis—it must be immediately granted that the monetary idea could not then have occurred to anyone—and even admitting, which is impossible, that it had occurred all the same to someone, no one would have dreamt of making use of it, so much in the presence of comptabilism would the monetary system have seemed barbarous by its illogical and inconvenient character.

Such are the theoretical considerations which it seems necessary to insist upon.

But if there is a difficulty in comprehending the question from its theoretical side, this difficulty disappears if approached from the practical side.

This is what will be seen on examining the system which M. Hector Denis has gone to study in Austria and which he proposes to realise in Belgium.

All the post-offices in the Austrian Empire are in connection with the Savings Bank, the central establishment of which is in Vienna and which has become during the last few years a thoroughly comptabilistic establishment, in this sense, that,—independent