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Commercial paper, commercial fiction: 'The Compleat English Tradesman' and Defoe's reluctant novels

Criticism, Summer, 1995 by Sandra Sherman

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The integrity of the whole, its continual balance, is the basis of accounting theory. North remarks that:

The Art of Regular Accompting depends wholly upon this

Supposition, viz. That every thing negotiated comes out of

something, and goes into something, having (as they say of Motion)

its terminus a quo and ad quem. But Increase or Decrease of the

Whole, or any Part in the Transition, there is a common Receptacle,

or Place, which receives of furnisheth exactly the same. So that

however spaciously the Books are branched out, there is conserved

a perpetual Par, or Balance of the Whole.(8)

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North's language invokes an organicism that is ultimately restrained, a steady-state reliability "conserved" in organized, internally consistent space. He uses the example of shifting contents from one drawer of a "Scritoire" to another, which "Alterations make no Disorder, but the Repertory of the whole is continually compleat" (17). Most importantly, he emphasizes hat intertextuality is the key to representational perfection:

As the Accompts depend on one another, so all the Books

and Papers belonging to the Business, are connected in the

Accompt by References; for the Ledger calls on the Journal,

That on the Waste-Book, That on the Subsidiary Books of all

sorts.... And an Alphabet of the Names, or Titles of the Accompts,

always attends to Ledger; by Help of which you

have ready Recourse to any Accompt there; and then you

have the Thread that guides thro' all; which Disposition as

to Consultation or Searches, is to all Intents perfect.(31)

The point is that the entire system is designed for the "perfect" retrieval of reality, with an internal discipline that enforces accuracy. By writing first in the waste book, transcribing to the journal and posting to the ledger, multiple restatements curtail the possibility of a careless or fraudulent posting with no back-up text to provide corrrection. Not only can fiction be caught, but right use of the system discourages pepetration of lies:

And that other way [posting directly to the ledger] is also

open to Frauds, as may be practiced at any time, by writing

what you please in the Books; for perhaps there is not occasion

to write a Line in an Accompt for three or four Years together;

and in the last Year you may write with a Date two

Years before; and what shall shew the falsity?

If the parcel be entered in the Day, it is justified to be done at

the Time, by the continual daily, and perhaps hourly Entries,

that are made before and after it. So that an After-cheat, not

designed, when the Books were carried on day by day, can

afterwards foist nothing into the Books that is false, to give a

Colour to it. (31)

Virtually all the pedagogical texts discuss the prevention and cure of accounting errors. North says flatly, "Errors are to be adjusted to Truth in the Books" (39). The ultimate point of avoiding Error is that not only do accounts display one's affairs, they regulate the self--the author--who is prior to the act of inscription. The tradesman diligently keeping his accounts is less inclined to interpolate an "After-cheat."

Commercial paper, commercial fiction: 'The Compleat English Tradesman' and Defoe's reluctant novels

Criticism, Summer, 1995 by Sandra Sherman

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