9 JANUARY 1830, Page 10

BOOK-KEEPING.*

It is pleasant enough that we should be indebted for such peaceful improvements as the arts of banking and keeping accounts to the sons the furious Longobardi ; and that men who were so famous for their warlike virtues should in their posterity be the first that introduced order and system into commercial transactions. The method of "book-keeping by double entry," which, from the country where it was invented, is also named "the Italian method," .is justly looked on as exhibiting the perfection of arrangement, and its almost universal adoption is the best proof of its value. Still, with all its excellencies, it is a mighty useless affair as taught in the schools. It is cumbered with much complexity, and made unnecessarily difficult in the acquisition • or it is treated in so abstract a way, and with so little reference to the business of real life, that the scholar who has mastered It most * The Scholar's Introduction to Merchants' Accounts. By George Reynolds, Writbate-, Mist's Ripples'. London, 1$29.

completely finds on entering a merchant's countinghouse, that his previous' study has been almost thrown away. We are not aware that we can except from this charge any system of bookkeeping that has been yet published: Dr. HAnsuirores (we mean that which is contained in his "Merchandise") is undoubtedly the best, and the exercises ap pended to it are of great value. But it is too difficult for general use as a school-book. Mr. MoRRIsON'S book we look on as a very inferior production, notwithstanding the pains tliken to puff it. It was held out as a specimen of the manner in which the merchants of Glasgow kept their accounts: we cannot say how truly. If it were, we should say that the merchants of Glasgow kept their accounts in a very confused and imperfect way,—which, from their general acuteness and intelligence, does not seem very likely.

In the little work whose title we give below, an attempt, and we think a successful one, has been made to give simplicity to the system as at present taught. The rules are copious and clear ; and no pupil however dull, will find any difficulty in applying them. So far Mr. REYNOLDS'S work deserves great praise, but of the besetting sin of such works, it is no more free than its predecessors. There is no such description of merchant as the A. B. of Mr. REYNOLDS in existence—no such description of business—no such method of carrying it on. What man in London, or -England or any where else, having a capital of twelve thousand pounds, ever stored in his warehouses such incongruous items as" 19hhds. of sugar, 30 bags of hops, and 60 yards of drugget at 3s. 9d. a yard ? " And, in the name of wonder, where has our author lived, that he talks of a hogshead of sugar weighing 3761bs. ? The mode of A. B.'s transmitting business is as foreign to all practice as his stock is to all precedent. Ex. gr. "Sold Benj, Clay, Holborn, 2hhds. of claret at 57/. 9s. per hhd. to pay in a month." The directions here are to journalize—" Benj. Clay Dr. to Clazet," and to open an account for Benj. Clay in the Ledger. Now in real business, there would be no " Benj. Clay" at all. A. B. would draw on him at one month for 114/. 18s. ; and the entry, if he made one, in his Journal, would be "Bills receivable Dr. to Claret." There is one remark that applies equally to Mr. REYNOLDS'S book and all others that we have seen. They give the system exactly as it was given when first introduced, without an attempt at amendment or improvement. But it is exceedingly susceptible of both. It would puzzle a conjuror to say what is the worth of the Journal. As a step in the instruction of little boys, we have strong doubts of its utility—they must be very simple little boys that require it ; but as an instrument of business, it is positively without object or value. The only books (we do not here advert to subsidiary books) from which the transactions of a merchant are to be ascertained, are the Waste-book or Day-book, where those transactions are recorded in the order of their occurrence, and the Ledger, where they are classed in groups according to their nature. The Journal merely ter s the tale that the Day-book has told before in another way. It %,euld be quite as rational to keep one Day-book in English and another in French. There is a great en-or in all the books in the instructions for posting the Ledger. When several items are sold or bought, the rule is to post them "by or to Sundries," as the case may be, with a reference to the Journal. The purpose, and the only purpose of the Ledger, is to enable the clerk to make out his accounts with facility. If he must at every line turn back for particulars to his Day-book, he may as well have no ledger at all. This error is, however, smaller than the retention of an idle superfluity like the Journal, which answers no end but to make that look abstruse and difficult, which is, when properly set forth, simple and easy.