Locke: Accounting

Some Thoughts Concerning Education - by John Locke, 1693

§ 210 But if his mistaken parents, frightened with the disgraceful names of mechanic and trade; shall have an aversion to anything of this kind in their children; yet there is one thing relating to trade, which, when they consider, they will think absolutely necessary for their sons to learn.

Merchants' Accounts. Merchants' accounts, though a science not likely to help a gentleman to get an estate, yet possibly there is not any thing of more use and efficacy to make him preserve the estate he has. 'Tis seldom observed that he who keeps an account of his income and expenses and thereby has constantly under view the course of his domestic affairs, lets them run to ruin; and I doubt not but many a man gets behindhand before he is aware, or runs farther on, when he is once in, for want of this care, or the skill to do it. I would therefore advise all gentlemen to learn perfectly merchants' accounts, and not to think it is a skill that belongs not to them because it has received its name from, and has been chiefly practised by, men of traffic.

§ 211 When my young master has once got the skill of keeping accounts (which is a business of reason more than arithmetic), perhaps it will not be amiss, that his father from thenceforth require him to do it in all his concernments. Not that I would have him set down every pint of wine, or play, that costs him money; the general name of expenses will serve for such things well enough: nor would I have his father look so narrowly into these accounts, as to take occasion from thence to criticize on his expenses. He must remember, that he himself was once a young man, and not forget the thoughts he had then, nor the right his son has to have the same, and to have allowance made for them. If therefore I would have the young gentleman obliged to keep an account, it is not at all to have that way a check upon his expenses (for what the father allows him, he ought to let him be fully master of), but only that he might be brought early into the custom of doing it, and that that might be made familiar and habitual to him betimes, which will be so useful and necessary to be constantly practised through the whole course of his life. A noble Venetian, whose son wallowed in the plenty of his father's riches, finding his son's expenses grow very high and extravagant, ordered his cashier to let him have for the future no more money than what he should count when he received it. This one would think no great restraint to a young gentleman's expenses, who could freely have as much money as he would tell. But yet this, to one who was used to nothing but the pursuit of his pleasures, proved a very great trouble, which at last ended in this sober and advantageous reflection: If it be so much pains to me barely to count the money I would spend, what labour and pains did it cost my ancestors, not only to count, but get it? This rational thought, suggested by this little pains imposed upon him, wrought so effectually upon his mind, that it made him take up, and from that time forwards prove a good husband. This at least everybody must allow, that nothing is likelier to keep a man within compass than the having constantly before his eyes the state of his affairs in a regular course of accounts.