Note 145-5 — CHAPTER 1.

The Code de Commerce, I, art. 8, requires that every merchant should keep a journal, paged and approved by the authorities, showing the receipts and disbursements of each day, on whatever account, and also the monthly expenditures of his family. Besides, he is required to make a yearly inventory of his debits and credits, subscribe to it and preserve it. That such books were excellent judicial evidence may be shown by Italian statutes of the fourteenth century. (Martens, Ursprung des Wechschrechts, 23.) Those of Germany even in 1449. (Hirsch, Danziger Handelsgeschichte, 232.)