ABSTRACT
Title 3 of the Ordinance Pour le Commerce (1673) contains ten articles setting out a list of accounting rules to be followed by tradesmen and merchants. The principal author of the Ordinance was Jacques Savary, whose book Le Parfait Négociant (1st ed. 1675) is in part an explanation of and commentary on the provisions of the Ordinance. The accounting rules of the Napoleonic Commercial Code strongly resemble those of the 1673 Ordinance.
Neither the Ordinance nor the Code established any administrative procedures for the enforcement of the rules prescribed, although there were penal sanctions for those who xvfailed to keep properly authenticated books of accounts. In practice non-observance of the law was officially tolerated. A possible indirect means of enforcement was the use of private accounting records in litigation.
Translations into English are provided of the ten articles of the Ordinance and of relevant articles from the Code of 1807.
