96 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Cuap. VI

method of balances, a complete account of the distribution
of capital-value among real persons; and, by the method
of couples, a complete list of the articles of actual wealth
thus owned. On this list there will be no stocks, bonds,
mortgages, notes, or other part rights, but only land,
buildings and other land improvements, commodities and
real persons. In other words, we arrive again at the
proposition of Chapter III, that wealth underlies and corresponds
 to property.

§4

Among other part-rights in real wealth we find what is
called “credit.” There has been much discussion as to the
nature of credit; whether, in particular, credit is to be
regarded as a “part of capital.” It has been claimed that,
from the merchant’s point of view, credit is capital because
 it enables a business man to enlarge his business.
In this view it is capital, though it is borrowed capital.
MacLeod specifically includes credit under capital. Professor
 J. Shield Nicholson says that eredit is a sort of
revenue capital! but that “strictly and taking only
material (productive) capital, this would involve counting
the same elements twice over.” We see, from our study
of capital accounts, how to avoid such double counting.
That part of a man’s so-called capital which is borrowed
should not enter his books as his capital at all, being but a
manifestation of the fact that the total capital of the community
 which he in part owns is also owned in part by
others. Indeed, the phenomenon of credit means nothing
more nor less than a specific form of divided ownership
of wealth. Credit merely enables one man temporarily
to control more wealth or property than he owns, that
is, some part of the wealth or property of others. This
occurs generally on the theory that he can use it to better
advantage than the real owner.

* Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy, Vol. 1, p. 452.