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.