Pareres, ou Avis et Conseils sur les plus importantes Matières de Commerce.

Code Savary

First edition of the author's continuation of his manual on mercantile trade, Le Parfait Négociant (1675). Savary wrote on commercial topics with considerable authority in that he made a large fortune through commerce. He suffered both politically and financially from the disgrace of Fouquet (1661), who was his patron, but he later made good his name and was admitted in 1670 into the council established to undertake commercial reforms. So great was his influence on these reforms that when, in 1673, the ordinances recommended by the council came into effect, they were informally known as "le Code Savary". His colleagues in the council pressed him to make his views more generally known, and so, in 1675, he published Le Parfait Négociant, an enormously successful work which went through several editions and translations during the author's life. "Jacques Savary was the individual most responsible for promoting the lower of cost or market rule. In Le Parfait Négociant he recommended current price valuations of inventory, unless it had begun to deteriorate of go out of style, in which case its book value should be reduced. Book value should also be lowered if replacement cost falls below acquisition price" (Michael Chatfield, The History of Accounting (RLE Accounting): An International Encyclopedia, p. 514). Le Négociant's sequel, Parères (affidavits or certificates), contains many examples of bookkeeping technique based on Savary's experience in the textile trade, in which he had made his fortune. From the library of Jean R. Perrette, with his bookplate to the front pastedown.