Now the comptabilistic system in officially registering this power, acquired on the one hand and diminished on the other, permits the afore mentioned ratios being fixed, and realises entirely the part played by money. Therefore it can entirely be substituted for the monetary system. And let it be said, in its favour, that the power registered in this system cannot itself be lessened by the fact of the fluctuations in price of the metal, as actually now takes place. Moreover, the necessity which exists at this present moment of surrendering commodities to procure the monetary instrument indispensable in transactions, would disappear. It is evident that it might have been possible _theoretically_ to pass directly from the regime of barter to the application of the comptabilistic system, and if one admits that the conception of this system could have been produced at this far distant epoch, and have been thus used from the commencement,--which in the presence of the laws of evolution of the human mind, could only be a pure hypothesis--it must be immediately granted that the monetary idea could not then have occurred to anyone--and even admitting, which is impossible, that it had occurred all the same to someone, no one would have dreamt of making use of it, so much in the presence of comptabilism would the monetary system have seemed barbarous by its illogical and inconvenient character. Such are the theoretical considerations which it seems necessary to insist upon. But if there is a difficulty in comprehending the question from its theoretical side, this difficulty disappears if approached from the practical side. This is what will be seen on examining the system which M. Hector Denis has gone to study in Austria and which he proposes to realise in Belgium. All the post-offices in the Austrian Empire are in connection with the Savings Bank, the central establishment of which is in Vienna and which has become during the last few years a thoroughly comptabilistic establishment, in this sense, that,--independent of its primitive aim, it keeps the accounts of over thirty thousand who are affiliated and who annually through this medium do business of which the figures are above a thousand millions of florins. The Savings Bank exacts from those persons who wish to transact business through its medium, a fixed monetary deposit of 100 florins, without relation therefore to the importance of the transactions which they can effect; it opens for them an account and delivers them, upon request, cheque books which serve to effect the payments which they desire to make. All this is done by the intervention of any post-office of the Empire.