SCOTLAND – BIRTHPLACE OF THE MODERN PROFESSION

It is not unfittingthat when we come to deal with the modern profession of accountant, Scotland should occupy the place of priority. It is there that the Chartered Accountant originated, and in Scotland we find the oldest existing societies of public accountants. We are not unmindful of the claims of Italy, to which country we are indebted for so much in connection with the profession, but however important a position accountant occupied there during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their influence undoubtedlydiminished thereafter.

In tracing the growth of the profession in Scotland as elsewhere one meets with many difficulties. In Edinburgh it was for long associated with the profession of law, so it is difficult to find the designation of Writer applied in one place to the same individual who is in another designated Accountant. There are several instances of members of the Society of Writers to the Signet, the leading Solicitors' Society in Scotland, practicing as accountants. Moreover, until comparatively recent times, much accountant’s work was done in solicitor’s offices. Again, to a certain extent in Edinburgh, but to a greater extent in the more commercial city of Glasgow, the designation of accountant was, in early times, confounded with that of merchant, a term of much wider significance then than now.

A very full compendium of the kind of work which a Glasgow accountant professed to undertake, the list of duties which Mr. James McClelland attached to the circular, dated 12th March 1824, in which he announcedthat he had commenced business on his own account:

- factor and trustee on sequestered estates;

- trustee or factor for trustees of creditors acting under trust deed;

- factor for trustees acting for the heirs of persons deceased;

- for gentlemen residing in the country for the management of heritable or other property;

- agent for houses in England and Scotland connected with bankruptcies in Glasgow;

- the winding up of dissolved partnership concerns and the adjustingof partners accounts;

- the keeping and balancing of all account-books belonging to merchants, manufacturers, shopkeepers, &c;

- the examining and adjusting of all disputed accounts and account-books;

- the making up of statements, reports, and memorials on account-books or disputed accounts and claims for the purpose of laying before arbiters, courts, or counsel;

- the looking after and recoveringold debts and dividends from bankrupt estate;

- and all other departments of the accountant business.

The Petition, which was signed by forty-nine accountants in the City of Glasgow, set forth: That the profession of an Accountant has long existed in Scotland as a distinct profession of great respectability; that originally the number of those practicing it was few but that, for many years back, the number has been rapidly increasing, and the profession in Glasgow now embraces a numerous as well as highly respectable body of persons; that the business of an Accountant requires, for the proper prosecution of it, considerable and varied attainments; that it is not confined to the department of the Actuary, which forms indeed only a branch of it, but that, while it comprehends all matters connected with arithmetical calculation, or involving investigation into figures, it also ranges over a much wider field, in which a considerable acquaintance with the general principles of law, and a knowledge in particular of the Law of Scotland, is quite indispensable; that Accountants are frequently employed by Courts of Law ... to aid those Courts in their investigation of matters of Accounting, which involve, to a greater or less extent, points of law of more or less difficulty; that they act under such remits very much as the Masters in Chancery are understood to act in England, and . . . that it is obvious that to the due performance of a profession such as this a liberal education is essential.

Directly after its formation the Edinburgh Society deliberated upon a distinctive title for its members, and resolved to adopt the name of “Chartered Accountant”, indicated by the letter “C.A.” The same course was followed by the Glasgow Institute as well as by the Aberdeen Society when they were incorporated later. It naturally took some time before the new name became familiar to the public or even in the mouths of the members themselves, but ere long it acquired a definite signification throughout Scotland, and when in 1880 the same designation was adopted by the English Institute, incorporated in that year, it soon became a recognized term wherever the English language is spoken.