Accounting as the master metaphor of economics

Abstract

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles. … Little did I dream that I should have lived to see disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men. … I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.