Advance in Europe

Definition of Equitable Doctrine Of Advancement

If a purchase or investment is made by a father, or person in loco parentis, in the name of a child, a presumption arises that it was intended as an advancement (that is, for the benefit of the child), so as to rebut what would otherwise be the ordinary presumption in such cases of a resulting trust in favour of the person who paid the money. The doctrine also applies to a purchase made in the name of a wife. See Dyer v. Dyer.[1]

Capital Advances

In the writings of the French PHYSIOCRATS “advances” are an outlay of wealth with a view to some future return, as opposed to an outlay for immediate consumption. This notion was wide enough to include the advances of food made by a parent to his infant child Physiocrates, ed. 1846, p. 391), and might include the mans of preparing a feast or making a toy. But more commonly the word was used almost as we now use “capital.” ” The weapons made by the first hunter were a great augmentation of his capital or his advances” (Haire, ib.)

The physiocrats distinguished three sorts of advances in agriculture :

• The ground expenses or avances foncieres which are laid out once for all, e.g. on clearing, draining, etc.;
• The original advances or avances primitives, needing occasional repair or renewal, e.g. on ploughs, carts, oxen, and manure;
• The annual expenses, or depenses annuelles, which need regular and continual renewal, e.g. wages of labourers and food of cattle (Daire, p. 344) applies similar distinctions even to manufacture (Form. et Distrib. des Rieh. § 52 seq.)

The distinction drawn by Adam SMITH between fixed and circulating capital rests not on this difference of durability but on the retention or non-retention of the capital in the hands of the investor. RICARDO adopts the criterion of durability while preserving the twofold instead of the physiocratic threefold division. Later economists have followed Ricardo, though most of them admit with him that such a distinction, being one of mere degree, cannot be closely pressed. The “advances necessary to produce a commodity” are sometimes described as synonymous with the capital necessary to produce it (e.g. MALTHUS, Pol. Econ., let ed., p. 293); and sometimes we hear of the “advance of capital” (Senior, Pol. Econ., p. 194) ; but it is specially in relation to wages and the wages fund that the word “advances” has been most frequently employed (see CAPITAL ; W .N N. SENIOR; WAGES FUND). The financial sense of the word (e.g. advances to government by the bank) calls for no special consideration here.[2]

Resources

Notes

1. Definition of Advancement, Equitable Doctrine Of is, temporally, from A Concise Law Dictionary (1927).
2. Robert Harry Inglis, Sir, Dictionary of Political Economy, Vol. 1, 1915

See Also

Further Reading