But personal qualities may be used as purchasing power in another way besides that of labour. If a merchant enjoys good "credit," as it is termed, he may go into the market and buy goods, not with money, but by giving his promise to pay money at a future time - that is, he creates a right of action against himself. The goods become his actual property, exactly as if he had paid for them with money - in fact, this right of action is the price he pays for them, and this right of action is termed a credit, because it is not a right to any specific sum of money, but only a general right against the person of the merchant to demand a sum of money at some future time.

Hence a merchant's credit has purchasing power exactly as money has. When a merchant purchases goods with his credit, instead of with money, his credit can be valued in money exactly as his labour may be; and therefore, by Aristotle's definition, personal credit is wealth; and so also Demosthenes says - There being two kinds of property, money and general credit, our greatest property is credit.

If you did not know this, that credit is the greatest capital of all towards the acquisition of wealth, you would be utterly ignorant.

Thus, Demosthenes shows that personal credit is or goods and chattels and or capital.

Thus, though credit, like labour, cannot be seen, nor touched, nor handled, yet it may be bought and sold, or exchanged - its value can be measured in money, and therefore it is wealth.

Thus it is now clearly shown that personal qualities, both in the form of labour of all kinds, and also in the form of the credit of our merchants and traders, of all sorts, is national wealth, and it also follows that the credit of the state itself is also national wealth.