b. The other and final peculiarity of Credit is, that it always involves on the part of one person a commercial confidence in some person _as such_. The term, Credit, is derived from the Latin CREDO, _I believe_, and the corresponding term, Debt, from DEBEO, _I owe_. Thus the personal element and the future element are wrapt up in the very origin of the words. There is no credit without debt, and no debt without credit. The very words imply a _belief_ of one of the two parties in a commercial promise made by the other, and also an _obligation_ acknowledged by this party as due to the first. There is a basis for credit in human nature. Faith in each other to a certain extent is natural to men. Whatever enlarges the intellectual foresight, and especially the moral character of men, opens a broader and surer field for Credits. Civilization, so-called, and Christianity certainly, deepens and broadens the natural trust of man in man. Despite all the instances of broken faith, and they are too many; despite the shocks and cautions that come every now and then to every man who trusts much in his fellow-men; experience itself justifies and rewards an ever-growing commercial trust. It is one of the noble things in international commerce, as we shall see, that men trust each other across the oceans, and lay millions of value upon the faith of a single firm. As the core of the Christian religion is confidence in a _Person_, so the very substance of credits is a natural and in general well-grounded faith in _persons as such_. A Credit, then, may be defined to be _a Right to demand something of somebody_; and a Debt to be _an Obligation to pay something to somebody_. What always lies, accordingly, between creditors and debtors, are Rights coupled with Obligations; and these are _Property_, just as much as anything is and for the same reason, since they always may be, and usually are, bought and sold by other parties as well as the original parties. In these Rights or Claims, therefore, arises a commerce, domestic and foreign, immense in extent and amount, and the Rights themselves take their undisputed place on an equality with tangible Commodities and personal Services. Having thus reached an ultimate and satisfactory definition of Credit, we must still pursue a little further our present object, namely, to obtain a clear conception of the _nature_ of this great class of Valuables, by drawing two or three distinctions between Credit-Rights and some other rights very apt to be confounded with them.