A simple standard in which to express the debt is the thing borrowed, as horse, sheep, wheat, house.

Again, the thing to which the value of debts is referred may be a thing quite different from the goods borrowed and, with the growth of the monetary economy and the use of the interest contract, money comes more and more to be used as the standard.

At length the law declares that, in the absence of any other agreement, the amount of a debt is to be payable in terms of the unit of standard money, which thus is made legal tender as well as the customary standard of deferred payments.

A _standard of deferred payments_ is the thing of value in which, by law or by contract, the amount of a debt is expressed and payable.
Sec.7.

# Increasing importance of the standard.# Until the use of money develops, the use of credit is difficult and limited; it becomes easy when the value of all things is expressed in terms of a common circulating medium.