LINCOLN'S FINANCE OF WAR, ITO THE EDITOR OF Tun "
SPECTATOR.") Sm,—I am amused to read the stricture of "S. R. H." on Lincoln's greenback issues, "condemned," he writes, "by every economist who had studied the subject." Well, I am an "economist," and I have studied the subject, and I am in complete agreement with Lincoln I And, anyhow, which of us economists is in your anonymous ecsrespondent's mind and who is entitled 'to set his judgment against Lincoln's ? The great Napoleon once wrote : "The economists are an accursed breed, and there is no State so powerful but they can destroy it." That is a denunciation for ever in our minds to-day, and perhaps that is why we economists are so smug and shy and silent I And why does your anonymous correspondent bring "Professor Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard" to judgment ; or, indeed, any other Professor ? The United States at this moment is not particularly popular in the British Isles, but still it is fair to recall that every dollar of Lincoln's greenback issues were refunded at par with gold—a hundred cents gold for each dollar paper. Is it perhaps because the United States made no profit by these issues that Professor Hart and the other economists of our "accursed breed" condemned the greenbacks ? If so, I am happy to find myself in the minority [We cannot continue this correspondence.—En. Spectator.]
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