These lectures were delivered in October December, 1917, to the Political and Economic Circle of the National Liberal Club. They are printed mainly as given, but with some com pressions, a few improvements of statement, some little annotation, some postscripts, and the inclusion of some passages omitted in delivery. Their usefulness, I conceive, might have been increased by more systematic annotation from economic literature; but other pressing occupa tions make that impossible. Since, further, they make no pretension to constitute a systematic economic treatise, but aim only at a partial practical application, of economic ideas to the great problem of reconstruction, a larger array of authorities might suggest a much higher estimate of their lasting utility than I put upon them.