CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR. 573 



fouud before them the conclusions of a sagacious mind, furnished with 



ample information on every essential aspect of the situation. It was 

 Professor Dunbar's undeviating habit to turn to the primary sources of 

 information, — to the statutes, the official documents, the contem- 

 porary sources of knowledge. He was never content with information 

 at second hand, and was frequently able to point out how the conclusions 

 of authors of repute were overthrown by a careful comparison with the 

 sources from which their conclusions should have been derived. 



Professor Dunbar's writing?, as already intimated, were compara- 

 tively scanty; they were certainly scanty as compared with what he 

 was equipped to do. His little book on Banking, brief and unpreten- 

 tious, is a model, and indeed well-nigh a classic, in its Held. His 

 essays on the financial history of the United States, published in the 

 Quarterly Journal of Economies, are also models of their kind. Occa- 

 sional comparisons, undertaken in these essays, with the financial 

 experience of other countries, — as, for example, in the essay on Some 

 Precedents followed by Alexander Hamilton, — give indication of the 

 wide range of his researches. Similar evidence appears in essays on 

 some recondite and little understood phases of economic history, such 

 as those on the Dank of Amsterdam, on the Bank of Venice, and on 

 Early Banking Schemes. Those who had the privilege of Professor 

 Dunbar's intimate acquaintance knew that he had pushed his way into 

 other obscure and difficult places also, lie had given much attention 

 to the history of the Assignats in France, and to the peculiarities in the 

 course of depreciation during that remarkable episode in monetary 

 history. On this subject he had collected, as was Ids habit, a Btore of 

 contemporary material, and had planned at some time to present the 

 results of his researches in published form. He had undertaken a 

 minute and careful study of the financial administration of Alexander 

 Hamilton, of which the results appeared in print only to a very Blight 

 extent. He had followed with equal thoroughness the history of bank- 

 ing operations in the United States, especially from the middle of the 

 century to the present time ; but here also failing Btrength and an 

 untimely death prevented the execution of his matured plai 



2s'o small part of Professor Dunbar's time and thought w e en in 



the later years of his life to the Quarterly Journal of E mmics. That 



Journal was established by Harvard University in 1886, Professor Dun- 

 bar being appointed its editor, and remaining in charge from 1886 to 

 L896. It was a very different editorial posl from that which he had 

 held on the Advertiser; but its duties were performed with no |i 



