_To the Editor of "The Scotsman."_ SIR: For Professor Hodgson's "undue encroachments on your space and his own time," I leave you to answer to your readers, and the Professor to console his class. To his criticisms on my language and temper I bow, their defence being irrelevant to the matter in hand. Of his harmless confusion of the word "correlative" with the word "consequent" I take no notice; and his promise of a sifting examination of my economic teaching I anticipate with grateful awe.[40] But there is one sentence in his letter of real significance, and to that alone I reply. The Professor ventured (he says) to suggest that possibly I with others "believe that economists confused existing demand with wise and beneficial demand, and existing supply with wise and beneficial supply." I do believe this. I have written all my books on political economy in such belief. And the entire gist of them is the assertion that a real law of relation holds between the non-existent wise demand and the non-existent beneficial supply, but that no real law of relation holds between the existent foolish demand and the existent mischievous supply. That is to say (to follow Professor Hodgson with greater accuracy into his lunar illustrations), if you ask for the moon, it does not follow that you will get it; nor is your satisfaction more secure if you ask for sixpence from a Poor-Law guardian; but if you limit your demand to an honest penny, and endeavor to turn it by honest work, the divine law of supply will, in the plurality of cases, answer that rational and therefore divine demand.