No more talk of carrying on the war economically! The only economy is to make short and swift work of it, and the people are ready to bear the expense, if it were five hundred millions of dollars, to-day. This was printed when the war was very young; when no man dreamed that it would cost the Federal government six times five hundred millions. The _Sun’s_ editorial articles were not without criticism of the conduct of the war. It was one of the many papers that demanded the resignation of Seward at a time when the Secretary of State was generally blamed for what seemed to be the dilly-dallying of the government. Lincoln himself was still regarded as a politician as well as a statesman--a view which was reflected in the _Sun’s_ comment on the preliminary proclamation of emancipation, September 22, 1862: As the greatest and most momentous act of our nation, from its foundation to the present time, we would rather have seen this step disconnected from all lesser considerations and from party influences. The inference in this was that Lincoln had deliberately made his great stroke on the eve of the Republican State convention in New York. The _Tribune_ declared that the proclamation was “the beginning of the end of the rebellion.” “The wisdom of the step is unquestionable,” said the _Times_; “its necessity indisputable.” The businesslike _Herald_ remarked that it inaugurated “an overwhelming revolution in the system of labour.” The _World_ said that it regretted the proclamation and doubted the President’s power to free the slaves. “We regard it with profound regret,” said the _Journal of Commerce_. “It is usurpation of power!” shouted the _Staats-Zeitung_. Such was the general tone of the New York morning newspapers during the war. Only three--the _Sun_, the _Tribune_, and the _Times_--could be described as out-and-out loyalists. The _Sun_ was for backing up Lincoln whenever it believed him right, and that was most of the time; yet it was free in its criticism of various phases of the conduct of the war. Like most of the Democrats of New York, the _Sun_ was an admirer of General McClellan, and it believed that his removal from the command of the army was due to politics. But when the election of 1864 came around, the _Sun_ refused to join its party contemporaries in wild abuse of Lincoln and Johnson. On the morning after the Republican nominations it said: It is no time to quarrel with those men who honestly wish to crush the rebellion on the ground that they have nominated a rail-splitter and a tailor. It would be more consistent with true democracy if these men were honored for rising from an humble sphere.