Lombroso was a passionate advocate of the rights of the expropriated classes, always a fearless opponent ever ready for battle, of all exceptional laws, and a firm believer in democracy; but he was as far removed from the one-sided advocacy of any kind of class interest as he was from every apriorist interpretation of social life. I may, therefore, answer the question by saying that as an intellectual, and in his criticism of the present social order, Lombroso shows himself to be an individualist; but, notwithstanding this, his feelings lead him to favour the socialist view, so that we find in his writings a sympathetic understanding of the humanist movement no less than of the process of emancipation in modern social evolution. We cannot discuss Lombroso as a sociologist without considering also his ideas and efforts in the field of social reform. We have seen that he rejects the class war and revolutionary methods as instruments of social reform, but he is even less sympathetic towards parliamentary government,[40] and he expects valuable results from those reforms only that are demanded and brought into effect by the public opinion of the time, and regarding whose necessity the majority of the population is firmly convinced. Inasmuch as Lombroso was led to the study of socio-political questions chiefly by way of his interest in the world of crime, it will readily be understood that he was concerned with the construction of the legal order of society, and especially with criminal law, rather than with the construction of the economic order of society. For this reason we find in his writings few original ideas regarding industrial problems and the emancipation of the working classes. During many years spent in Pavia and Pesaro he failed to come into contact in any way with capitalism and the greater industry. First in the industrial city of Turin did these phenomena force themselves upon his attention; but in his earlier life, while still quite a young man, he was much occupied with the agrarian question; and he was one of the most ardent opponents of the traditional tariff policy of Italy—a country in which the food of the people is very heavily burdened by excessive protectionist corn duties, enormous land taxation, and very high octroi (town dues), without any correlative advantage to the small tenant farmers, peasant proprietors, and agricultural labourers.