Wagner believes that he has discovered a law according to which the functions of government are constantly increasing—in many places, even in spite of theory. According to him, government in all civilized countries is uninterruptedly taking upon itself new duties. The post-office, education, the telegraph, railroads, and the care of forests are examples. The increase in state business in England, _e.g._, may be seen from the fact that the expenses of government were forty times as great in 1841 as in 1685, although the population had little more than trebled its numbers.[203] If it can be shown that Wagner’s theory is really a law, and that the apparent proofs of it are not merely temporary social phenomena, it will at once be admitted that it is of the highest importance. Its operation would, of itself, establish the socialistic state, since, if government continually absorbs private business, there will, in the end, be only state business. In this socialistic state there would be the same differences in rank as at present between the different governmental employees. At the top of the social ladder there would still be an emperor, and at the bottom ordinary laborers, steadily employed in the service of the state, as, _e.g._, the workmen on the state railroads now. At present things are moving pretty rapidly in Germany towards the accomplishment of Wagner’s ideal, if we may suppose that expressed by his law. In fact, since Bismarck is said to value him highly, it is not impossible that he may have considerable to do with directing the economic policy of Germany. He has always been a strong advocate of state railways, the compulsory insurance of laborers by the state, and the tobacco monopoly. What may be the ultimate results of the changes taking place in Germany it is far too early to say. The leading ideas of the professorial socialists may be best learned from a little work by Professor Gustav Schmoller, entitled “A Few Fundamental Principles of Law and Political Economy.”[204] It is an open letter, addressed to Professor von Treitschke, a Prussian of the Buncombe type, who, with a very insufficient study of their writings, had the rashness to attack the professorial socialists in his “Socialism and Those Who Favor It” (“Der Socialismus und seine Gönner”). Von Treitschke is generally regarded as having fared ill in this encounter. As Schmoller pointed out, those whom he attacked had spent more years in the study of economic questions than he had weeks.