Mr. Doctrinaire mires up badly in trying to evade the point which I made about Italy. I contended that while it was true that great estates were the ruin of Italy, there had to be some general cause at work, injurious to the average man, before the soil could be concentrated into these great estates. This is very obvious to anyone who will stop to think a moment. Mr. Doctrinaire thinks that the great estates in Italy were acquired by simply claiming the land and fencing it in, by “each individual claiming far more than he could use.” If all the land of Italy had been claimed and enclosed, the power that these land claimers had over subsequent comers is obvious; but _how_ did “the claimers” get the lands? The most superficial knowledge of Roman History ought to convince Mr. Doctrinaire that _Italy was cut up into small holdings_ until one branch of the government, the aristocracy, represented by the Senate, gathered into its own hands by persistent encroachment all the powers of the State. After that had been done, they fixed the machinery of government so that the aristocracy were almost entirely exempt from public burdens, whereas the common people had to bear not only their just portion, but also the portion which the aristocracy shirked. The ruling class, the patricians, not only escaped their burdens in upholding the State but they _appropriated to themselves_ the revenue which the Roman State exacted from the lower class, the plebeians. The result was that the Italian peasant found himself unable to sustain the burdens which the government put upon him and he abandoned his farm, just as the French peasant quit the land, for the same reason, prior to the French Revolution. In other words, _the small proprietor had to sell out to the patrician_, and the patricians got these great estates in the same manner that Rockefeller, for instance, got the estate which he now holds at Tarrytown. The Standard Oil King did not simply stretch his wires and “claim” land. He bought out the people who found themselves unable or unwilling to hold their lands. Rockefeller stood relatively on the same ground of advantage held by the Roman patricians. Governmental favoritism, and special privilege, the power of money which he had attained through unjust laws, made him more able to buy than the individual owners around him were to hold. _Therefore he absorbed the small estates_, and his estate became the “great estate,” just as such great estates were created in Italy.