As regards public services, all seems to oppose law professor Cauwès, a theorist of protectionism, and Colson, a public servant who favored liberalism. Cauwès was a friend of Meline, influenced by German Sozialpolitik. He believed that Public Services were a “legitimate field of the republican State” and had extensible, modifiable functions (transport, social justice). Nevertheless, Colson refused the individualism of the partisans of an “€œexcessive” free trade. He believed in the role of the State in the fields of transport and social rights. Their main differences were rather in their methods and their public (law students versus economists), than in an acceptance or a rejection of Public Services.