Chapter 275

Chapter 275

Irene was actually somewhat resistant to suppressing the riot, and if she had been notified of the meeting that night as well, she would have strongly urged Paul to take measures of persuasion, negotiation, and the like first. In this regard, Hansel and Cecil’s fears were justified.

But what really made her very upset was the way a group of men treated her, and in the process of quelling the riot, she, who was a high-ranking member of the Council of State, was once again excluded from the decision-making level, and was unaware of the incident from beginning to end. It wasn’t until after the riot was quelled, when Chief of Staff Schroeder read the report sent back by the army to everyone at the meeting, that Irene was dumbfounded to know that such a thing had happened. She didn’t say a word in that meeting until it was over, filled with resentment.

Irene felt that she was now like a vase in the Council of State, which the men admired a few times when they had time, but immediately threw her out of the picture when there was a real emergency.

Paul helplessly explained, “Oh …… my Lord Head of Education, you know the power of tradition is strong, even as a lord I can not immediately change anything.”

He put on a very innocent expression, in fact, he hadn’t thought of calling Betty over for the meeting that night.

Irene understood Paul on that score; the lord had been a rare enlightened man to resist the pressure of other men to have a woman in charge of the field of education – which of course clung to the light of the fact that no one but the lord had taken education seriously.

When his father, as king, had asked his sister to share the government for him, the resistance from the courtiers had been equally great.

“Hmph! Sooner or later I’ll shut up the Abbott gang.”

Paul cheered for her, “I wish you all the best!”

“So, Lord Lord, what are you going to do about the rioting civilians?”

“Oh, this is not a normal small matter, there are too many people involved, and it’s obviously not proper to have my word to decide as in the past days. That’s why I’ve decided to select five excellent magistrates from Arda and Baildin to serve as [Judges], and they will form the Lords’ Court to jointly hear this matter, and Cecil and Ruth Hayden will be responsible for ascertaining the behavior of everyone in the riot, and then submitting it to the judges for perusal, who will then formulate reasonable punishments based on the magnitude of the crime.”

That was more like it; Erin’s biggest fear was that Paul would sentence everyone involved in the riot to death with a single sentence. This was far too common among local lords who held military and political power on one side.

“I also plan to make the [Lords’ Court] a permanent institution, which will hear small and large cases within the territory.”

“Aren’t the magistrates in each place sufficient?”

“It’s too unreasonable to centralize law enforcement and judicial power in the hands of one person, in the future, the magistrates – or the police – will only be able to arrest people but not have the power to convict them, and they must be submitted to the court, where the judges will formally convict them before they can be further punished. I think this can avoid the abuse of power to a certain extent.”

Listening to Paul’s explanation, Irene nodded, “That’s a good improvement.”

Although the vision was beautiful, but Paul’s headache was how to centralize the power in this area in the lord’s house, if the tax contracting is the same, in those remote countryside areas, the phenomenon of landlord gentry’s private courts and private penalties abound, and the locals’ first thought when they have a dispute is not to go to the lord, but to go to the local reputable people to solve the problem.

However, he did not have a strong organization in hand that could immediately bring the countryside under control, and could only take his time to make changes.

……

The riot named by Paul as the “4-15 incident” had a huge impact on him, not only to build the [telegraph] system, but also to strengthen the construction of the internal guards and the public security department. As early as last year, the Council of State established the [Department of Public Safety] under the leadership of Ruth Hayden, who was born in the Internal Security Army, but in view of the financial and other factors, Ruth has always existed as a commander-in-chief, and now the Council of State intends to let this department really play a role.

The town of Lakewood intends to create a police force of 2,000 men over the next five years, who will replace the old system of sheriffs and maintain order in the various towns, and extend their authority out into the countryside when it suits them.

The internal guard force, on the other hand, was originally set up with the intention of protecting offices and the personal safety of senior staff, and was therefore very small. Now Paul intended to develop them into a force similar to the armed police of the previous world, and as an important component of the field of public safety, its expansion was imperative.

There was another thing that needed to be resolved urgently, and that was the livelihood of those salt people on the seashore.

Unlike porcelain, canned goods, paper and other emerging industries, the emergence of salt farms for the traditional salt industry is a huge impact, do not take measures will inevitably become the root cause of a new turmoil.

Therefore, the State Council proposed two methods:
One is to guide the salt people in the young and strong laborers to the new industry diversion.

The second was to open government-run salt farms to absorb the salts into the labor force.

However, due to the recent war and a series of new measures, the Council of State did not have much spare money to run any salt farms, so at Paul’s suggestion, the Council of State only provides technical guidance, by the salt people to build their own salt farms, called [collective salt farms], each family has a stake in it. In order to ensure fairness, the collective salt farms were managed by the Council of State, and the profits were distributed to the salt farmers according to their shares.

……

The interrogation of the rioters was conducted in a tense and orderly manner. Considering that many of them were the main laborers in their families, and that they did act irrationally only after being forced by Baden, most of them were admonished and then discharged to their homes, though carrying fines that they might not be able to pay enough for the rest of their lives.

The Court of Lords eventually locked up 50 men who could not be sentenced lightly, either for the crimes of looting or killing innocent people, or for leading the riots.

“My lord, this is the result of the punishment we have initially drawn up, of these 50 people, all of them are already in custody except for a man named Bishop who is nowhere to be found.”

Thomas, who was appointed as the chief judge of the lord’s court, presented the verdict to Paul.

“There are still people running away?”

“Yes, this person called Bishop is very suspicious, according to the accounts of the salts, this person is usually unprofessional and idle, but after the riot, he encouraged them to fight against the lord’s army to the end, and then disappeared after the battle, we suspect that there might be something wrong with him.”

“Well, let’s leave this to Cecil to investigate. I see that some of these people are still very young, not even 16 years old, so isn’t it a bit too heavy to just hang them or do decades of hard labor.”

Thomas said, “You are the lord and can decide their fate on your own.”

Paul mused, “About these people, let me reconsider.”

(End of chapter)