bookandnovel Chapter 49 Sniping
Chapter 49 Sniping
In the Kingdom of Rune, a nobleman's influence is directly proportional to the quantity and quality of his land. This is easy to understand: the more land a nobleman owns, the more money and resources he has, which translates into political influence.
At the same time, the monopoly on land also closed the channels for the lower class to move up to the upper class. After all, all the land in a country has an owner. What kind of noble is a noble without land? That's why life nobles like barons and knights came into being.
At the same time, this system also helps to stimulate people's enthusiasm for outward exploration and is conducive to the country's external expansion.
But all of this changed after the rise of Intis's Emperor Roselle. The Industrial Revolution changed people's lives and broke the aristocratic class's monopoly on wealth.
The creation of wealth no longer depends entirely on land, enabling some people to rapidly accumulate enormous wealth through industrial production.
In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, the nobility, relying on their advantage in controlling resources, managed every aspect of production and, through large-scale enclosure movements, caused many land-owning peasants to lose their land and be forced to move to the cities to become slaves in factories. The nobility, on the other hand, obtained various resources such as wool needed in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, as well as cheap labor. The nobles were very wealthy, which is why the Duke of Negan and some other nobles owned so much land.
However, more than a hundred years had passed since Russell initiated the Industrial Revolution, and the curse of "wealth not lasting beyond three generations" still plagued the aristocratic class. Moreover, more and more urban residents became capitalists and the middle class through the accumulation of wealth over several generations.
If a class becomes wealthy, it will naturally seek to improve its political status. For decades, the monopoly of politics by the nobles of the Kingdom of Rune has been continuously broken.
Finally, in order to ease the tensions between the upper and lower classes, William Augustus VI, the father of the current King George III, adopted a tough approach to complete parliamentary reforms and maintain the unity of the Kingdom of Loen.
It was his reforms during his reign that freed the Kingdom of Rune from its old constraints, defeated the Republic of Intis which inherited the legacy of Emperor Roselle, and enabled the Kingdom of Rune to once again stand at the top of the nations. This also made him the king, whose image is printed in the center of the 1-pound banknote of Rune, officially becoming a national symbol.
Decades ago, the aristocratic class was unwilling to accept losing some of their rights, and at the same time, they were worried that more and more people would use this opportunity to encroach on their rights.
Therefore, during the reforms, they proposed a law that required nobles to have a corresponding amount of land to be granted titles. If they did not have enough land, they would be demoted, and without land, they could not become hereditary nobles. This law was eventually passed under the strong impetus of the noble class.
The bill was originally enacted to seal the door with land, but decades of changes have shown that it has increasingly become a noose around the necks of the nobility.
As industrial levels continue to improve, capitalists accumulate wealth at an increasingly faster pace. Correspondingly, the corruption of the nobility is also accelerating. Many nobles go bankrupt due to failed investments and have no choice but to sell their ancestral lands, even at the cost of losing their titles, just to repay their debts.
In recent years, the New Party, which has received strong support from capitalists, has begun to emerge, while the Conservative Party, which represents the interests of the aristocracy, has become increasingly weak, even though it still holds most of the power.
Faced with this situation, the Duke of Negan proposed amending the provision in the original law that linked titles to the amount of land, changing the provision from applying to everyone to applying only to newly ennobled individuals.
In this way, old nobles would not be subject to such restrictions, and could freely sell land to raise funds without worrying about losing their titles. At the same time, they could sell their relatively worthless land to capitalists or bankers who were interested in obtaining titles, and try to get a good price.
The Duke of Negan had a well-thought-out plan, but Robert was not having his way. Ever since Robert pushed for the repeal of the Grain Act, the Duke of Negan and Robert had almost fallen out, and they had grown to dislike each other.
The recent lawsuit filed by members of the Horn family against Earl Akhova for illegally transferring the right of succession is definitely orchestrated by the Duke of Negan.
Robert, however, was not one to mince words. He would retaliate in kind. During this time, Robert pretended to be overwhelmed with problems, which made the Duke of Negan lower his guard. But just today, when the Duke of Negan had just introduced a bill in preparation for muddying things up and getting it passed, the Conservative MP whom Robert had arranged in advance suddenly turned against him.
When Parliament asked members to sign up to vote one by one, Conservative and New Party members stood up and cast their votes against the bill, which made the Duke of Negan's scalp tingle. Using his right as the bill's submitter, he withdrew the bill midway to avoid further embarrassment—the bill was rejected.
Today was a shocking day for Ruhnn's political scene. Robert Horn simultaneously rallied Conservative and New Party MPs to successfully thwart the Duke of Negan, demonstrating to everyone that he, Robert Horn, is not a pushover and that his leadership in repealing the Grain Act last year was not just luck.
His influence is slightly less than that of political heavyweights like the Duke of Negan or the Earl of Hall, and he cannot independently push for the passage of a bill, but he can prevent it from passing.
From this day forward, Robert Horne will have a veto in Parliament; no bill can pass without his approval.
Moreover, Robert demonstrated his influence in this way, making others more cautious when facing him in the future. Ultimately, it gave marginalized members of parliament more options, and those who wanted to change the status quo would actively gravitate towards Robert.
Listening to Robert proudly boasting about today's victory, Evan couldn't help but sigh inwardly, thinking that his older brother was no pushover!
At the same time, Evan also had doubts: how could Robert have such a great influence? If he had such a great influence before, how could Duke Negan, a veteran of the political arena, have been completely unaware and been successfully ambushed by Robert?
Robert noticed Evan's doubts and asked him:
"What's wrong? Was there anything I didn't understand?"
Evan didn't stand on ceremony and directly asked Robert for the answer.
Robert knew that Evan had discovered the problem, and he was overjoyed, laughing heartily:
"You're right, I don't actually have that much influence. I just made Duke Negan mistakenly believe I did, and that's how I intimidated him!"
"ah????"
Evan hadn't expected to get this answer.