Chapter 420 — Questions and Answers
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
He asked the priest before him, who had regained the Holy Light, "Wright, what sort of group do you think the 'nobility' are?"
"The nobility..." Wright frowned. "They... are the owners and rulers of the land and the people, and at least in name, the protectors of all of it... Their power is immense; this kingdom basically runs upon their backs."
"Then do you think the 'nobility' are good or bad?"
This time it was Amber beside him who answered: "Bad, obviously—Wright's seen it with his own eyes."
"I am a noble too," Gaoyang said, looking at Amber with a half-smile. "As are Viscount Gran, who freed the slaves eleven years ago—now Viscountess Gran—and Viscount Andrew Leslie, who has accepted the Cecil Code and is preparing to swear allegiance. They are all nobles."
"Uh..." Amber blinked, scratching at her hair. "Well then... some are good and some are bad, I suppose."
"Yes. There are good nobles among them. But why does the group as a whole still rot and decay like this?"
Amber and Wright exchanged glances, seeming at a loss for a moment as to what Gaoyang was really driving at.
Fortunately, Gaoyang did not leave them puzzled for long. There were things he had long wanted to say to those close to him, and now the moment was right. He drew a slight breath and spoke his mind: "The nobility—or, to put it more strictly, the landed nobility under Ansell's current system—are the absolute owners of land and population, and the makers and executors of power. From the day of their birth, the nature of this group determined their way of survival: they hold nearly all resources, and possess absolute authority to use them. All commoners are nothing more than tenants of their resources—or even a part of those resources. The nobles do not engage in production, nor do they need to produce anything; they need only parasitize the land and the people, drawing sustenance from the latter...
"So of course they will never truly cherish or care about the lives and rights of commoners. And because their resources come from the land, the degree to which they care about the people is even less than the degree to which they care about their own land. Even when they occasionally put on a show of caring for the people, it amounts to no more than a man treasuring the coins in his pocket. They will protect their coins, but when the price is right, they can 'spend' those coins at any time.
"They style themselves the protectors of the people, and that too is a fact. In the savage years of pioneering, humanity had only limited resources with which to sustain a limited number of protectors. To survive, we had to concentrate vast resources in a few powerful individuals, letting those individuals safeguard the whole—and those powerful individuals were the first landed nobles. At least in that age, their existence ensured the survival and development of civilization. But after that age ended?
"No one can control the landed nobility, because they are at once the owners, the distributors, and the users of resources, and at once the makers, the executors, and the upholders of law. So they are bound to become a group beyond control, corrupt and degenerate—and, setting morality aside, even their 'corruption' cannot truly be called corruption. It is merely the natural change of a group swelling and growing in an environment rich in nourishment, just as a plant will keep growing in fertile soil."