Roland, disregarding whether Barov could accept it or not, just continued with giving his speech: “Back to the topic of setting up the Ministry of Agriculture, when the serfs began to farm their own land, it’s bound to happen that they will use various kinds of methods, for example how deep they will plow the soil will all be done differently.
This is an excellent opportunity for observation, so the Ministry of Agriculture should split all the farms into groups of six and each member of the ministry will record every step taken by his designated farmers. Things like how deep they plow, what kind of planting interval they use and so on. It will be necessary that they work on it in as detailed a manner as possible, and that all of them will get some measuring tools and be taught on how to use them.
“You mean we are going to measure their… contrast?” Barov was clearly old fashioned in some areas, but he was definitely a quick thinker overall.
“That’s right, for the first time, it was needless to care too much about the harvest. We will still maintain importing the food as we have been… furthermore, we will also start to use some new wheat seeds to make sure that no one has to starve anymore. The job of the Ministry of Agriculture is to find the best method to planting, and later they have to promote, teach and supervise the way in which wheat is planted in the future.
Roland didn’t know much about farming, but this did not prevent him from using a scientific approach to summarize a set of optimal solutions. With this program, both the expansion of the cultivated area, or to add several new kinds of seeds to try, would help him to raise the average output to a whole new level.
Barov nodded at first but then he hesitated and after a while, he finally asked, “Your Highness, there is one thing that I don’t understand, when the serfs are promoted to free people, why will you only charge them 20 % of their harvest as a tax? Even if you asked them to hand over 50 %, letting them keep 50 % for themselves, you would still be seen as extremely benevolent.”
“Because there is no meaning in hoarding all the money in the basement,” Roland explained, “When I need more than the 20 %, I will buy the rest of the food from them at a fixed price — in Border Town, the trade with food only belongs to the right of the Lord. They have to deliver all the food to the castle and will be paid for it. After some saving they will most likely want to buy things like cattle, iron tools, beef, cotton clothes, and good brick houses. And all of this can only be provided by me for the town’s people, if they want to buy food it will be the same thing for them, they can only buy it from the castle. In this way, the coin will still flow back into my pocket, but as long as it is cycling, it will be able to raise everyone’s standard of living. Are you able to follow me with this?”
Barov wore a frowning expression, it was clear that he was still caught up in processing this information.
Roland smiled and shook his head, “It isn’t a problem if you don’t understand it yet, you can go back and think about it later, at the moment it is more important that you follow my orders.”
Hearing this the assistant minister stood up as if he were in trance, but when he reached for the door, he suddenly looked back.
“Your highness, you just said you want to build two departments, what is the other one?”
“The Ministry of Education,” Roland replied, “However, for that I will be the one personally responsible.”
Chapter 139 The Devil’s Power
When Barov returned to his office in the Town Hall, he immediately closed the door behind himself.
My God, cold shivers were running down his spine, he immediately firmly grasped the God’s Stone of Retaliation hanging around his neck, once more starting to feel safe. It seems His Royal Highness really has become possessed by the devil. Previously he had only thought of it as a sort of crazy speculation, but now he was almost certainly, the one with whom he had just talked was definitely not the 4th Prince.
Barov could still accept his huge character changes with him becoming somewhat eccentric, but how was it possible that he would suddenly have so much new knowledge about topics he had never had any former contact with? Such a thing he had only heard of happening in myth, but in the legends, it was always God who had possessed a mortal body, moving to lead humanity out of their predicament. But since when did the Devil start loving to do the same thing?
If Roland Wimbledon acted like a king and engaged himself in the management of his territory (though that would become a challenging situation), Barov would not be too surprised to learn that the previous information of the 4th Prince was without learning or any skills turned out to be false, but his character still couldn’t be disguised. After all, it was always possible that someone had just secretly taught him how to govern a city or even a country.
But Barov had never heard anything about the ideas and programs coming out of the Prince’s mouth. Yet, he had previously worked for twenty years in the Capital’s City Hall, even becoming the finance minister, so he should have a deep knowledge about how to organize and operate a Town Hall. As a minister, he had had been in charge of many areas, and he even had made numerous secret deals before, but he had never betrayed his higher ups.
The King had issued a decree, that a minister could decide who would work under him. So, each minister had his own power, and they all ended up handling it differently. For example, the minister responsible for the defense of the King’s City had hundreds of knights and mercenary under his control. At the same time, those underground organization also had a lot of influence. When these forces began to rampage, they would most of the time be eying the criminals, but even as a noble it would soon become difficult to stay in the city. They could only wait for the king to place them into prison.
But this wasn’t only in the King’s City, other cities also had the same situation.
So, if I want to become a Lord or King, the most important thing I would need is a big aristocracy or others with an influential background.
If they did not have enough money to recruit any men, could it be that they had any other option that they could lean on? And the more people they controlled, the more they would be valued by others, after all so many people can’t be wrong, right?
But the Prince’s approach completely subverted Barov’s concept of how things worked. He was still the minister and still had his own apprentices, but everyone else was directly recruited and paid for by the Town Hall. In other words, even if he was to die, they could easily exchange him for a new person, or directly raise a person up from below him.
This was a completely new system to him, Barov was now sure of it, the Price was implementing a completely new political system for the Kingdom of Graycastle.
Some people may think that this was just some kind of wishful thinking on the part of Roland, or that Roland believed himself to be infallible. But Barov didn’t think so, he took a quill and recorded down all of His Highness’ requirements.
Looking at the plans, it seemed everything was intertwined, nothing was forgotten.
First, he had to manage the eat and drink for all project.
Barov naturally knew that with a stronger control over the people the instructions issued by the Lord would be executed faster. But doing it in this way, it would also greatly increase the workload for the management, from where was he meant to get all these people who would need to know how to read and write? Furthermore, this would also greatly burden the Lord’s own treasury, only a few Lords would be willing to do this.