"I am not sure I see the value of a constitution in restricting what the government may do, rather than just in laying out how the government is formed and decides things." Though presumably she's convinced of the merits at some point. She is not weighting that very heavily before she's heard the arguments for it though, lest she wind up counting the arguments twice.

"I don't think one could have a republican government without some set of formal principles in place to prevent it from descending into tyranny again. Positions of leadership are naturally attractive for those of want power; those who want power tend to seize more of it. The better part of designing a system of government is in deciding how to stop them without entirely eliminating their ability to actually govern. As for what those principles should be – 

– Well, I personally wouldn't proscribe offensive war, though of course I'd be biased, having spent most of my adult life conducting one. I wouldn't make it simple to declare – one wants consensus, reflection – but, yes, in the end I'd let the people choose. In the main, I think they'd choose well. Wars serve tyrants who want to add to their glory more than the poor conscripts who fight them." 

"We've been fighting an offensive war, too, or at least one that it would be hard to permit by law while forbidding all offensive wars."

"I think I'd live with having tied the Empire's hands until Tar-Baphon started it, but not of course with the continued existence of Cheliax in the power of Hell. I ...do not particularly think that people choose well about when and whether to go to war, if they're voting to send others off to fight rather than choosing whether to fight themselves...even in the latter case, really, but especially in the former. The war with Tar-Baphon is not in fact very popular in Taldor and I doubt would win a vote."

"One could argue that the levée en masse is a necessary institution to ensure peace is a free society – I don't know if I agree, but I'd listen. But now it sounds like you're not so much worried that a voting public will make war without cause than that they'll not declare war for only and all the causes you think just."

"I think I expect conquest to be popular out of all proportion to how often it's warranted, and defense against any kind of subtle or complicated threat to be unpopular until it's too late to do anything about it. It really doesn't seem like substantive freedom, to me, to be governed in a fashion that significantly increases the probability of conquest by Tar-Baphon, and the freedom to conquer other peoples I'm a little hesitant about treating as a positive good."

"And I expect that a state in which conscript soldiers can vote would be reluctant to conquer and quick to defend – but we both agree that's beside the point. We might decide that in our Republic offensive wars are forbidden. We might decide that the power to declare war rests with the legislature and isn't decided by popular referendum – in fact, that's how it was in Galt and is in Andoran. We might give the power to a special minister who's required to retire completely from public life if they should ever exercise it. There are a million things we might do without giving up on a republic altogether." 

"I think I agree with Elie that I expect conquest to be unpopular, if you are surveying the whole of a country including those populations from which the army is drawn... But apart from that question of fact, I think there's a subtler disagreement I'd like to unravel. You said you don't think it's a substantive freedom, to be governed in a way that increases the chance of conquest by Tar-Baphon, but it seems to me that that might, in fact be a substantive freedom. There's a distinction we can draw, between a form of government making the people subject to it more free and making the people better governed, especially when 'better governed' is defined with regard to a narrow problem like defending against Tar-Baphon.

As an extreme case, we could imagine a family of settlers on the Varisian frontier; they pay no taxes, they will not be conscripted to fight in any wars, they have the use of all the land they can tame. Suppose, even, that they have the means to return to the empire proper if they please. They seem, in a sense, very free. But there is no army to protect them from monsters or raiders or bandits, and if they have a quarrel with their neighbors there is no magistrate to sort it out. If Tar-Baphon takes an interest in their lands they don't stand a chance. I would say that they are poorly governed, and will probably be much the worse for it if none of them are great heroes.

Or, in microcosm, we might imagine a single man, a free farmer, say. He owns some good land, but let him be very lazy. If the man is geased appropriately, he will work his fields every day, and bring in good harvests, and may marry well and have many children. If he is not, he will neglect his fields, and bring in poor harvests, and no woman would have him, and he will become a pauper. It seems that he is much better off if he is so geased but it would be very hard to say that he is more free!"

"That one I'll grant you. Or, at least, he might choose freely to be geased, and I'd say the choice makes him more free, but certainly if you do it to him over his objections he is less so. The case of governance seems different because  - so, approximately no one prefers the rule of Tar-Baphon to the rule of the Empire because they actually have an eccentric preference for being undead. The reason the war is unpopular is because it is very hard to evaluate whether or not the war is necessary, and whether or not the war is being efficiently conducted. The case I can make for fighting Tar-Baphon is not particularly more convincing to a farmer than the case Porthmos can make for fighting Qadira. It happens I think that losing one of those wars will lead to the eternal slavery of everyone in the world and losing the other will mean that a disputed province changes hands for the twenty-fourth time, but I believe that for reasons that are hard to verify if you are a farmer, or even if you are an Opparan nobleman.

It is a meaningful freedom, to decide you'd rather pay fewer taxes and risk being enslaved; it seems a less meaningful one, to be fine with the taxes to avoid the being enslaved, but to be obliged instead of paying the taxes and not being enslaved to decide which of a dozen untrustworthy merchants claiming to sell this service you will pay to provide it; and even less of one, to have all your neighbors pick a merchant and then be subject to the competence and benevolence of whoever persuaded the most of your countrymen. If a process involves lots and lots of input but doesn't reliably produce conditions where you can get the thing that you want, it seems eccentric to me to call that freedom."

"It seems rather strange to me to posit a system of government that gives people what they want without ever asking them what that might be."

"It seems strange to me to treat a ballot for who will rule them as the only or best way to ask people what they want! You could go out and survey them! You could save the trouble of doing that by asking a god or a prophecy the result you'd get if you did! You could ask one in every hundred, or send everyone in government out on rotations with responsibilities that bring them in contact with it! "

"Certainly. And I don't think the vote is sufficient to ensure a well-informed government. It's simply that I doubt any ruler will maintain a commitment to put the needs of the people first if their own power doesn't depend on it. Why would they? It's so much easier to do anything else at all. Lastwall gives its people consistent laws and the ability to operate a small farm without particularly backbreaking tithes and – oh, not peace, but a series of never-ending wars that don't interrupt the course of ordinary lliving. Those are all fine things and a great many people might want them. But their council doesn't know – and I cannot imagine that they care – if their subjects should ever prefer something different."

"Why do you imagine that they wouldn't care?"

"If they do care, I'd think they'd make some effort to find out. Polling or representatives on mission or anyt of the things you've mentioned. And when I imagine suggesting it to any of them before last year, they'd say they have more important priorities. How can you justify spending your gold on some sop to the masses when you've got Tar-Baphon and the Worldwound and Cheliax to worry about? And the masses don't complain, anyway, so what concerns could they have?"

"Hmmm, 'we have more important priorities' is - not what I think of as not caring. There are a lot of things that matter - even matter a great deal - but are not reasonable priorities if Hell is running the Empire. If they never checked at any point in nine hundred years that's a stronger argument. I would expect lots of work on that in peacetime. I have some work like that planned myself for peacetime."

"I haven't made a careful study of what they've been doing for the past nine hundred years. I don't have any particular reason to believe that it was much different." 

He does, actually, now that he thinks about it – they might have made more use of the Church of Aroden. Then again, that's not really to Lastwall's credit, is it? 

"Of course I'm in perfect agreement that the empire being run by Hell matters much more than the fate of civilians in Lastwall. That's one of the reasons I have no interest in participating in the government of Lastwall, or indeed anywhere else. To work against the will of the people to send them to die in a war they would not choose is a very grave wrong. I've done it, and I'm not sure I regret it, but it's a wrong all the same, and I think it disqualifies me from holding any office of any kind. 

Besides, your church helped us in the war against Hell, but the government of Lastwall didn't." 

"That makes more sense to me given what you've just said! The government of Lastwall does not seem like necessarily the right instrument for that fight, especially if they are still supposed to stand watch over Gallowspire. Partially for the reason you name - that the work of improving the world in general should be done through the church more than through the country, though I think I hold that more weakly than you do - and partially because organizations dedicated to the defense of the world against a shared threat, where they also go to war, either endanger the world or risk being the beneficiary of their enemies' unwillingness to stoop to that."

"If that's so, why make Lastwall the country responsible for holding the seal on Tar-Baphon? 

...But that's not fair. You haven't done it yet."

"I can guess, though. Because the alternative is to make it not a country. Or to fight a war with the Empire."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"I do not have a free hand to found a country governed purely by principles I approve of on the land the Crusade conquered, and separately found an organization which keeps watch on Gallowspire and is funded by - my hoped-for Church, I suppose? I might, if there is a necessity for an organization that keeps watch on Gallowspire, be able to convince the Emperor it is not a dire insult nor a dangerous precedent to arrange an independent polity dedicated to this purpose, it being very evident that being an Imperial province wouldn't be conducive to it."

"I'm curious what sort of country you'd like to found if you didn't have to worry about Gallowspire."

"Hmmm, I suppose there's a bit of a question as to whether the responsibility actually diminishes, or enhances, the government's ability to do all the other things I've said I care about. It's a burden, of course, but it's also insulation against war. But of course I'd have them freer to decide what the highest priority is, if I could, even if it is hard to imagine a situation where it would not be a top priority to keep Tar-Baphon contained."

"I think I'd like the rulers of Lastwall more if I believed that to them that lack of freedom was a tragic but necessary sacrifice – or, really, if I believed that they'd thought about it at all."

"It seems unsurprising to me. I think that if people in Lastwall are free to leave, those who wish they were doing something other than guarding Tar-Baphon's prison would be more likely to go elsewhere and do that rather than join Lastwall's leadership. And most people tend not to acutely feel the absence of freedoms that they never had."