The Shadow of Great Britain

Chapter 1280: Chapter 163: Secret Service Fund (Part 2)

And during the tumultuous five years that followed, Fouche repeatedly shifted between the Royalists and the Jacobins, and ultimately waited for the opportunity of ’meeting his wise ruler’.

In August 1799, General Napoleon, after achieving a grand victory in Egypt, secretly returned to Paris and had clandestine meetings with Talleyrand and Fouche.

What they actually discussed, probably only those involved know.

As outsiders, we only know that three months later Napoleon became the First Consul of the Republic, while Talleyrand was reinstated to his former position as Foreign Minister, and Fouche was appointed as Police Minister.

Upon officially taking office at the Voltaire Riverfront Road headquarters, Fouche’s first act as Police Minister was to ruthlessly suppress his former Jacobin colleagues and conduct stringent inspections of theaters, publishing houses, and newspapers to quell protests. To show determination, all dissenters were ordered to be executed.

Perhaps in intelligence work, paths inevitably converge, or maybe Fouche read about Britain’s successful experiences in books.

Therefore, this French intelligence chief quickly resurrected the long-lost encryption techniques elsewhere.

Although the National Assembly had once enacted a decree, stipulating that all postal officials must swear not to violate the privacy of personal communications.

Yet, for national security reasons, the letters of political exiles were excluded from this bill on May 9, 1793.

However, everyone knew that in France, law was law and enforcement was enforcement; the two cannot be confused.

The first country to violate the ”Declaration of Human Rights” was precisely France, which drafted it.

Hence, during Napoleon’s reign, all social communications were placed under Fouche’s surveillance.

Fouche even set up a special ’dark room’ adjacent to the postal sorting office for examining letters.

The ’dark room’ staff was often selected from the most astute and competent postal workers, who were arranged comprehensive training including mathematics, with outstanding ones even sent abroad for further studies. Thus, they could handle foreign language correspondence and also identify regional dialects, trendy vocabulary, rural slang, and abbreviations.

Under Fouche’s leadership, the ’dark room’ mastered the art of decoding each deception. It knew every chemical method well, acquired decoding methods from mathematical probability and grammatical analysis, could ingeniously modulate, soften wax, and re-harden it after it permeated the seal. After long-term study, even the hardest-to-crack codes eventually came to light.

More interestingly, to conceal the existence of this group, ’dark room’ members were immediately assigned other official positions of similar status upon employment.

And this was precisely what Arthur was doing at the Police Intelligence Department.

Noble souls each have their radiant colors, but sordid thoughts always share a repulsive odor.

If Fouche inherited Seluo’s intelligence thought, then Arthur clearly reclaimed the orthodoxy of spy work for Britain.

Concerning this former senior police officer enthusiastic about surveillance, Foreign Secretary Viscount Palmeston directly called this lad a genius, praising Arthur’s police research report sent back to London highly. However, compared to Viscount Palmeston, Prime Minister Count Grey and Home Secretary Viscount Melbourne had much more conservative attitudes.

Prime Minister Count Grey was not a realist; this was evident from his decades-long call for parliamentary reform and his firm support for abolition while in opposition.

To Count Grey, safeguarding freedom was not merely a slogan. Despite being constrained by practical factors, Count Grey’s thoughts were no longer as radical after last year’s London riot shock, and he was more willing to accept compromise solutions.

However, this does not mean he thought Arthur’s proposal was a good idea, even though it seemed very attractive.

As for Viscount Melbourne, he had always been a centrist within the Whig Party, with political views quite moderate among liberals, even aligning in many aspects with Tory Party’s Sir Peel. Yet, likewise, he felt Arthur’s proposal was too conservative.

If you covered up the name, he might even think the proposal’s author was the Duke of Wellington, or the Earl of Eldon, the Duke of Newcastle, and others.

As for Chancellor of the Exchequer Viscount Althorp, he firmly opposed the proposal.

But this was unrelated to his political inclination; his opposition mainly stemmed from the Treasury’s old traditions.

The Treasury’s stinginess opposes all proposals extracting money from their pockets, although most people feel at least nominally this money isn’t the Treasury’s but taxpayers’ taxes, the Treasury evidently held a non-mainstream view.

The Treasury believed, if you want to extract money from their pockets, you must give them money first. In other words, the Treasury demanded tax increases, and they even cited broadly pointing out: Fouche’s intelligence expenses mainly stemmed from heavy taxes imposed on gambling venues and brothels.

Therefore, if Parliament allowed the Treasury to increase taxes on these establishments, the Treasury would agree to expand and reorganize the intelligence system.

But it’s widely known, casinos and brothels in Britain belong to a grey area. Britain neither has laws stating these establishments are legal nor illegal, and has no systematic laws to manage or abolish these places.

Given there are no laws, naturally, there can be no taxes imposed on these places.