They're not quite _that_ formal/tolerant about it, but (as per an earlier reply), it's bordering on being like that, in fact if not in law. If you get robbed in a "bad" part of the city at a "suspiciously late" hour by "known tongmembers", you get little sympathy from the local legalists, who are more likely to start to investigate what _you_, a stranger, were up to in such disreputable circumstances.
> Additionaly the licences could be limitted in number & distributed through
> the heads of the tongs (thereby bringing them within the holy buerocracy)
Not officially, though their degree of internal organisation may ape it to a large degree. And if more tongs start operating in an area than is good for 'stability', drastic action is taken until order is restored.
The Kralori attitude is that you can't perfect _all_ of the world, at least not all at once; their priority is to maintain that which is Splendid and Ordered as it is now, and slowly improve it as appropriate. If parts of the cosmos are barbaric, let them fester behind the mountains. If some are ineducable in their folly, dump them into Bliss in Ignorance to rot in their unenlightenment. If some peasants wish to sacrifice their bodies and minds to fruitless criminality, and others are too dim to avoid becoming the victims thereof, that can be tolerated so long as it stays in the slums.
Slan,
Alex.
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