Judge the exercise of power
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An imperious market warden demanded that traders stop speaking whenever he lifted a finger and obey every order immediately. The warden's high-handed seizure of a trader's covered stall ignored the trader's agreed right to use that space. The warden's tyrannical rule extended to punishing an entire row of merchants whenever one person questioned an instruction. The clerk recorded these incidents carefully, separating the published weighing requirement from the warden's personal demands and the harm caused by enforcing those demands.
When the imperious warden ordered the clerk to erase a trader's objection, she asked him to identify the rule authorizing that change. His high-handed response was to take the book without addressing the trader's rights or the clerk's responsibility to preserve the record. The council later examined the tyrannical pattern of arbitrary punishment across several market days. It heard from the affected merchants individually, so the investigation concerned specific conduct rather than a dispute over whether every official instruction was unwelcome.
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Original fictional passages for vocabulary practice.