"Oh, no. It’s a long-established administrative amanuensis. Dating from the seventeenth century again, actually. I imagine the connection is fairly direct: the state seeking to create and protect necessary infrastructure, sometimes against the wishes of fairly rowdy local landholders. The Civil War was something of a landmark moment in that discussion, I suppose: Magna Carta versus the divine right. The rights of the individual against the rights of supreme lordship. The former bounding the latter, and so on."