NovelsAlex Chapter 1106 What is the Legal System
Chapter 1106 What is the Legal System
Chapter 1106 What is the Legal System
"The Emperor is the manager, governing the people on behalf of God. And all officials are public tools..." Old Zhu's face was uncertain.
This is indeed a brand new theory. With Lao Zhu's intelligence, he can naturally see the potential in this theory...
Although this set of arguments is only a framework now... However, this framework has framed everything in the world within the "public opinion". If it is allowed to develop, it will be even more terrifying than Dong Zhongshu's Three Strategies of Heaven and Man!
During the Zhou Dynasty, the emperor ruled the world according to the Zhou Li. In fact, the Zhou Li also took the path of deifying the emperor. The emperor was supreme and ruled the people on behalf of heaven. Duke Zhou shaped the emperor into a mysterious and powerful symbol, and consolidated the territory of the Zhou Dynasty through enfeoffment... The Zhou emperor was high above, and the princes checked each other. Even if the emperor did nothing, the world of the Zhou Dynasty could, to a certain extent, be stable and long-lasting.
But later, because of the suicidal behavior of King You of Zhou and others, the emperor's lofty status was trampled upon, and the mysterious veil bestowed on the emperor by Zhou Li was unveiled.
As a result, rituals and music collapsed, the Zhou Dynasty's legal system was broken, and the war results of the Spring and Autumn Period came.
Until the rise of Qin Shi Huang, without Qin Shi Huang, there would be no unified China... This is absolutely true and there is nothing wrong with it. No matter how we praise the First Emperor, it is not an exaggeration.
But we should not forget that the Qin Dynasty perished in the second generation and unified the world for only fifteen years. After the Qin Dynasty, Xiang Yu enfeoffed the princes and divided the Central Plains into even more fragmented pieces than during the Warring States Period.
If Xiang Yu had continued on his path, the brief unification of China might have been like the Maurya Dynasty.
Neither Qin Shihuang nor Xiang Yu re-established a new and legitimate legal system to rule the world.
At this time, it was Liu Bang who stood up and inherited the Qin Dynasty's foundation. The Han Dynasty inherited the Qin system, shouldered the burden of Zulong, and continued to complete the unfinished business of Zulong... After the efforts of successive kings in the early Han Dynasty, the situation of great unity was finally maintained, and it lasted for hundreds of years.
It is also because of this that hundreds of millions of people in the Central Plains consider themselves Han people. This alone shows that the achievements of the Liu family are in no way inferior to those of the First Emperor.
However, Liu Bang started out as a village headman, and it was not possible for him to establish a legal system all at once. In the early days of the Han Dynasty, which had no legal system, the Han Dynasty also faced danger and destruction several times: after Liu Bang established the country, he encountered a rebellion by a king of a different surname, and the invasion of the Huns. Later, the power of the foreign relatives was monopolized, and the Lu family was in power. Even during the reign of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing, the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms broke out...
The emperor's majesty is a far cry from that during the heyday of the Zhou Dynasty.
The world at the beginning of the Han Dynasty was in chaos. It was extremely difficult to maintain a unified situation!
At this time, Emperor Wu of Han, Liu Che, became the emperor of the world.
Liu Che worked hard to govern the country and fight against the Huns. Not only did he eliminate all hidden dangers that threatened the unification of the country, he also pushed the Central Plains dynasty to a new peak. The fact that he was on par with the Qin Emperor and Han Emperor was the greatest affirmation of him.
But compared with the military achievements of Emperor Wu of Han, the civil governance of the Han Dynasty was not inferior to that of his predecessors, because a Confucian scholar stood up and proposed the Three Strategies of Heaven and Man, which mobilized the emperor to abolish all schools of thought and respect Confucianism alone.
It was not until this time that the unified China truly had its legal system!
Dong Zhongshu advocated the interaction between heaven and man, the divine right of kings, the elimination of all schools of thought, the respect for Confucianism alone, and the promotion of great unification. He emphasized respecting the king and expelling the barbarians... His ideas provided the best theoretical basis for Emperor Wu of Han, who extended favors to the princes, attacked the Huns, and the Han Dynasty reached its peak of prosperity.
At this point, the unification of the feudal dynasty had a real ideological foundation.
Regardless of whether Confucianism is the only doctrine that should be respected is a good idea or not, the fact is that for more than a thousand years since the Han Dynasty, no matter which dynasties changed, the same framework was continued, and everyone just made some modifications to it.
It was not until the Song Dynasty that the country, which had lasted for three hundred years, fell into the hands of the Yuan court, and the Han land fell into the hands of barbarians... After nearly a hundred years of painful oppression, a red scarf finally rose between the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, and a peasant of humble origin took up arms and started a war to restore the old mountains and rivers.
Countless heroes from north to south of the Yellow River, east to west of the Huai River, and up and down the Yangtze River joined this massive uprising. Some called for the restoration of the Song Dynasty.
Now that the Yuan Dynasty has fallen, the Zhu family has inherited the legal system that has been passed down since the time of Emperor Wu of Han.
This legal system is precious, but it also has fatal flaws. From the Han Dynasty to the present, there has never been a dynasty that can last forever. After a few hundred years, the legal system will change hands... Even though Zhu and Zhu Su knew in advance how the Ming Dynasty would perish in the future, they made many targeted repairs and took many measures.
However, they still could not be sure that the Ming Dynasty would continue forever.
The system of a dynasty cannot last forever. Every time a dynasty changes, the system will face a reshuffle... But the legal system has been passed down from the time of Emperor Wu of Han to the present day, and has hardly been interrupted. If the Ming Dynasty can be tied to the legal system, it may be a new idea.
What is the legal system? The legal system is the basis for the emperor to govern the country.
For example, Dong Zhongshu summarized a new legal system for Emperor Wu of Han amidst the many chaos from the Spring and Autumn Period to the early Han Dynasty.
If the Ming Dynasty wanted to change its legal system, it should also summarize new rules from the chaos from the Han to Yuan dynasties.
What is the relationship between the emperor, court officials, and the people?
The Zhao Song Dynasty fell, the Yuan Dynasty collapsed... What should we learn from these hundreds of years of painful lessons?
Emperor, in what name should you govern the world?
This series of grand questions tortures the smart people of the time... Liu Bowen, Song Lian, and even the current Zhu Yuanzhang, may have thought about this before. They hesitated and struggled, and had no confidence in the future.
Finally, it was decided to make some modifications to the existing legal system and use it as is… After all, the existing legal system has been proven and can guarantee the emperor's supremacy for at least a few hundred years.
Ensure the rationality of the "family empire".
The Ming Dynasty opened up a new era, but it seemed to be just a ghost of other feudal dynasties. This new dynasty had one foot in the new era while the other foot was still struggling in the quagmire of the old era.
If we follow the original history, Zhu Yuanzhang had great difficulty in overthrowing the Yuan Dynasty, but in the end, he still chose the original legal system passed down from the era of Emperor Wu of Han.
The script of the Ming Dynasty was almost the same as that of all previous dynasties: it continued to go from being strong to being peaceful and prosperous.
There were constant party struggles, reforms could not be implemented, the emperor became more and more incompetent, the barbarians on the border rose up, and eventually the country was destroyed miserably... It's time to relive the old days!
In the end how to do?
In history, after experiencing the painful lesson of mountains of bones, thinkers in the late Ming Dynasty began to reflect thoroughly on what a true emperor should be like and why the Ming Dynasty perished.
After countless days and nights of painstaking thinking, someone wrote Mingyi Daifanglu, and proposed Yuan Jun... At the beginning of life, everyone is selfish, and everyone is self-interested; there are public benefits in the world, but no one promotes them, and there are public harms, but no one eliminates them. There are people who do not consider their own benefits as benefits, but let the world benefit from them; they do not consider their own harm as harm, but let the world be free from harm; this person must be more diligent than the people in the world...
In ancient times, due to selfishness, no one would do things that would benefit everyone, and no one dared to stand up for bad things that would harm everyone's interests... It was not until the birth of the ancient wise kings that they disregarded personal gains and losses, promoted benefits and eliminated disadvantages, and governed the people with a thousand times more diligence that the Three Dynasties came into being.
Later rulers will not do so. They will think that the power over the benefits and harms of the world all comes from me, and that I can take all the benefits of the world for myself and all the harms of the world for others, and that this is also acceptable; so that people in the world will not dare to be selfish or self-interested, and will regard my great selfishness as the great public good of the world.
The monarchs after three generations regarded the world as their private property, monopolized all the benefits of the world, treated the people of the world as guests and themselves as the masters. It was not enough for one person to be the emperor, but he also passed the throne to his children and grandchildren, squeezed the marrow of the people of the world, and separated the children of the world. Is this still the true way of being a monarch?
This is the lesson learned from blood and tears by some survivors after the demise of the Ming Dynasty.
What is the true way to be a king?
How should the world be governed?
During the great Ming Dynasty, perhaps no one could figure it out. And in the three hundred years after the Ming Dynasty, under the literary inquisition of the Qing Dynasty, no one dared to think about it.
And now, Zhu Su gave Lao Zhu an alternative answer.
Although the future king will inherit the Mandate of Heaven, the Mandate of Heaven is the human heart, and the human heart is peace and happiness.
The land of the world is not the private property of the emperor, but is received from heaven and distributed to the people.
The key to the future world lies in peace and happiness!
Because Zhu expelled the Tartars and brought peace to the people of the world, the Zhu family has the destiny!
Under the Mandate of Heaven, the emperor has the right to hand over his power to officials and let the officials govern the world for him...Officials are public instruments that hold power!
And power comes from the emperor! Because the emperor exists to make the people happy!
It is only natural for the emperor to use this power for this purpose!
If the framework of this legal system is fully formed, it can be summarized into golden rules for the next hundred years, or even passed down longer... As long as Zhu, the founding emperor, still has supreme control over the country and promotes the implementation of this set of propositions, the legal system of the Ming Dynasty will be very different from those dynasties.
This is a brand new road!
Zhu Su, who proposed this legal system, will be deified like Dong Zhongshu... A saint whose achievements far exceed Zhu Xi's is about to rise.
This matter is really too important.
"If, in the future, the people don't want a descendant of my Zhu family to be the emperor..." Old Zhu frowned and expressed his biggest worry about this legal system.
"That means that the emperor has made the people's lives miserable. The people have no other way out but to attack my Zhu family." Zhu Su said solemnly.
"Even if we follow the original legal system, do you think that my Zhu family can control the world's divine weapons under such circumstances?"
"Ever since Chen Sheng and Wu Guang shouted 'Are kings, dukes, generals and ministers of different species?', the Chinese people will never become callous and helpless prey."
"Father, you wanted to compile household registration and restrict the movement of the people. You hoped that the Ming Dynasty would become a stagnant pool of water from now on, thinking that this would be the foundation for eternity. But you also know the final result..."
"Have Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong and others stopped roaming around because of the household registration laws of the Ming Dynasty? Or do you want to castrate the blood of the people? Sindhu now also has our Ming Dynasty concession, you should also know what the situation is like over there."
"Even though the caste system is deeply rooted and the people are heartless... there is still no long-term stable regime in Sindhu. Because the people are heartless, anyone can come and step on them!"
"Even the people are numb and indifferent. The whole country is like a cesspool... China must not fall into such a situation!"
Old Zhu fell silent again. What Zhu Su said was true. Even though Dong Zhongshu’s legal system deliberately deified the emperor and made him the supreme being... so what?
The people can no longer live, and they dare to poke a hole in the sky! What about the emperor?
The emperor is supreme and cannot be disobeyed. When the order truly collapses, it will become just a joke.
"If that's the case, it would be better to destroy this so-called 'supreme' legal system and simply let the emperor have the legal system by 'governing the people', so that heaven and man can be completely united."
"If you want to maintain the rule of law, you must take the people into consideration... In this way, even if the emperor is incompetent and willful, there will always be a string in his heart, and that string is the people."
"Let future kings never forget the people, no matter what! Because their legal system essentially comes from the people!"
Zhu Su said.
(End of this chapter)