This is a change.
Under the coercion and inducement of the imperial court, the local people had no choice but to accept the custom of not binding feet.
Peng Yingshen, the magistrate of Wuqing County, used his salary to order a batch of full-length embroidered cotton shoes, which made most of the people in Wuqing County more willing to accept the behavior of letting go. This was considered to be a flexible behavior that was very good at taking advantage of human nature, so he got Received praise from Zhu Yijun.
Therefore, when the Ministry of Officials went to take him, he was specially appointed as an official to give Shizhong to replace Dai Guangqi, who was executed.
Ming Dynasty does not lack officials who can do things well.
Even though many Qingliu courtiers were executed due to the incident of burning the middle palace, the imperial court was still able to quickly select a large number of local people-friendly officials who were qualified enough to hold positions such as Kedao and Liubu to serve as officials in the capital.
Basically, they are still promoted to sergeants.
Who knows that the Ming Dynasty had a lot of Jinshi.
You must know that most of the Jinshis in each session are fellow Jinshis from the top three, and most of these fellow Jinshis can only hang around in the local area and waste their whole life.
Therefore, as long as the emperor does not neglect his duties and does not maliciously leave official positions vacant, there will be no shortage of people suitable for certain official positions in this land.
Even if the requirements are raised a bit, it still says that you have to be a Jinshi or pass the exam with distinction, and that's okay. There are many Jinshi bureaucrats in the Ming Dynasty who have outstanding abilities but can't wait for the opportunity to be promoted.
This is why today's noble families are far inferior to those of the Han and Tang Dynasties.
The cost of studying to become a civil servant has been greatly reduced.
A large number of common people and small landowners can also cultivate one or two scholars, resulting in people who want to be officials in the world like crucian carp crossing the river.
They are not afraid of fierce fighting within the court, but they are afraid that the court will not give them the opportunity to make progress.
Zhu Yijun personally was not afraid of killing the literati too harshly. What he was afraid of was that in the late Ming Dynasty, after the big gentry had annexed enough land, they would unite with several big gentry to monopolize the township discussions and even build a strong network of relationships in the officialdom. Later, he controlled the local government, and then committed widespread fraud in the examination hall. He used various means to monopolize the quota of students and candidates in the imperial examination, thus blocking the advancement of ordinary scholars.
According to statistics from later generations, regardless of the Ming and Qing dynasties, as the dynasties developed into the later stages, the proportion of Jinshi who came from ordinary people and landlords would gradually decline, even to a serious extent.
The same was true at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Because the road to advancement was gradually blocked, some students also rebelled, the so-called White-headed Army.
Logically speaking, as members of the ruling class, students should not rebel on their own, but it did happen in history.
Of course, Zhu Yijun did not dare to continue to mess up. After letting Shen Shixing and other ruling ministers who still cared about the common people see what the consequences would be if he, the emperor, messed up, he had to continue to work diligently.
Because Zhu Yijun could not predict how unbalanced the mentality of local officials would be if he, the emperor, continued to misbehave after seeing that he was not getting promoted; especially after seeing that his colleagues who were corrupt and broke the law were not dealt with at all, Will it make you more mentally unbalanced?
Will they completely lose the desire to protect the long-term interests of the entire landlord class, and start to act recklessly or even more wildly?
Therefore, Zhu Yijun naturally did not dare to fail like Wanli in history for more than 20 years.
He quickly approved the newly recruited Qingliu Daoist official from the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Although many Qingliu Dao officials have bad mouths, they are indeed a powerful tool for supervising the high officials in the court. After all, they are young and somewhat energetic, and they can curb the nepotism of the high officials in power.
Otherwise, Zhu Yuanzhang would not have allowed petty officials to take power in the first place.
The turmoil caused by the burning of the middle palace was actually a good thing for the court, because after that, a large number of new Qingliu Dao officials were basically implemented in the implementation of the new rites, that is, the ban on foot binding and abandoned infants, etc. A local people-friendly official who performed well.
These people's appointment as central admonishers will naturally make the advancement of the new rituals smoother.
"Your Majesty, to establish the new etiquette, we should re-draw the etiquette between the country and the people, officials and the people, people and the people, and the barbarians and the people. The most important thing now is the establishment of the new etiquette between the people and the people, and the barbarians and the people. .”
"To establish these two new types of etiquette, we must not only change the disadvantages of the old etiquette, that is, prohibiting foot binding and abandoning babies, but also clarify the concept that among the five ethical etiquette, fathers should be righteous and mothers should be kind!"
"Parents should not use the old rites to restrain their children, nor should they use the old rites to kill their children in vain. Life and death should be the right of the emperor. All the people in the country are the subjects of the emperor. The emperor should be kind and righteous, and he should not kill his people in vain."
When discussing the new rites, Xu Xuemo, the Minister of Rites, reported to Zhu Yijun the opinions on the construction of the new rites agreed upon by several of the ruling ministers in the political hall.
However, when Xu Xuemo said that the emperor should not kill his people in vain, he couldn't help but glance at Zhu Yijun.
Zhu Yijun was not angry.
First, he came from a later generation and was not so repelled by the request that the emperor respect his people's right to life;
Second, he also knew that if he wanted the Han people to love the Ming Dynasty, he, as the master of the Ming Dynasty, must first treat the Han people as his compatriots and let people know that the country and the country's monarch regarded them as human beings and did not treat them as human beings. Be like cattle, horses and grass.
Therefore, Zhu Yijun only said after hearing this: "I have always governed the country with benevolence. I never kill people easily, and I never kill people in vain! Parents and officials in the world must not kill people in vain. They should treat their subordinates with benevolence, and cannot ask their subordinates to treat their superiors with respect. The criminal law This aspect needs to be revised, not just emphasizing respect from the subordinates to the superiors, but also paying attention to the construction of benevolence from the superiors to the subordinates.”
"What your Majesty is saying is that I believe that the Ministry of Punishment should revise the criminal law and abolish the old law that parents kill their children with a stick, and change it to the death penalty for heinous crimes by hanging, so as to prevent them from continuing to harm their children."
"At the same time, each clan is not allowed to execute the younger members of the clan without authorization and replace the national law with the so-called clan rules."
"In addition, parents should encourage individuals to make choices based on their conscience. At least they should not use etiquette instead of law!"
"Although etiquette should exist in customs, the law must be in the hands of officials. Therefore, in the criminal law, for those who are punished by their parents for not obeying their parents' decisions, they should not be punished by the parents in the name of their children being unfilial and guilty, but should be punished because the parents are unkind. "
At this time, Yang Wei, the Minister of Punishment, followed suit.
Yang Wei was ideologically the same as Shen Shixing. He advocated the coexistence of Zhu and King, and even advocated promoting benevolence to the people, instead of only emphasizing father and son as stipulated in Neo-Confucianism, so he hoped to have certain restrictions on parents.
Of course, this is what will inevitably happen at this stage of restructuring. From the opening of the sea to encourage people to go overseas for business to the government recognizing King Zhu as his equal, it is destined that the new etiquette will reach a point where parents are also subject to certain restrictions.
After all, the institutional design and legal principles of the Ming Dynasty from top to bottom are all derived from the relationship between parents and children in ethical relationships.
What Xinli wants to do is to give children certain freedoms and rights.
Only when children in ethical relationships are freer can Han people be freer, and the personal dependence of Han people on landlords will be reduced, and more emerging citizen classes and working classes will emerge, which will further refine the grassroots of the entire Ming Empire.
By then, imperial power will be more thoroughly distributed to the countryside.
It is an unprecedented move to allow the Han people to reduce the personal constraints from their clans and parents and to make the citizen class stronger. It is also an inevitable phenomenon after the development of the commodity economy.
"Accurate!"
Zhu Yijun agreed and asked: "As for the relationship between the barbarians and the people, do we have to be polite to the barbarians?"
"Your Majesty, the barbarians are people who do not know how to be kings. They are afraid of power and have no morals. They should not be polite!"
"The disadvantage of the old rites is that they treat the barbarians with etiquette, but do not treat the barbarians with etiquette, which makes them inappropriate. Now we should correct the chaos and make the new etiquette only treat the people of the country with etiquette, not the barbarians, and treat the barbarians with etiquette. Discipline them with magic."
"After deliberation, I believe that the new rites will not be given to barbarians!"
Xu Xuemo, the Minister of Rites, said.
(End of chapter)
