After Gu Yuncheng said that, he sat on the sliding pole and returned home in despair.
He originally planned to stop by Donglin Academy to visit, but he is too lazy to go now.
As a traditional scholar-official, Gu Yuncheng was naturally a little repelled by such new things.
only.
On the way back, Gu Yuncheng saw several tenants of his family sitting leisurely on the big bluestone by the stream, chatting about household matters, and comparing their children's test scores.
Among them, there was a tenant named Fangyuan who was originally a boy of the Gu family he had grown up with.
Fangyuan even mentioned at this moment that his daughter got double hundred points in the girls' school, showing a proud look on his face.
This made Gu Yuncheng, a traditional scholar-bureaucrat, even more unacceptable, especially since his former servant, Xiao Fangyuan, was mentioning this matter and was proud of his daughter's good reading.
"shameless!"
"It was for nothing that I studied Cheng and Zhu Zhi's studies for so many years."
Gu Yuncheng cursed a few times, then asked Fangyuan and the others:
"You are not in the fields at this time, what are you doing here?"
"Why do you ask?"
"We are no longer your slaves. We are all hired. We only need to pay enough rent every year. Do we still have to obey your orders?"
At this time, Fangyuan replied with a smile and then asked Gu Yuncheng.
Gu Yuncheng felt a little disappointed after hearing this, and then said:
"You really don't call me 'Master' anymore now."
Fangyuan still smiled and said: "I have already left the house, it is not appropriate to call me master again!"
In order to retain some tenants, the Gu family continued to farm their own land, especially those with rich farming skills and experience, and indeed changed many domestic tenants to the employment system.
In other words, these tenants are no longer tenant slaves of the Gu family, but citizens of the Ming Dynasty with official household registration. This means that they have no personal dependence on the Gu family and only need to pay enough land rent every year according to the deed. .
The landlord, the Gu family, cannot not only collect land rent, but also ask the tenants who have changed to the employment system to do work for him.
Gu Yuncheng naturally had to admit this result.
However, he felt inexplicably a little disappointed now, and he could only watch helplessly as these tenants idled by the stream after finishing their farm work, doing nothing.
"correct!"
"I have to tell you that next month, the emperor will return to Beijing to finish his southern tour, so I and a few brothers have agreed to see the emperor off together and have fun in Nandu."
"It's just that if you want to call someone, you won't be able to call me. If you still need to run errands, remember to find someone else."
At this moment, Fangyuan suddenly talked about something else.
Gu Yuncheng was greatly surprised after hearing this: "What did you say, you are going to Nandu?"
Gu Yuncheng said and asked: "You are a tenant slave who left my house. Why are you going to Nandu for fun? Your Majesty still needs you to send him as a gift?"
"Didn't I leave the house?"
"As long as I pay enough rent, you care where I go?!"
"Besides, a monk who can run away cannot run away from the temple. I have a family and a small child here, and you are still worried that I will not be able to pay the rent. I am just telling you out of kindness to save you from getting used to bossing me around again!"
"Logically, if you order me, I shouldn't run errands for you. For the sake of growing up together, I thought it would be idle to be idle, so I will run errands for you. But this does not mean that I It’s time to run errands for you now.”
"You can't be unreasonable."
Fangyuan spoke.
Gu Yuncheng couldn't help but said: "Can you please not go? I'm used to bossing you around. I don't trust others, so I'll give you money."
"You can't even give me money. I have to go after I collect all the grain."
Fangyuan replied.
"you!"
Gu Yuncheng pointed at Fangyuan, but couldn't do anything about Fangyuan for a while, and finally said:
"Go early and come back early. The road will be safe. Also, there are many tricks to deceive people in Nandu, so be careful!"
Fangyuan said "hmm".
Gu Yuncheng returned home even more depressed.
As an upper-class person who had been accustomed to using Fangyuan as an arm and finger since he was a child, he was really not used to the feeling that he could no longer control the servants he had used to do as he pleased.
For a moment, he was furious, but had nowhere to vent.
As soon as Gu Yuncheng came back, his brother Gu Xingcheng came over:
"What I just learned is that the third child in your family signed up to be an official escort on the railway. He said that he did not want to learn from Confucius, Mencius, Cheng and Zhu. He just wanted to see what the railway was like. You can discipline him personally. I, as an uncle, will not Intervened."
"Is this happening?"
Gu Yuncheng asked in astonishment, then slapped the table hard:
"This traitor!"
"Come here, bring him immediately and tie him with a rope! Then open the ancestral hall. I will personally beat him to death and tell him to go see some railway. He does not learn the principles of the saints and betrays the family motto!"
"yes!"
Gu Yuncheng, who was originally angry, suddenly seemed to have found an outlet to vent his anger.
In his opinion, it is natural for me to beat my son, so he doesn’t need to worry about the new gift. After all, my son can’t really dare to sue me, right?
As a result, Gu Yuncheng's son Gu Jie was severely beaten.
But Gu Yuncheng did not beat Gu Jie to death, but only broke Gu Jie's legs.
It wasn't that Gu Yuncheng was unwilling to kill him in the end, but that his family and elders came to persuade him, so he had no choice but to give up in the end.
Otherwise, Gu Jie would not have his legs broken.
Although Gu Yuncheng did not beat Gu Jie to death in the end, Gu Jie had no intention of giving up.
As a young man, he was more exposed to many new ideas and new etiquette than Gu Yuncheng.
Therefore, on the eve of Zhu Yijun's southern tour, Gu Jie had someone quietly carry him to Nandu, where he filed an imperial complaint against Zhu Yijun, accusing his father of being unkind and violating the new etiquette, and beating him until both of his legs were broken. To challenge the patriarchy.
After receiving Gu Jie's complaint, Zhu Yijun did not hesitate, but immediately ordered: "The order is issued to arrest Gu Yuncheng! This man is unworthy of being a father and must be dealt with severely!"
"Obviously when we first established the new rites, I had already issued an edict stating that the fault of the old rites was that those who formulated the old rites misinterpreted the Three Cardinal Principles and the Five Constant Rules. They only emphasized the power of the father and did not emphasize the righteousness of the father. As a result, killing a son is like killing a slave. As a result, father and son are like masters and servants, and all Han people in the world are like slaves. In this way, servility grows and spreads, leading to the decline of the country and the weakening of the people!"
"Now that Gu Yuncheng is a scholar-bureaucrat, he is still so ignorant and uses the old rites and dross to discipline his son. It is simply abominable!"
"So, once it is proven that he has the motive to kill his son, he will be exiled to Luzon or Burma and will never be pardoned!"
As an emperor who wanted to strengthen the country and enrich the people and develop capitalism, Zhu Yijun would naturally not allow Gu Yuncheng's method of disciplining his son to exist.
Even because of this, Zhu Yijun was very willing to see this kind of situation where a son sued his father, and regarded this as a good manifestation of resisting the old etiquette.
Moreover, Zhu Yijun also ordered Gu Jie to be treated in the inner court hospital and rewarded with money.
As for Gu Yuncheng, it didn't take long for him to meet the Jin Yiwei who came to pick him up, and he also found out that his son had sued him.
This made Gu Yuncheng doubly sad, and he shed tears on the spot and said:
"It's a pity that I didn't raise a good son in my life, so I was so disobedient and unfilial that I sued my own father!"
As Gu Yuncheng spoke, he couldn't help but look up to the sky and shout: "Your Majesty, if you indulge that rebellious son so much, aren't you afraid that he will dare to sue his father today and kill the king tomorrow?!"
The old rites have been praised by many emperors in history, especially those of the Qing Dynasty. The reason is that the old rites really facilitated the emperor to rule alone and enslave the people of the world.
But old rites, like other ideas, also have a lifespan and will decline after reaching a certain level of civilization.
Because any idea must match the production relations of the entire society.
If it was in the early Ming Dynasty, when the degree of land annexation in the world was not high, there were fewer people and more land, a lot of waste was waiting to be developed, and commerce was not developed, Zhu Yijun promised to maintain the old rituals so that he could be the master of the world.
But now the Ming Dynasty has developed for more than two hundred years. The land has been highly concentrated in the hands of big bureaucrats and landowners. Business has been so developed that there are a large number of merchants who are as wealthy as the country. Moreover, most of the wealthy merchants have the background of big bureaucrats and landowners. .
Therefore, if Zhu Yijun continues to emphasize the old etiquette at this time, it will only further weaken the country and the people. Only big bureaucrats and big landlords will continue to expand, and until the people are further weakened, the country is further weakened, until the whole country is weakened by one person. Completely occupied by alien races whose population is less than the native population.
Because the old rites essentially cultivate people's servility and facilitate cannibalism, in the end, if they want the old rites to continue to exist, the only way for the old rites to continue to exist is if the entire nation is enslaved.
And if the aliens invade and become the masters of the entire Han people, in order to keep the emperor from being a slave and the old rites continue to exist, then most of the invading aliens will also become slaves, and then they will be integrated into a new servile system. Then the whole nation will continue to be weak and continue to be plundered by new foreign forces. Then the whole family will continue to become the slaves of foreign forces, and they will be proud of being the slaves of foreign forces.
Zhu Yijun naturally can no longer choose this way.
Because he knew that if he made this choice again, he would only end up being treated like a slave by the foreign invaders, and even wanted to be a slave but couldn't.
For example, in history, after Hongguang Zhu Yousong fell into the hands of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, he begged to be a tombkeeper guarding the Xiaoling Tomb, but he was still not allowed and was killed.
Moreover, it will inevitably appear in human society with industrialization.
The decline of old rituals is inevitable.
Not only the old rites, but also the decline of the status of Confucianism as a whole is something that is difficult to prevent.
Even the entire social sciences will be relatively weakened due to the rapid improvement in the status of natural sciences following the emergence of industrialization.
Zhu Yijun could choose not to start industrialization in order to maintain the old rites.
But in this case, it will be other countries that start industrialization.
Then the future of the entire nation will pay for the current selfishness of his emperor.
What's more.
Now, even if Zhu Yijun wants to be so selfish that he only treats himself as a human being and does not treat other members of his clan as human beings, he will most likely end up hanging himself or being strangled to death by a bowstring.
Therefore, Zhu Yijun could only take the initiative to abandon the old rituals, adapt to the times, let the Ming Dynasty take the lead in industrialization, and become an emperor who advocates new rituals in the new era.
Although the Ming Dynasty's geographical and other factors made centralization of power inevitable even if it industrialized, the monarch would still continue to be autocratic because of the state's monopoly capital.
But if the Ming Dynasty’s industrialization is not to be lost in its budding and initial stages, the emperor must insist on advocating new etiquette, that is, he must have the awareness to treat his own people as human beings, give more respect and freedom to his children at home, and also must do so at court. Give more respect and freedom to ministers, and give more respect and freedom to the people in the country.
This is the consciousness that the emperor must have if he wants not to be led into the abyss by the social rules of the old era!
For this reason, Zhu Yijun asked Wang Xijue, Shen Li and other officials to jointly agree on the "Human Rights Declaration" and promulgate it to the world long before the southern tour, so that the world would know the outline of the new etiquette.
In other words, power all comes from a source.
In some societies, power comes from the people.
There are also societies that say power comes from heaven, and some even say that power comes from God.
There are many gods in the Ming Dynasty, but there is essentially no god. The source of all power in the Ming Dynasty society.
The imperial decree of human rights is nothing more than the rights granted by the emperor to all citizens of the Ming Dynasty.
This is a new initiative in Chinese history.
You must know that the emperor only authorized the officials, but not the people.
In the past, even when citizens' rights to life and financial rights were protected, it did not mean that they were granted such rights, but that they were ordered to require others not to deprive citizens of their lives and property at will.
This only leaves an ordinary citizen with no sense of rights, only a sense of obedience.
Now Zhu Yijun has conformed to the changes of the times and issued such an edict. It is nothing more than to make the people have a sense of rights, which will in turn help the citizens of the Ming Dynasty to have the awareness to actively change the status quo and innovate instead of accepting the situation, which will facilitate the further industrialization of the Ming Dynasty.
Otherwise, sooner or later, old rituals will reappear, sooner or later the development of science and technology will stop, and sooner or later, industrialization will stop at the initial stage and then regress.
Zhu Yijun took advantage of the fact that he came from a later generation and was not affected by the old rituals. He and some elites of this era who had extraordinary ideological understanding were the masters of the Ming Dynasty. The entire country began to have ideological innovations due to economic reforms and political reforms. At that time, by promulgating the "Imperial Declaration of Human Rights" to grant basic rights to the citizens of the Ming Dynasty, it can be regarded as further pushing the level of civilization of the Ming Dynasty forward, so that even if the Ming Dynasty regresses in the future, it will not go back too far.
Now, Zhu Yijun is punishing Gu Jie's father Gu Yuncheng. He is also practicing this spirit and encouraging the people of Ming Dynasty to regard themselves as human beings and dare to safeguard their rights and interests.
But Gu Yuncheng couldn't understand it himself. He didn't understand why the emperor didn't fear someone who dared to resist authority, but instead encouraged him.
Not only Gu Yuncheng couldn't understand it, but many conservative people couldn't understand it, but they didn't dare to oppose the emperor. After all, the old rituals protected the emperor more, and they only dared to ask Gu Jie.
Therefore, shortly after Gu Jie sued his father, officials such as Gao Panlong found Gu Jie, and Gao Panlong said to Gu Jie:
"You are already unfilial by suing your father for receiving the rod! Now you must go to Ben to plead for mercy for your father's exile. Only then can you restore your filial piety. Otherwise, the world will not forgive you!"
(End of chapter)
