Master Kong Zhongni

Chapter 121 Jae Yu at this time is revising Zhou Rites
In the early morning, when the sun just appeared on the earth, a faint ray of sunlight shone on Jai Yu's face along the window.

Jae Yu opened his eyes, sat up abruptly, brushed away the long hair covering his eyes, and let out bursts of maniacal laughter with his head down.

"Hahaha!!!"

He laughed for a while, then suddenly lifted the quilt again, trotted to the door, and pushed all the important objects in the house against the door.

Then he carefully dragged out the book collection box at home, opened the lid, and carefully selected these bamboo slips that he regarded as treasures.

Soon, more than a dozen bamboo slips were selected by Zaiyu, and these bamboo slips all had a concise name—Li.

Zaiyu opened a bamboo slip, picked another piece of white paper and laid it out in front of him, his hand holding the pen trembling slightly.

Although he had wanted to do this for a long time, Zaiyu was still a little scared when he was really asked to do it.

After all, this is the ancestral law that has been passed down for 500 years!
But Zaiyu thought about it again, and remembered what his master said the day before yesterday: If you make a mistake, then go and correct it.

If it is wrong, it must be corrected!The law of the ancestors is wrong, so it has to be changed!

Zaiyu boldly unfolded "Li", intending to criticize it with a dialectical perspective.

He glanced over and began to read.

[The Son of Heaven is about to go out, he must first offer sacrifices to God, Sheji, and Ancestral Temple.The princes are about to go out, and they must sacrifice to the shrine and ancestral temple]

[The princes have the power to conquer after being rewarded with bows and arrows by the emperor]

[The feudal princes are rewarded with a battle axe, so they have the power to punish and kill them]

[The princes are rewarded with Gui Zan, so that they can brew their own wine]

Ok……

The whole of these articles emphasizes that a monarchy is conferred by the emperor. Although the whole is rather cumbersome, it has little to do with the people. Moreover, few princes in the world now care about the emperor.

Besides, changing this line is too conspicuous, so let's not change it for now.

Zai Yu's eyes then swept down.

[The emperor ordered the princes to establish education, and the princes can set up schools.Among them, the primary school is located in the southeast of the palace, and the university is located in the suburbs]

[The emperor's university is called Piyong, and the prince's university is called Yigong]

When Zaiyu saw this, with a swipe of his pen, he dropped the line "the emperor ordered the princes to establish education, and the princes can set up schools".

It was changed to "Heaven prospers to educate and educate the people, and the princes should establish education".

【When there is no war between the Son of Heaven and the feudal lords, they hunt three times a year】

[The purpose is, the first is to prepare offerings for sacrifices, the second is to prepare dishes for entertaining guests, and the third is to enrich the daily meals for the emperor and princes]

Seeing this, Zaiyu added another item, "Fourth, for the sake of sharing the joy with the people, distribute the hunting harvest to the common people, so as to show the mighty will of God and share the benefits of the land."

[The rules of field hunting are: the emperor should not encircle all sides when hunting, and the princes should not kill all the wild animals in groups when hunting.】

[After shooting wild animals, the emperor will lower the banner of command, and the princes will lower the banner of command]

[After the doctor shoots the beast, he should order the auxiliary vehicle that assists in driving the beast to stop driving]

[After the doctor's auxiliary car stopped driving, the people started hunting]

This one seems to be okay. The emperor, the princes, and the common people enjoy themselves happily, and they can all hunt for food, but there is still room for improvement.

With a swipe of his pen, Zaiyu added a line of common people after the common people.

[After the first lunar month, fishermen can go fishing in Chuanze.Field hunting can only begin after September.After August, nets can be set up to catch birds.In October, you can enter the forest to cut down】

【Insects cannot hunt wild animals by burning weeds before they have settled in the ground.When hunting in the field, do not capture young animals, do not take birds' eggs, do not kill pregnant females, do not kill newborn young animals, do not destroy bird's nests]

Zai Yu nodded slightly: "Sustainable development, and this one can also help cultivate a heart of benevolence. If you can't kill birds and animals at will, how can you execute people randomly? Keep it."

[Farmers help cultivate the public land and do not pay additional land rent.After the merchants pay the land tax, they no longer pay income tax.Items entering and exiting the customs are only inspected to see if they are prohibited, and no customs duties are imposed.Entering the mountains, forests, rivers and swamps for logging, fishing and hunting within the specified time limit will not be prohibited】

Seeing this, Zai Yu couldn't help but stop writing and sigh.

Only this time, he did not sigh because of the shortcomings of "Li", but because of the fact that the advantages of "Li" could not be implemented.

As far as this article is concerned, isn't such a policy good?

Of course it is.

This is a typical lenient policy of the government to give benefits to the public!

However, such a policy could not be implemented for various reasons.

Take the rule that farmers only need to help cultivate public land and do not need to pay extra land rent. The first to break this rule is precisely the state of Lu that strictly abides by Zhou etiquette.

After the king of Wu conquered Zhou and established a new order, he once made an alliance with the princes of the four directions: under the whole world, could it be the land of the king.On the shore of the land, could it be the king's ministers.

It was this sentence that laid the tone of the land policy of the Zhou Dynasty, that is, the public ownership of land based on the well field system.

All the land in the world belongs to Zhou Tianzi, who does not recognize anyone else's ownership of the land, but only recognizes that they have the right to cultivate and harvest the land.

All the land in the world, taking [-] mu as a unit, is divided into nine small squares of [-] mu according to the well.

The eight outer squares are handed over to farmers for farming, allowing them to enjoy the benefits of these fields themselves, without taxing these fields.

The [-] mu of land in the middle is used as public land, which is cultivated by eight families. The income from the public land is turned over to the state and distributed to the public office.

Everyone can guess what happened later.

The private fields are intensively cultivated, and the public fields are casually handled.

Over time, the income from the public land has become less and less, and it is difficult to meet the daily expenses of the country.

The offices of various countries are extremely poor, but there is a saying that when you are poor, you want to change.

Faced with increasingly tight financial conditions, countries have resorted to reform measures.

It was still the man from Qi who carried out the reform first.

Guan Zhong launched a new policy of "referring to the land and declining the land". The main content is roughly as follows: to re-integrate the fields of the whole country, regardless of public land and private land, and then distribute the farmers to the land for farming. , The level of crop yield, according to the gradient collection tax.

However, Guan Zhong's reform was ultimately carried out under the scope of public ownership of land.

But as the saying goes, the waves behind the Yangtze River drive the waves ahead, and each wave is more powerful than the last wave.

As a neighboring country of Qi State, Lu State also moved to change the law of the ancestors after seeing the neighboring Qi State benefiting from the reform.

Lu Xuangong, the ancestor of Lu State, was the first person to eat crabs. According to the needs of the development of the times, he put forward a groundbreaking and great idea-the reform of the initial taxation.

The initial tax mu reform not only absorbed the successful experience of Guan Zhong's reform, but also introduced new measures.

The main measure of the initial tax mu is that in the future, not only the tax on public land will be turned over to the state, but also one-tenth of the harvest from private land will be handed over to the government.

Of course, if there are only these two items, then the initial tax mu is not called a reform, but a simple tax increase.

In order to persuade the domestic officials and ordinary people to agree to the reform, Lu Xuangong also made another promise:
The widow knows that in addition to farming private fields, you have also opened up many new private fields that have not been registered.

These newly reclaimed private fields were not recognized by the state in the past.

But as long as you agree to the initial tax mu, then these newly cultivated fields can be registered normally as long as one-tenth of the land tax is paid on time.

Lu Xuangong's few words seem to be just a lightly agreed to register the new land, but in fact it is an acknowledgment of the land privatization in the territory of Lu.

Because once these new fields are officially registered, they can be bought and sold at the legal level.

Therefore, from the beginning of the tax-mu reform, the public land ownership system in the State of Lu was tantamount to an official declaration of disintegration.

After Lu Xuangong implemented the initial tax mu reform, countries followed suit one after another, and the well field system, which represented the public ownership of land, officially announced its withdrawal from the stage of history.

In the history of China, the land annexation that lasted for more than two thousand years also kicked off.

　Never believe that suffering without readers' votes is worth it, suffering is suffering, and suffering does not bring success.

　　Suffering is not worth pursuing. To hone the will is because suffering cannot be avoided.

　　——Excerpt from "Zaiyu's Diary"

　　
　
(End of this chapter)