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Chapter 738: Ming Dynasty Law

"Well, Minister Yang, that's a good point. As the saying goes, a sword is sharpened by grinding, and the fragrance of plum blossoms comes from the bitter cold. No matter who you are, if you don't experience the hardships of youth, it will be difficult for you to achieve great things."

Hong Tao highly approves of Yang Lian's way of educating his descendants. From ancient times to the present, there are many successful entrepreneurs, but only a few who can carry forward their talents. The reason lies in their philosophy of education.

Most entrepreneurs have experienced hardships, and even fought their way out of a mountain of blood and blood before they succeeded. When they have offspring, they begin to intentionally or unintentionally prevent their offspring from going through hardships, and as a result, most of the ones they cultivate are like flowers and plants in a greenhouse.

The problem is that future generations cannot live in a greenhouse forever. When they lose the meticulous care of the previous generation, most of them cannot withstand the cruel test of nature.

The most typical example is the royal family. The royal family of each dynasty basically has the same character: the founders are all great men of civil and military skills, at least superior to ordinary people in some aspects. When the throne is passed to the second generation, most of them are no longer effective, and only a small number of them can still hold on, and these are also the children who have fought with their fathers for many years.

From the third generation onwards, they are basically all lying flat. If they are gentle and mediocre by nature, they are lucky, at least they are not too wasteful. But those who are not very capable but have strong self-confidence can squander the family business left by their ancestors in a minute, and by the way, they will also ruin themselves.

"...Your Majesty, is this beautiful sentence from a new work? May we hear it first?" However, this statement did not resonate with the audience. Instead, it made the two ministers, who were Jinshi graduates, pay attention to the emperor's literary talent.

"Ah... My attainments in poetry are comparable to two taels of iron for a broadsword. It's not enough material, so let's not talk about it. Let's talk about the laws of the Ming Dynasty. If this law is not issued, I will be unable to sleep or eat!"

After staring and thinking for several rounds, Hong Tao still couldn't figure out who wrote the poem "A sword is sharpened by grinding." He could only give up his attempt to become a literary giant, but he would never admit that he didn't write it. He wanted to leave a clue in case he remembered it later.

This time, the two highest officials in the Ming Dynasty legal community were invited to come together for one thing: to revise the Ming Dynasty Law. After being in power for fifteen years, every time they needed to use the law, they would find that it was either too heavy, too light, too vague, or simply missing, which was a headache.

Although he is in power now and can make his words become the constitution, the country is so big and there are so many officials that he cannot personally judge all the cases that need to be decided. Therefore, it is very important and necessary to formulate a law that is conducive to social stability, economic development, and national security.

Hong Tao wants to use this law to tell all officials what they should do to get promoted and what they should do to get demoted and held accountable; at the same time, he also wants to tell the people what they can and cannot do. Only when most people work and live under the same rules can the country function normally and efficiency be improved.

The "Great Ming Code" currently in use was promulgated in the 30th year of Hongwu. The compiler was not Zhu Yuanzhang, but every law and every order had to be reviewed and approved by him personally before it could be passed.

There were two versions before this one. Before the founding of the country, Li Shanchang took the lead in drafting the first version of the Ming Code, which was promulgated in the first month of the first year of Hongwu. This version of the Ming Code was basically revised according to the Tang Code, which made Zhu Yuanzhang very dissatisfied.

From the first year of Hongwu to the 30th year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang continuously organized officials to revise the "Great Ming Code", until he finally completed the code one year before his death. When he promulgated it throughout the country, he announced that all previous versions would be abolished.

It seems that Zhu Yuanzhang attached great importance to the law. It is said that in order to revise the Great Ming Code, he asked officials from the Ministry of Justice to write down every law and hang it on the wall of his bedroom so that he could study it anytime and anywhere.

But like most of the policies of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang made the same mistake, being overconfident and self-centered. He seriously ignored the laws of nature and naively believed that everything was immutable. Then he set rules for his descendants and did not allow them to change the laws he set. As a result, the Ming Dynasty never revised the "Ming Code" for more than 200 years. When there was a lack of laws that had to be used, the emperors of later generations could only issue imperial edicts to add temporary regulations to the "Ming Code" as a supplement.

The Great Ming Code of the 30th year of Hongwu had basically lost the shadow of the Tang Code and became a new law. It was headed by the Mingli Code and divided into six codes according to the responsibilities of the six ministries: civil, household, ritual, military, criminal, and engineering. It had a total of 30 volumes and 460 articles.

However, by the 1000th year of the Wanli reign, the number of regulations temporarily added by emperors of various dynasties had reached more than , and officials from all over the country had to use the two legal documents, laws and regulations, as the basis when adjudicating cases.

If the directions of these three legal documents were the same, there would be no big problem, but they were promulgated decades or even centuries apart, and their purposes were not the same. There were often conflicts in their use, which caused unnecessary confusion for officials and made the people at a loss as to what was illegal and what was not.

In addition, Zhu Yuanzhang had very ulterior motives when making laws, which left many backdoors.

For example, the opening "Mingli Lu" stipulates the Eight Discussion System, which explicitly stipulates that those who discuss relatives (imperial relatives), old friends (emperor's old friends), merits, talents, abilities, diligence, nobility (first-rank officials and civil and military officials of the third rank and above, and officials of the second rank and above), and guests (those who succeed the previous generation as state guests) have legal privileges.

After these people broke the law, the judicial organs could not interrogate them without authorization, but had to report to the emperor first and wait for instructions. Do you have a feeling that the laws of later generations are very similar to Zhu Yuanzhang's starting point in this regard? Guilt or not is not determined by legal provisions, but by the opinions of leaders.

Zhu Yuanzhang's original intention was to use the Great Ming Code to allow the Zhu family to rule the country from generation to generation, and then govern the country well on this basis. Why is he naive? Because he got the order wrong. He had to govern the country well first before he could rule the country from generation to generation.

In fact, naive is a more polite description, and it is more appropriate to say that he is unlearned and unskilled. He is full of low-level cunning, lacks great wisdom and breadth of mind, and is a freak created by the times.

It was this "Ming Code" that created the perverted officials and bureaucratic gentry groups in the Ming Dynasty, making the law a tool and excuse for these people to plunder.

Without any guarantee, who, except for a few vested interests, would truly believe that they belong to this country? And who would truly work hard to safeguard the interests of the country?

We are all just trying to make a living. You have big fists and strong arms, but we can't beat you and can only obey your orders. But if you get into trouble one day, not only will we not help you, we will also help your enemies beat you up.

This is the fundamental reason why a country with a population of hundreds of millions could be easily overthrown by the Jurchens with a population of a few million.

Rather than saying that the Ming Dynasty was destroyed by the Jin Dynasty, it is better to say that the Ming Dynasty was abandoned by its own people. As the ancients said, those who are righteous will have many supporters, while those who are unrighteous will have few supporters. The death of Emperor Chongzhen was not unjust at all. He was paying off the debt of his ancestors.

(End of this chapter)