The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 432: Contradictions Revealed at the Meeting
At nine o'clock in the morning on June 15th, the twenty-ninth year of Ming Dynasty Gong, in the Chengyun Hall, the main hall of the New York Palace of the Ming Dynasty of America.

A discussion meeting on the adjustment of the nature and status of the American Commonwealth and a consultation meeting on the current situation and problems of the American Commonwealth were formally held.

Representatives from each free state entered first and stood waiting between their reserved seats.

After all the representatives arrived, the prince of the Ming Dynasty, the great ministers of the kingdom, and the ministers of the kingdom entered and took their seats on the rostrum.

The ordinary representatives collectively bowed and saluted, and then sat down in their respective seats.

The Minister of Etiquette of the Kingdom of America announced the start of the meeting. The eldest prince Zhu Jingkun, as the host of the cabinet meeting, spoke first, explaining and emphasizing the reason and theme of the meeting:

“Within the free states of the United States, matters and powers agreed upon by the King and the court through agreements with the free states shall be managed and exercised by the King and the court of the Kingdom.

"All other matters and powers not agreed upon shall be reserved and exercised by the Free State.

“Within the Dominions of the Kingdom of America, specific matters and powers agreed upon between the King and the Court and the Dominions shall be governed and exercised by the Dominions.

“All other matters and powers not agreed upon are reserved and exercised by the King and the Royal Court by default.

“Within the provinces of the Kingdom of America, all affairs and powers are managed and exercised by the King and the Kingdom’s court by default.

“Unless the king or the royal court specifically authorizes it, provincial officials may handle the matter on their own.

"There is a widespread and fervent desire among the people of the various free states of the United States to change the free states into provinces or dominions.

"I, Zhu Jingkun, the eldest son of the Ming Emperor, and the Ming Dynasty's governor of America, and my fourteen brothers, follow our father's imperial decree to jointly preside over American affairs.

“Now we are responding to the call from the people of the Free State and inviting people from all walks of life in the Free State to attend the meeting for an open discussion.”

Zhu Jingkun's opening remarks mainly characterized the meeting itself.

It is clear that this incident was caused by the public’s call, and the court did not take the initiative to do this.

He explained the identities of the princes and the source of their power, and said that he was authorized by the emperor to handle all matters in America.

More content is about the interpretation of the theme of the meeting.

Since the people of the Free State want to discuss changing the nature of the Free State, they must clarify the differences in the status and power logic of provinces, dominions, and free states.

All power in the provinces tacitly and actually belongs to the king and the royal court.

All power in the dominions belonged to the king and the court by default, but the king explicitly granted specific powers to the localities in advance.

All powers in the Free State were vested in the localities by default, but the Free State delegated certain powers to the King and the court.

The nature of the provinces and the ownership of power did not need to be carefully distinguished and discussed. The conference mainly focused on the key differences between dominions and free states.

The essential difference between the two is the "default ownership of power", which refers to who is in charge when the law does not stipulate it, similar to the difference between a blacklist and a whitelist.

After Zhu Jingkun finished saying these long-winded but necessary things, he turned around and instructed the Minister of Etiquette to explain the meeting process and rules of procedure.

These things have actually been distributed in advance, but they still need to be confirmed and emphasized again at the meeting.

The process of the meeting is similar to that of a debate competition.

In the first stage, the nobles, officials and common people each nominated three representatives to speak in turn, explaining the problems they had discovered, their main views and demands.

In the second stage, each of the three parties nominates a representative to make a direct rebuttal to the existing views of the other parties.

In the third stage, ordinary representatives of the three parties will speak and directly ask questions related to the topic to each party, and the corresponding supporters of the viewpoints will give answers.

The fourth stage is free debate, where participants can question and ask each other questions at any time. In the third stage, the party being consulted cannot ask questions in return.

In the fifth stage, representatives nominated by each party will make summary speeches.

The meeting rules are similar to those of normal parliamentary discussions, with Zhu Jingkun serving as the temporary speaker of the meeting, controlling the meeting process and maintaining order.

Except for the fourth stage, no one can interrupt others' expression, and everyone must speak in turn regardless of question or answer.

At all stages, personal attacks cannot be made alone. We must stick to the facts and avoid circular reasoning.

After the Minister of Etiquette emphasized the procedures and rules, the eldest prince Zhu Jingkun spoke again to announce the official start of the meeting, with representatives nominated by the nobles speaking first.

The first representative of the nobility was Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams, who was actually his father's agent.

Adams directly facilitated the Ming Dynasty's participation in the war and established a very good relationship with the American King Zhu Jianxuan.

Therefore, among the founding fathers and first generation of aristocrats of the United States, Adams was one of the ones with the highest reputation and status.

The most important thing is that he is still alive and remains a nobleman of the Free State.

Among the American aristocrats of Ming descent, there were civil and military officials whose status was higher than that of the nobles of these free states.

But those with the highest status among these people later went to serve in the Ming central court, and became Ming aristocrats from American aristocrats.

Among the Ming nobles who remained in the United States, there were also those whose status was comparable to that of Adams, Hancock and others, but they were all royal nobles and did not participate in the affairs of the Free State.

Among the American nobles attending today's meeting, Adams has the highest status and reputation.

Adams' legs and speech were not working well, so he let his son speak.

Adams' eldest son, Quincy, was the sixth president of the United States in history, and together with his father, he formed the first father-son president pair.

Quincy's argument is very simple. The political system and operating mode of the American Free State were agreed upon by the emperor and local elders when the United States was founded.

These rules are the foundation of the United States and the basis for the smooth development of various free states to this day. No one is qualified to tamper with these rules.

Then there was William Temple Franklin, grandson of Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin's eldest son was a royalist in history and opposed American independence. He also did not support American independence in this world.

After the American War, Franklin's eldest son went to live in England as in history.

However, his son William grew up with his grandfather, Franklin Sr., and served as his grandfather's secretary while his grandfather was working. Later, he inherited his grandfather's title and influence.

Now William himself speaks as a representative.

William claimed that their ancestors were the founding fathers of the United States, the founders of American independence and joining the Ming Dynasty, and the heroes of the United States.

They should be respected and supported by all Americans and should have extraordinary wealth and status.

This can encourage future generations and new immigrants to continue working to build America.

The form of a free state is the best way to safeguard their status and attract newcomers to follow.

Finally, there is Horatio Gates Jr., the son of American founding father Horatio Gates, who inherited the title after his father's death.

Like William Franklin, Gates was a second-generation American aristocrat, and both had lived and trained with Zhu Jianxuan in the New York military camp. Gates was even more blunt and rude, claiming that those who advocated changing the nature of the Free State were jealous of the status and wealth of the founding fathers.

Their status and wealth are earned by their ancestors at the cost of their lives. No one can take it away from them, and no one should even dream of it.

Adams was from Massachusetts and Franklin was from Pennsylvania, both of which were the places with the highest voices in changing the free state into a dominion.

Gates was from Virginia, which had the largest population, the most developed agricultural industry and the greatest influence among the free states in the South.

After the three noble representatives finished their speeches, Zhu Jingkun did not let the official representatives speak next, but directly let the civilian representatives start speaking.

Zhu Jingkun knew in his heart that officials without aristocratic status would probably be ambiguous on this issue, and the opinions they expressed would most likely have no practical significance.

Most of the civilian representatives certainly support changing the free state into a dominion, and the conflict between them and the nobles is the most acute, so let them speak first.

However, now is the stage of argumentation, so the statements of the civilian representatives are relatively calm, even calmer than those of the nobles.

The three representatives, a reporter, a lawyer, and a writer, had obviously discussed it beforehand and spoke in turn from different perspectives, listing the problems of the Free State.

First of all, there is a lack of effective supervision over the Free State’s political affairs, judicial affairs, and legislative processes.

The nobles of the Free State used their status and influence to directly dominate or interfere in the handling of all official affairs.

Most of them will directly serve as government officials, judges, and parliamentarians themselves, and will also arrange for their trusted subordinates and friends to serve as parliamentarians.

They are ready to make laws that are beneficial to them, abolish systems that are unfavorable to them, or interpret legal provisions in a direction that is beneficial to them.

Since no one can properly supervise their actions, institutional and systemic corruption naturally arises.

These problems could only be solved by converting the Free States into provinces, introducing official watchdogs to ensure that local institutions acted impartially.

The second representative talked specifically about the issue of corruption.

The nobles colluded with each other and used official institutions such as government, judiciary, and legislation to profit for their own industries.

At the same time, they use official power to directly strike at their competitors.

All foreign merchants entering the free states under their control must obey and cooperate with their various unreasonable demands, otherwise there is no way to operate normally.

They used nominal official means to exempt their own property from taxes, while increasing taxes on other merchants.

Using various official means, they forcibly acquire other people's well-run industries.

Control land transactions and drive up land prices.

There are countless similar things, and only a few representative examples are listed here.

When it comes to personal affairs, many nobles are even more evil. The key is that after committing various evil cases, they use official means to allow them to evade punishment.

There are countless such things, and there is no way to list them all, but a quick statistical analysis will yield a huge number.

Because the Free State exercises all major powers alone, countless people have been wronged and unable to seek redress.

In order to avoid these problems, the only option is to change the free states into provinces and govern the local areas with unified kingdom laws that cannot be changed at will.

Let officials appointed by the kingdom govern the local areas directly, and prevent local nobles from interfering in local governance.

The last civilian representative stood up and specifically pointed out the various wastes and actual losses caused by the free state with such an environment.

The infrastructure construction of the Free State was slow. The Free State institutions and nobles were unwilling to fund the construction themselves, and at the same time were unwilling to cede land to the royal government for construction.

The Free State's education and judicial systems are in chaos. The Free State itself is unable to organize standardized transactions, but it does not hand it over to the royal government.

There are huge differences in the laws between different free states. Something that may be legal in one free state may be illegal in a neighboring free state.

At the same time, all free states will find ways to collect transit taxes and never allow any goods to pass through their jurisdiction for free.

These symptoms are manifestations of institutional corruption in the Free State's official institutions, and these problems seriously affect industries operating across regions.

The only way to solve these problems is to abolish the free states and have the kingdom’s court rule them all.

When the three civilian representatives were speaking, other civilian representatives would applaud from time to time, and occasionally would deliberately cheer to show their support.

Most of the noble representatives gnashed their teeth and wanted to interrupt or make excuses on the spot many times.

But they were immediately stopped by the guards arranged by the princes.

Zhu Jingkun also reminded several times that now is not the debate stage and the speakers must be allowed to say what they want to say.

So the nobles could only suppress the urge to explode and wait little by little until the civilian representatives finished their speeches.

The eldest prince Zhu Jingkun turned to the official representatives and asked them to speak as official agency personnel.

The opinions of these official representatives were similar to what Zhu Jingkun had initially guessed, that is, they were non-biased and wishy-washy.

Most of them have close ties with the nobles of the Free State and have certain conflicts of interest with them, so it is not easy for them to criticize them directly and openly.

They are not civilians either, and they can generally benefit from the current environment in the Free State.

However, they themselves are not nobles. They now seem to be in control of official institutions, but in fact they can only obey the orders of the nobles.

If the free states were changed into dominions or provinces in the future, they would have the opportunity to break away from the control of the nobles and truly control the actual power in the local areas.

Therefore, most of them do not want to oppose the public’s call or express clear opinions.

The speeches of the nobles and civilian representatives made all the parties involved feel the same, either sharing the same hatred or being furious.

Everyone's spirits are high.

But when the officials' representatives spoke, it seemed that both sides couldn't find the main point, which made people feel drowsy.

However, no one was in any mood and they waited silently until the official representatives finished speaking and entered the second stage of rebuttal.

Zhu Jingkun controlled the meeting process and started with the nobles, asking them to arrange representatives to refute the views of other representatives.

The pent-up anger of both the nobles and civilian representatives was immediately released, and they began to engage in a verbal battle of refutation.

Nominally, counter-questions or additional questions are allowed in this phase. You can only express doubts and refute the views already raised by the other party.

But in reality it is difficult to completely control the situation, at least both sides can express themselves in a more severe tone.

The other representatives who did not speak would also applaud the representatives who performed well in speech and boo the representatives who performed poorly.

The originally quiet hall soon became extremely noisy.

(End of this chapter)