Established a thousand-year family from the end of Qin Dynasty

Chapter 406 Magna Carta (Eleven)

five months later
In the crisp autumn season, the Salt and Iron Conference of Yan State was held.

Participants included the descendants of the clan of Yan State, representatives of local guilds, powerful representatives, Confucian scholars, and officials.

The current state of Yan is a mixture of salt and iron government camps and salt and iron private companies. In Liaodong, which has been destroyed and rebuilt, salt and iron government camps are implemented, and in Incheon, Busan, Chang’e and other cities that contributed a lot to the war to overthrow Wang Ting, salt and iron are implemented. private.

Boom!
The bronze bell was rung, and Wang Ying said to everyone, "The meeting has begun."

Later, Xun Biao stood up and quoted scriptures: "In the past, Emperor Xiaowu of the Han Dynasty was able to raise the military expenses for the Northern Expedition to the Huns by relying on the official salt and iron camps. The previous emperors of the Yan Kingdom also relied on the official salt and iron camps to raise money for overseas land reclamation."

"If there is no salt and iron official camp, who will stop the invasion of the Goguryeo and Xianbei people, I will die long ago without a place to bury."

Celebrities who supported the liberalization of the salt and iron industry retorted: "The sage said, the benevolent is invincible. If you can practice benevolence and righteousness, why should you be afraid of enemies outside the district?"

"Liberating up the salt and iron industry will only make local tycoons bigger."

"The salt and iron workshops operated by the government have low output, high prices, and poor quality. The common people have complained for a long time. On the contrary, in the past two years, some privately operated salt and iron workshops in Chang'e City have good quality and low prices. This is beneficial to the country. civil."

It is not much different from the salt and iron meeting in Huo Guang's period. Although the two sides were arguing about the salt and iron industry, they got off topic after arguing and arguing, and both sides began to attack each other personally.

Those who support the official operation of the salt and iron industry accused the other party of wanting to embezzle state assets, and those who supported the liberalization of the salt and iron industry accused the other party of wanting to be the second Wang Ting.

Gradually, the topic was not only about salt and iron, but also about whether to continue to adhere to Confucianism, whether to continue to adhere to the centralization of power, and whether to continue to adhere to the system of Sangong Jiuqing.

"If we can't form a joint force, how can we resist the invasion of the Central Plains? How can we resist the looting of the grassland?"

"As long as benevolent government is implemented, all people will naturally return to their hearts, and the Central Plains and grasslands will naturally not dare to invade."

At this moment, Xun Biao turned himself into Sang Hongyang, debating with many local Confucian scholars alone.

Don't touch the interests of the upper class, and don't touch the ideas of the bottom people, which is vividly reflected here.

The rest of the Wang family didn't care about Confucianism or not. What they cared about was that they had more power in their hands, and there would be no second Wang Ting who wanted to be autocratic.

On the surface, it was a dispute of Confucianism, but in essence it was a power struggle between the Wang family's children and Yanhou Wangba.

Everyone is a descendant of the Wang family, and their bodies are all the blood of the ancestor Kang. Why should you, Wang Ba, be more noble than other Wang's children?
Sure enough, nothing was discussed at the meeting, the two parties broke up unhappy, and no one was able to convince the other.

Xun Biao ignored a very important point. Huo Guang was able to keep the Yantie official camp because Huo Guang had military power in his hands.

However, the national situation of Yan State is different from that of the great Han hundreds of years ago. Although Wang Ba has military power, other Wang's children also have military power.

Arguments come and go, but in the end you still have to rely on your fists to speak, and chanting ten thousand words of a sage is not as good as someone else's military power.

another three months later

In the face of verbal criticism from the entire Yan family's children, Xun Biao was forced to commit suicide. The counselor who helped Wang Ba ascend to the position of Yanhou, the grandson of Xun You, a first-class counselor, was forced to end his life amidst the crusading voices of many Wang's children. own young life.

However, it is not completely fruitless, that is, the Yantie official camp in the Liaodong area has been confirmed, and Confucianism has been confirmed as the official school of Yan State.

As for the overseas regions, they can only let go of the official operation of the salt and iron industry, and each city owner will manage the salt and iron industry, and each city owner will resell his own salt and iron industry management rights to the guilds in his own city.

And some cities without a city owner, such as Chang'e City, directly sold the salt and iron industry to the local guilds.

At the same time, since no one can persuade anyone, and everyone does not want to fight another civil war, they each take a step back and implement "one country, two systems" in Yan.

Liaodong is similar to the ruling model of the Central Plains. Overseas, each city owner decides the ruling model on his own, and then the parliament approves it.

If you have to use a dynasty as an analogy, it is the great Han Dynasty in the period of Emperor Wen of Han.

Liaodong is like Guanzhong, which is directly under the jurisdiction of the Marquis of Yan, and overseas regions are like the Kanto region, which is ruled by the descendants of the Yan clan.

The three cities of Chang'e, Busan, and Incheon are semi-directly governed and semi-autonomous. The city lords are appointed by the Marquis of Yan, and the city officials are elected by the municipal councils.

In Liaodong, the strict Central Plains ruling model was practiced, the legal inheritance rights of women were abolished, the system of monogamy and multiple concubines was restored, the eldest son inheritance system was implemented, and the nine-rank Zhongzheng system was implemented.

Overseas cities are very diverse. Some cities are self-governing, some cities have an inspection system, some cities have a nine-rank system, some have their own examination systems, and some implement a trusteeship package tax system.

The so-called trusteeship tax system means that a certain area is contracted to a certain guild for rule, and then the guild pays taxes to the Wang family who rule the city on a regular basis. .

As for the marriage system, some cities still implement monogamy, others have polygamy, some have polygamy, some have polyandry, some have polygamy, and some have polygamy. There is no marriage system.

At the same time, some cities on the frontier opened up wasteland in order to gain population, and some cities in the center wanted to deal with the excess population. Therefore, the various city lords hit it off and passed the decision to "restore slavery" in the parliament.

The people of Yan State were allowed to be reduced to private slaves, bought and sold by various guilds and city lords, making them a land reclamation population.

Because some cities prefer workshop production, they not only do not prohibit land mergers, but also encourage land mergers, causing a large number of people to become refugees. These refugees enter the cities and become cheap laborers, dedicating their lives to the development of urban workshops.

Gradually, some cities began to have such things as slums.

In the past, there was no such thing. People without jobs would go to the countryside to farm, and naturally there would be no slums.

However, some cities’ policies of encouraging land mergers have caused local people to lose their fields. These people can only rely on working in workshops to support their families, and at the same time they cannot afford their own houses, so they can only live in poor slums.

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The progress of the times sometimes does not necessarily lead to the improvement of people's livelihood, and even leads to the regression of people's livelihood, at least during the period of the Magna Carta, a large number of farmers were forced to become refugees, and then poured into urban workshops to work The cheap labor of the workshop owners. They used to work hard in the countryside and could barely fill their stomachs. After they were forced to enter the city, except for a small number of people who got jobs, most of them could only beg for a living. The rulers of the city captured and sold them as slaves. For the country of Yan, this period was a period of great productivity development, but for ordinary people of the country of Yan, it was an extremely dark period. ——"General History of the World Song Qin Hui"

(End of this chapter)