warring states careerist

Chapter 167
Few of the minor nobles in Pei County can see clearly the situation in the world, and they are destined to not expect Mo Zhe to turn his face suddenly.

The first news of the change finally reached the ears of the local nobles in Pei County.

It is appropriate to win over the merchants in Peiyi, liberate the industrial and commercial people under the industrial and commercial food officials, reduce taxes on industrial and commercial people, slightly increase the farmers' taxes but at the same time use new agricultural technology as compensation, and first take the opportunity to clean up the local officials. In the end, the only Mohists who made up their minds to oppose were the old aristocrats whose interests had been greatly damaged.

In the luxurious mansion in Peiyi, several old nobles were full of anger, denouncing Mo Zhe's evil deeds.

The first change has seriously hurt the interests of these old nobles. Taking money from people is like killing their parents, and harming people's interests is like prostitution. This kind of hatred is irreconcilable.

The high-sounding principles are for outsiders to hear.Now those who gather here are not outsiders, so there is no need to talk about those nonsense such as "broken ancestral law", "destroyed well fields", "not good for the world", just explain clearly how to deal with Mohist.

More than [-] local big families and nobles gathered together, just like when the Mohists dealt with those witches.

It's just that this time compared to the last time, it is obvious that everyone's hearts are not in harmony.

Xia Qi, who had worked out the method of revenge for blood relatives, and then quietly wrote about it afterwards, sat with a few people on the west side; the rest sat on the east side.

The side with a larger number of people said first: "The Mohist endured for a long time, and finally did such a thing. If you ask me, I should have ignored the consequences that day and fought to the death to kill the Mohist. How can there be any disaster today?"

Everyone thought, it's easy for you to say, killing the Mozhe that day... Not to mention whether it can be killed or defeated, even if all the Mozhe in Peidi are killed, what should the Mozhe in other places take revenge in the future?
These Mohists are all forces that can resist a country's besieging army. With us people, how can we touch them?

The person who spoke also knew that he had just had a mouthful, but the dissatisfaction in his heart really needed to be vented.

He has his own fief, and he can collect taxes from a small piece of fief, and it is enough to provide military obligations for the number of acres within the fief.

Farmers in their own fiefs need to perform various labor obligations to him.

There is also a part of the nominal public land, which can also drive serfs to work without pay.

Mo Zhe’s change in this way is tantamount to dividing up the public land, not recognizing that the land tax rights in the fief belong to the nobles, and exempting the serfs from their labor obligations to the nobles...

This is something he cannot accept no matter what.

What's the use of leaving only the land?Do you want to farm by yourself?

If you don't cultivate it yourself, what's the difference between those lands and wastelands?
Xia Qi, who was kneeling on the west side, didn't think so. The people behind him all belonged to a group of people who might benefit and suffer less from the Mohist reform system.

He waited for a moment, then said slowly: "From my point of view, the transformation of the Mohists is not necessarily impossible. The Mohists have iron tools and various good breeds. The land that originally required a hundred people may only need ten oxen and ten people to complete it." .”

"If cotton, black corn, sweet potato and other new grains and hemp can be sold, we can grow them. We have land, cattle and horses, and we can hire people to help with farming as long as we pay."

"The spirits made from cotton cloth and sweet potatoes are now very profitable for merchants to transfer. I see a lot of benefits from planting these..."

After Xia Qi was not a local nobleman, but fled here after the fall of the Qi State, and was a side branch, it was difficult to integrate into the Song State, and only in Peiyi as a small nobleman, relying on those followers to reclaim a lot of land , benefit from it.

The well field system did not disintegrate in a day, and private ownership did not come into being in a day. The tribesmen in those days gradually became renters and laborers, and the production relationship has actually undergone some changes in the long century.

Most of the people behind him are nobles in this situation, and the number of fiefdoms is not large. They originally accumulated a lot of private land relying on privileges such as theocracy and clan rights.

In their view, it doesn't matter how the Mohist struggles.

Let’s talk about honoring the sages. In the future, they will have a lot of land, and their children will be able to study full-time.

Maybe the world really honors the virtuous, and they can still climb up.

They are low-ranking nobles. Under the patriarchal system, it is difficult to climb up to the upper circle. Although they are privileged, in their view, even if they select talents in the future, their privileges can still exist. After all, their children have more opportunities to learn .

For the above, we hope to practice the concept of "everyone is equal under the emperor of heaven";

This completely contradictory theory is not unreasonable, but it needs to win the top and suppress the bottom, so the reality cannot make their reasoning a truth.

After thinking about it, they still feel that the Mohist's principles can actually achieve equality for the upper and oppression for the lower, and they still like it.

This is also a credit to the Xuanyi Department of the Mohist, who clarified a lot of truths and disintegrated and divided the nobles in Peiyi.

As soon as Xia Qi finished speaking, the nobles who had suffered the most damage from this reform cursed in unison.

They were originally on the same front, but now they are unconsciously divided.

The old nobles scolded: "Not to mention whether the Mohist's principles are right or wrong, or whether they will cause chaos if they do so, just talk about the private mother tax. Are we really allowed to pay the tax?"

"Which magistrate, didn't he first become friends with us before he can rule the town?"

After swearing a few words about Mozi's shameless, unconscionable behavior, the anger of man and god, and the inevitable chaos of the world, these old aristocrats finally talked about the most substantive issue.

"Acknowledging private acres, why should we ask those farmers to cultivate for us?"

"If the public land is divided, where will the military tax come from? Do we use our own money, silk, food, and grass to support chariots and four horses?"

"Is it tolerable for us to compete for the positions of officials with those of lowly backgrounds by appraising the worthy and selecting the worthy?"

"Encourage grass cultivation, and provide agricultural tools and ironware, and how many renters are unwilling to own their own land?"

"What's the use of the land if there's no one to cultivate it?"

After Xia Qi heard the words, he smiled and said, "Even so, what can we do?"

As soon as he finished speaking, he heard a thunderous sound from outside, followed by bursts of cheers from the people.

You don't need to ask to know that Mo Zhe is showing those powerful and terrifying weapons there again.

Xia Qi then said: "Listen, this is the voice Mohists want us to hear! The people are convinced, what can we do?"

"Two or three years ago, we didn't know the depth of the Mohists. We thought that there were no more than a hundred people, so we might not be invincible. If we still think this way now, it's really ridiculous! Even if the people don't accept the Mohist, how can we deal with the Mohist and the Mohist?" Those volunteers?"

When it came to the most practical issue of violence, the faces of those people on the opposite side became much uglier.

Among the Mohists, most of them are considered as "scholars", while righteous teachers belong to the expanded "Jiashi".If any great noble can have three or four hundred powerful "scholars" under his command, he can have enough voice in a place like Shangqiu.

Even though the nobles in these small places are skilled in chariots and horses, they are really no match for Mo Zhe in a real fight.

Hearing this, the person on the opposite side said after a while, "Now Mo Zhe has already dealt with those officials, using the name of accumulating wealth and harming the world with Wu Zhu back then, wouldn't they come to deal with us?"

Xia Qi then got up and said: "Wu Zhu was killed by the Mohists, and the rest of them are doing hard labor. Those officials don't have much land, and they can't pay it back. But we can pay it back."

"If Mo Zhe really persecutes us, he will pay back the money. After all, Mo Zhe is still reasonable, except for those witches who were executed and hanged, most of the rest are paid off and not pursued."

"But if we fight against Mo Zhe, we will sacrifice our lives. You have all seen the murder of Mo Zhe!"

When it comes to murder, these people can't help but think of those witches who were hanged and executed by thunder, and those corpses hanging outside the city. Those Mohists who stood up during the time of Wu Zhu were lunatics who even wanted to assassinate the monarch.

Under the tide of the times, these old nobles have fallen behind.

Not to mention Mohists with more advanced thinking, they will not even be able to fight for the monarchy in some countries in a few decades, let alone Mohists who never take bloodlines seriously.

What the Mohists are worried about is not the rebellion of these nobles, but only the fact that these nobles instigate the opposition of those "unknown" tenant farmers, which can solve the problem of the renter farmers. sexual solution.

But these people can also know that their power is weak, and now the internal division has been divided, and the evil name of Mo Zhe has spread more and more, there is really nothing they can do.

After a long silence, an old man said: "We can't deal with Mo Zhe, but Mo Zhe wants to cause chaos in the world, this is something the prince cannot tolerate."

"Now that the Mohists are powerful, let's not provoke them."

"But each family needs to pool some money. Go to Taoyi to hire eloquent people, and promise them a lot of money, let them lobby the emperor, and let the emperor's six ministers come forward to resolve this matter."

"The Mohists do this because they are afraid that the emperor and the six ministers will not know about it. As long as they report this matter and then use their words to persuade them, this matter will surely come true."

"As long as the emperor has orders and the six ministers have orders, once the Mohists leave, we can handle local affairs by ourselves."

They didn't know why the Mohists chose this time to act, and they didn't know that the Song Kingdom was in chaos, so they still pinned their hopes on the upper echelons to come forward to oppose it.

After all, the Mohists cannot fight against a country. Even defending the city can only serve as a catalyst to increase the strength of a weak country, so they think this is a feasible method.

These people present had never learned the relationship between productivity and production relations. They only felt that once the Mohists left, even if the people had iron tools, they could return to the original patriarchal system and the old system of enfeoffment with oppression.

Looking at it this way, it seems really feasible.

The people around Xia Qihou were also a little moved, but Xia Qihou secretly sighed in his heart, thinking that this method would not work—he didn't know the chaos that was about to occur in the Song Kingdom, but he vaguely sensed that even Mo Zhe If you leave, Peiyi may not be able to become what it was before.

(End of this chapter)