Chapter 23 One of the key points of the reform: the issue of peasants

Not long after Li Mu's reward, Wei Yang officially appeared on the stage and staged his reform drama. Like Li Kui, he believes that agriculture is the foundation of the country, and that if the country is to be strong, it must first ensure food production.Therefore, he promulgated the first decree - "Grass Cultivation Order". Since ancient times, it has been a matter of course for farmers to farm.However, if we want farmers to grow more fields, only cultivate fields, and strive to open up wasteland to cultivate fields, and not think about anything other than farming, we need to use some special means.

The first is to implement the policy of fooling farmers ideologically, so that farmers can be easily manipulated. Wei Yang believes that the greatest threat to the development of agriculture comes from knowledge.The nature and value of farmers lies in their ignorance. Once they have knowledge, they will not be content with farming and will think about other things.Therefore, it is necessary to reform Qin's original atmosphere of valuing learning, to exclude those who study from the regime, and to prevent them from having room for advancement, so that farmers will not want to study and will not deteriorate.

He was particularly wary of the influence of the Confucian school, and ordered officials from all over the country to burn Confucian classics such as "Poetry"-he may not have done the thing of pitting Confucianism, but he was more than a hundred years earlier than Qin Shihuang in the matter of burning books. . He also ordered the banning of all recreational activities in the countryside, which were a waste of time and prone to moral corruption.He must ensure that the peasants are "one-minded but not obscene" and devote all their energies to agricultural production. In short, in Wei Yang's ideal, farmers have neither knowledge nor emotion, they are just a group of machines that can farm.However, it is still difficult to achieve this goal only through the policy of fooling farmers, and corresponding coercive means must be used to force farmers to submit.

He stipulated that families that produce a lot of food and cloth can be exempted from corvee labor.This is equivalent to an incentive for advanced producers, and it is also one of the few incentive measures in the Grass Cultivation Order.Wei Yang is better at using punishment.Immediately after this incentive measure is the intimidation of backward producers or those who are not doing business properly: those who are impoverished and bankrupt due to business or non-production, will be paid as slaves by the government together with their wives and children. All mountains, rivers and lakes other than farmland are nationalized, and farmers are strictly prohibited from entering.There are birds in the mountains and fish in the rivers, but farmers are not allowed to hunt, thus severing the illusion of farmers wanting to find some sideline work besides farming.

In fact, farmers basically have nowhere to go except their homes and fields.Because Wei Yang also established the earliest floating population management system in Chinese history, prohibiting people from migrating without authorization.Whether visiting relatives or fleeing famine, you must obtain official approval.Passengers staying in hotels must have a letter of introduction issued by the government.If a hotel accommodates undocumented passengers, the owner of the hotel is guilty of the same crime as the tourists, and they will be sent to the shelter together. But these are not enough.Wei Yang was exhaustive. In order to ensure agricultural production, he also formulated a number of restrictive measures for merchants, officials and nobles.

Businessmen bear the brunt.Wei Yang believed that merchants seeking huge profits without engaging in production would be detrimental to society and must be dealt with severely.He stipulated that merchants must register the names and numbers of slaves with the government, so that the government can distribute corvees; impose heavy taxes on wine and meat circulating in the market, which is ten times higher than the cost of commodities; most importantly, prohibit private sales of grain to prevent merchants from monopolizing the market , to make huge profits.During his administration, the state of Qin had "no business to buy, no farmer to sell", grain production and sales were completely controlled by the state, and the planned economy had taken shape.

There are two main restrictions on officials. One is to streamline institutions and personnel to reduce parasites; the other is to strengthen clean government and prevent officials from interfering with agricultural production. The nobles were the key targets of Wei Yang's reform.He deliberately increased the taxation of the nobles, requiring the children of the nobles to serve the same corvee as the common people, and the conditions for releasing the corvee were higher than that of the common people.It is forbidden for nobles and officials to hire servants, forcing the children of nobles to work by themselves.He even stipulated that if the children of the public house did not have military merits, they could not be included in the clan and could not enjoy the privileges of the nobility.

It is conceivable that when the "Grass Cultivation Order" was issued, the sky was angry and people complained.The nobles gritted their teeth in hatred, and the peasants also had great opinions.Thousands of people from all over the country came to Liyang to petition and complain.Crown Prince Ying Si publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with Wei Yang's reform under the instigation of a group of nobles and elders. Of course Ying Si will not petition, his method of protest is very simple - break the law.As for which law was violated, there is no record in official history, and this book cannot fabricate it. In short, this incident has caused a lot of trouble, and everyone in the whole country knows it.

Ying Si threw Wei Yang a hot potato. If Wei Yang turns a blind eye, his prestige will be lost, and the right to reform is a joke; if he wants to act according to the law, the prince is the future king, let's see how he judges the prince. Wei Yang was not at all embarrassed. After obtaining the consent of Qin Xiaogong, he ordered the two teachers of the prince, Gongziqian and Gongsun Jia, to be arrested. One was sentenced to be punished (cutting the nose) and the other was sentenced to tattooing (face tattooing). If the prince breaks the law, of course he cannot share the crime with the people, but the prince's teacher can be used as a scapegoat.Wei Yang used an almost iron fist to show the world his determination to reform.

And behind this iron fist is Qin Xiaogong's unwavering support. The "Grass Cultivation Order" has been implemented for three years, and the effect has gradually appeared.The Qin State is vast and sparsely populated, with a lot of wasteland. After three years of forced development, a large piece of wasteland has been turned into farmland, and agricultural output has increased significantly. Great rule of the township".Coupled with the restriction of the power of the nobility and the expulsion of intellectuals, the peasants could easily obtain a sense of psychological satisfaction.It turned out that those professional households who petitioned now came to Liyang again, beating gongs and drums to send Wanmin umbrellas to Wei Yang, thanking "Master Zuo Shu for his good policy".

Wei Yang was very happy, and asked them: "Now, don't you think there is any inconvenience in the new law?" "It's very convenient, very convenient." "That's good." Wei Yang turned to the officials and said, "Write down the names of these people, and move them all to the frontier to guard the frontier." Everyone was dumbfounded. "It turned out that you criticized me, but I didn't speak out because the implementation of the New Deal has not yet achieved results. I held back. Now you praise me, but I want to move you to the border. You must be puzzled. Then I will tell you, National affairs are not something you farmers should talk about. If you do not do well, it is not your turn to point fingers; Don't look at it, don't say what you shouldn't say, in short, just do what the government says obediently." Since then, no one dared to discuss the government's decrees. To make a digression, this story teaches the world that any time you sing praises to an authoritarian government, you are asking for no fun.