Seeing Xu Shu's confused look, Uncle Wu didn't pay attention to him, and swept his eyes around, wanting to see if there was any business coming to his door. As a result, after scanning for a long time, I didn't see any business coming to the door, maybe I felt a little bored, or I thought I was chatting with Xu Shu, so I woke Xu Shu up immediately.

"Hey!"

Uncle Wu chuckled, I don't know if he was mocking or mocking, but I heard him say: "I said Gongzi, you regard the Son of Heaven as a 'monarch father', and the 'monarch father' may not treat you as a child." I'm still a farmer, old man, and I'll be treated as a human being. You merchants, don't look at the wealth of your family, not to mention that the court doesn't treat you as people, how many people in the world can afford you merchants?"

Shinong industry and commerce have been ranked like this in all dynasties, except for the new dynasty of Wang Mang, which appeared in a short time. Although the merchant is ranked fourth, he is actually no different from those slaves and prostitutes. Don't look at the merchant as rich, unless it is when the court is in decline, the merchant can still do something. Under normal circumstances, the descendants of merchants are not allowed to participate in the imperial examination, unless they change their identity, but who wants to live a life of haha after living a life of fine clothes and food. Therefore, Uncle Wu's words are still very reasonable.

As if awakened by Uncle Wu's words, Xu Shu thought for a moment and pondered again.

In Yuan Chang's new system, it seems that the class system is excluded, although Yuan Chang didn't say it, but Xu Shu and they can also see it. Although the class system is not a very humane system, it has the rationality of its existence. Society is slowly progressing, and the drastic removal of this system does not mean that it is a good thing. Just like Wang Mang of the new dynasty, he abolished slaves and pursued equality for all, which is a very good idea. However, because of the limitations of the times, not only the big families rose up to rebel, but even the common people rose up against him. The rebellion of the great families is inevitable, but why should the people also resist?

First of all, the productive forces of today's society are not enough, and the common people do not want to enjoy life, even having enough to eat is a problem, and if the slavery system is abolished, then the common people cannot sell themselves into slavery to rich families, so how can they survive in times of natural disasters? Therefore, sometimes the common people are not forced to become slaves, but also a choice of helplessness in life. When a slave can still eat and live, if he is not a slave, he will starve to death, in the face of death, not everyone can 'not bend his waist for five buckets of rice' like Tao Yuanming, and Tao Yuanming is because of his family background, he has the confidence to say this. However, most of the people in this world are ordinary people and are not comparable.

Moreover, in the feudal era, the emperor could make a person or a family a slave with a single word, and it was difficult to eliminate slaves at the root.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, China ended the slave society and entered the feudal society, but this was only a change in social form, not that slavery disappeared. Not to mention the appearance of local and small-scale slaves, there have been four periods of slavery in Chinese history, and each time was a tragedy in China.

After the rebellion of the Eight Kings of the Western Jin Dynasty, the land of China fell into darkness, and the northern nomads began to move south. With regard to this period of history, we can get a glimpse of the leopard from these two key words: the two-legged sheep is to compare the Han people to edible "sheep," and the Han people are reduced to food, how miserable it is; the begging army, the name of this army, has nothing to do with majesty and bravery, but begging to live, it can be seen how many vicissitudes they have seen, how many hardships they have experienced, and in the end they only put forward such a poignant demand! In this era, Han women are the most painful, basically "being raped and adultered at night, and being used as food during the day?"

The second time, during the Jin Dynasty's destruction of the Northern Song Dynasty, the northern land fell into darkness, no different from the Wuhu Chaohua period; at that time, Zhang Zeduan's "Qingming Riverside Map" described how prosperous Bianjing was, with a population of millions, but after the disgrace of Jingkang, the population declined to less than 100,000. When the Jin people saw the Han people, they cut them directly if they didn't like them, and the women were also extremely miserable, and they were directly dragged away on the street to commit adultery, and there were countless dead, which showed darkness;

The second is the Yuan Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty both rose from the grassland, and compared to the culture of the Han people, the backwardness of their system is needless to say, and slavery is normal in their eyes.

With the exception of these four periods, which were explicitly slavery periods, slavery was made in different eras than others.

In the Xia, Shang, Zhou, and Qin eras, slaves were mostly born in wars, and civilians captured by the enemy became slaves, and there were also those who were demoted to slaves for crimes, and there were official slaves and private dependents. In the Han Dynasty, the production of slaves mainly came from the private ownership formed by land annexation, and in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, the people took refuge in the owners of large estates in order to escape the war, and also became private subordinates.

In the Han and Tang dynasties, there was a clear distinction between good and low in the law, such as a trilogy that injured a good citizen and was to be executed, and a good citizen killed his own subordinate, regardless of whether the triqu was guilty or not, and the trilogy was not guilty and only sentenced to imprisonment and could be redeemed with money. Whoever commits the crime of rebellion, the whole family and even the whole clan must not be official slaves. Before the Song Dynasty, those who had been employed for a long time had a lower status than good people, and they were also a kind of slaves.

Since the Song Dynasty, the master-servant relationship formed by the employment relationship is no longer regarded as a good and low relationship. In practice, however, the phenomenon of private slavery existed in large numbers, but private slaves were legally forbidden and the sale of good citizens into slavery was not permitted.

At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, slavery was also implemented on the Han people, and slavery was abolished in the Yongzheng period, and the economy was prosperous in the early Qing Dynasty, and the Kangxi Emperor lowered the tax burden, and the number of people who sold themselves into slavery like the Ming Dynasty has actually been greatly reduced. The untouchable system in ancient China was different from that of slaves, and the musicians, artisans, servants, tooth people, prostitutes, and even the soldiers of the Song Dynasty were legally untouchables, but they were not slaves. Although there was no strictly defined slavery system in China, there were not a few Han people who were harmed by a similar slavery system, and the untouchability system was abolished during the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty. It was not until 1910 that the Qing court issued an edict promulgating the "King James Penal Law" that slavery was completely abolished. In this modern criminal code, the human trafficking system that existed in Chinese history for thousands of years was completely banned, and the name of master and slave became absolutely illegal in law.

Therefore, Yuan Chang sometimes can't understand what many people think, the thousands of years of history of China, why so many people want to travel to the era of the Qing Dynasty, kneeling at every turn, and being called a slave at every turn, what is good about such an era. Even if you want to live a comfortable and peaceful life, the early Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties are many times better than the Qing Dynasty.

Not to mention these, Xu Shu was touched by Uncle Wu's words and compared the Son of Heaven with the new system.

The existence of the Son of Heaven is unparalleled in the present era, or in the feudal era, and as for the eyes of the rebellious ministers and thieves, it is naturally irrelevant; according to this line of thought, Yuan Chang is not a rebellious minister and thief? Suppressing the thoughts in his heart, Xu Shu continued to think. According to the idea of Yuan Changxin's system, the existence of the Son of Heaven seems to be unnecessary, just a change of leader. Moreover, in the new system, the leader is not from the world, but has returned to the ancient public world, but it is different from the ancient public world.

In ancient times, the public world selected leaders according to their reputation, and Yao took over the position from his father, but Yao did not pass the throne to his son later. At that time, Yao was old and wanted to find someone to succeed him. On one occasion, he summoned the leaders of the four tribes to counsel. After Yao told him what he was going to do, a man named Fang Qi said, "Your son Danzhu is an enlightened man, and it is just right for him to inherit your position." Yao said solemnly: No, this kid has a bad moral character and loves to quarrel with others. Another person named Guan Dou said: The co-workers in charge of water conservancy have done a very good job. Yao shook his head and said: Gonggong can speak well, he is respectful on the surface, but he has another set in his heart. With this person, I don't feel at ease. ”

It can be seen that Yao is a person who sincerely thinks about the world.

The discussion was fruitless, and Yao continued to search for his successor. Once, he brought the leaders of the Quartet tribe to discuss and asked everyone to recommend them. The unanimous recommendation of Shun to the meeting. Yao nodded and said, "Oh! I also heard that this person is very good. Can you tell me more about his deeds? Everyone told Shun about the situation, and Shun's father was a foolish man, and people called him Blind See. Shun's biological mother died early, and the stepmother was very bad. The younger brother born to his stepmother was named Xiang, and he was so arrogant that he couldn't say it, but he doted on him very much. Shun lives in such a family and treats his parents and younger brother very well. Therefore, everyone thinks that Shun is a virtuous person. Yao was very happy to hear this, and decided to inspect Shun first. He married his two daughters, Empress E and Nuying, to Shun, and built a granary for Shun and gave him a lot of cattle and sheep. When the stepmother and younger brother saw it, they were envious and jealous, and they united with Su Su several times to assassinate Shun. Once, he asked Shun to repair the roof of the granary. When Shun climbed to the top of the warehouse with a ladder, he set a fire underneath and tried to burn Shun to death. Shun saw a fire on the top of the warehouse and wanted to find a ladder, but the ladder was gone. Fortunately, Shun carried two hats to protect him from the sun. With his hat in both hands, he jumped down like a bird spreading its wings. The hat fluttered in the wind, and Shun landed lightly on the ground, not hurt at all. The Elephant was not reconciled, and they told Shun to go to the well. After Shun jumped down the well, the Seeu and the elephant threw pieces of earth and rocks on the ground, filling the well and trying to bury Shun alive in it. Unexpectedly, after Shun went down the well, he dug a hole by the well, drilled it out, and went home safely. He didn't know that Shun had already escaped, so he returned home triumphantly and said to Su Suo: This time my brother is going to die, and this clever plan was come up with by me. Now we can divide my brother's property. After speaking, he walked towards the house where Shun lived. Who knows, as soon as he entered the room, Shun was sitting on the edge of the bed playing the piano. Xiang was secretly surprised in his heart, and said embarrassedly, "Hey, how I miss you!" Shun also pretended to be indifferent, and said, "You have come just in time, I have a lot of things, and I need your help to take care of it." In the future, Shun still treated his parents and younger brother as kindly as in the past, and he didn't dare to assassinate Shun anymore.

There are countless such experiences, and it can be roughly summed up that Shun went through nine or nine difficulties and finally obtained the true scriptures... Phew, he finally passed Yao's inspection and became his successor. However, in the end, Yao was imprisoned by Shun to death, and Yao's son was also exiled by Shun. This has to be said to be a sad story than sadness, a person who has been considered by himself to be of good character and capable has imprisoned himself. Of course, it is quite unkind for Shun to imprison Yao, but when Shun finally found a successor, he did not pass it on to his son, but handed over the position to Yu, but from Yu began to implement the family world, and finally the Xia Dynasty began.

This method of succession in the public world has drawbacks. Just like some of Shun and Yu's practices, they are all disgraceful behaviors.

However, the public world of Yuan Changxin's system is different.

First of all, this kind of public world is not from the whole country to recruit successors, but to select from a specific number of people in a standardized and orderly manner, and the selected object does not know whether he can succeed in the future, he can only start to complete the tasks that need to be completed according to the successor candidates, and finally get that position through layers of competition and tasks. Just like in Shun's incident, if someone has the selfish intention to inform Shun, then Shun can behave better, and then show his true face after taking the position, then he will harm a bunch of people, which is naturally undesirable. However, the candidates of Yuan Changxin's system, although everyone knows these candidates, they are not the only ones, they need to start from the bottom and rise step by step, if they can't rise, they will lose their identity as candidates. And the non-uniqueness of the candidates also makes it difficult for those officials to start, which can well eliminate the phenomenon of cheating.

However, the emergence of this system must abolish the emperor, otherwise, the existence of the emperor greatly limits the development space of the new system. And this is also the contradiction of Xu Shu, for him, the Son of Heaven is the object of his loyalty, if there is no Son of Heaven, who is he loyal to?

Hey, that's not right!

Xu Shu was like a lamb on the way, and suddenly found that he had entered the wrong place of thinking. Why should he be loyal to the Son of Heaven, not for the sake of this world and the people of the world? If it were an emperor like Xia Chaoji and Shang Chaoxuan, would he be loyal? Obviously, reason told him that this was impossible. The Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties were all overthrown because of the mediocrity and incompetence of the last emperor, wouldn't the Han Dynasty have gone through such a process? If an emperor was incompetent, and he Xu Shu still hung on it wholeheartedly, and used what he had learned all his life to assist such an emperor, what was the point of his existence.

"Haha, I see, I finally understand. In fact, I am not loyal to the Son of Heaven, but to the world and the people, as long as it is beneficial to the world and the people, I should spend my life to complete it. ”

Suddenly, Xu Shu realized the true meaning of loyalty, which made his spirit seem to be sublimated, and many things that he couldn't understand could be figured out. From this moment on, Xu Shu's talent is also moving towards top talents. For example, in history, Xu Shu can only be regarded as a middle-class talent, far from Guo Jia, Xun Yu, and Zhuge Liang, but now he only needs some time of experience, but he is comparable to them.

"Uncle Wu, bring ten cooking cakes to the kid, and celebrate today's big joy!" Xu Shu took out ten copper plates, swept away the depression in his heart, and said heroically.

“…”

Uncle Wu didn't know what to say, so he celebrated with ten cooking cakes? However, it was also a single business, and Uncle Wu didn't say much, and Zhong Neng wondered in his heart whether this son was hysterical.

Xu Shu strode away, his back as dazzling as the scorching sun in the sky.