Seeing that the cotton, silkworm, and machine cannibalism that Chen Jian talked to him about a few years ago became a reality day by day, but he couldn't do anything about it when he saw all this happening, even if he was elected as a member of the new council, he could only watch all this happen artificially accelerated.

Hu Lin even felt a little cold all over his body, this kind of cold was the same as when he said that Chen Jian's heart was dead, sitting here listening to the terms discussed at these councils, he deeply felt that the chill that seeped into the bone marrow had actually started a long time ago.

For the sake of free competition in the cotton spinning industry, the upper reaches of the cotton spinning guild were ruined with ginning machines, and a large number of unemployed and cheap hired laborers who flowed into the cities because of cotton cultivation on farms were produced in batches; In order to prevent a backlash at that time, and to facilitate transportation in the future, the construction of the canal at that time created a false bright future and hid the possible frightening chaos; In order to make cotton yarn a false prosperity and to accumulate more funds for the original cottage industry workshops, the wide loom was first made, and a group of small workshop owners with no interest in land were supported by the cooperatives to complete the accumulation; In order to make the cotton cloth sell better, go to sea to seek the market for smuggling, set up a navigation insurance company and a Nanyang company, to ensure sales and continue to accumulate at the same time; When the market boomed, the water-powered spinning machine was introduced, so that those small workshop owners who had no interest in land relied on the previous accumulation to set up water-powered factories, and relied on the cheap hired workers who had appeared before to eat cotton to ensure profits, and made a new class, and by the way, the number of hired workers who would not have supported it unintentionally but now definitely supported it......

One ring, one step at a time. Hu Lin thought that after scolding Jian Chen that day, Jian Chen would be touched, but now it seems that the pen smeared on the cold canvas has not stopped until now.

The debate in the ear council continued, but Hu Lin felt a little bored, if everything was a predestined and unchangeable fate, then what were his people fighting for? What are you tossing about?

There is neither external humiliation, but also no enemies, and there is no enemy who can pose a threat around, so is it better to delay these unchangeable fates from ten years to a hundred years without tossing or even slowing down?

This kind of confusion and loneliness made Hu Lin feel like he choked in his esophagus without chewing on steamed buns, and his stuffy ears became more and more blurred until bursts of applause came.

He thought, I don't know who finally came up with a proposal that everyone accepted, which is really rare.

However, when he came back to his senses, he heard someone in his ear: "Mr. Zhu Qian, what are you still sitting here?" Today is over. ”

Only then did he look up blankly and realize that many people had left, and the one who called him was the young man of the Mexican Party who gave him tobacco leaves when he voted against it that day.

Hu Lin smiled a little embarrassedly, and when he got up to leave, the ghost envoy asked, "Do you think you can solve the problem of Mincheng?" Or to solve the problems of the 36 counties in the north and south of the country? ”

"Mr. Zhu Qian said with a smile, we are just a mercenary party. Since fragmentation is inevitable, we can only move forward along the future we envision. We are not the ruler of the whole country, and we have not saved the crisis of the ethnic group, so we can't solve all the problems now, and we can't carry the cauldron you said, and we are not qualified to carry it, right? We are not an ethnic party, nor are we a party of the whole people, at least not yet. ”

Hearing this, Hu Lin felt that this so-called sacred council had become not holy at all, but just a place for groups of people to fight for their own interests here.

It's not dirty, but it's definitely not pure, and few people can even stand up and say that I want to think about everyone, maybe I think about it, but it's about the future and not the reality.

Once the sacredness of the council is removed, it becomes somewhat absurd.

Hu Lin looked at the people who were gradually leaving, and said with a wry smile: "If today's council does not meet your minimum requirements, such as the issue of voting rights and rent reductions that you cannot regress and prohibit the smashing of machines, but retreats to the era of guilds, what will your Mexican Party do?" ”

The young man's answer struck Hu Lin in the heart like a heavy hammer of iron striking in a wrought iron workshop.

The young man laughed, and said in a tone that was half joking, half serious, but always felt a little careless: "If it is really like what you say, we will flip the table and reason with flintlock pistols and cannons!" ”

This not-so-funny joke made Hu Lin laugh back and forth, and the young man who laughed was at a loss, he felt that this sentence was not so funny, but he didn't know why Mr. Zhu Qian laughed so much.

When Hu Lin withdrew from the council hall, he withdrew many steps, until he could see the panoramic view of the entire council, looked up at the places where he thought he could solve many things but many things he wanted to solve were not solved, thinking about the joke that lifted the table just now, and laughed.

……

After the establishment of the new council, the Moxican Party, which had compromised everywhere, did not lift the table, and the hand-spinning practitioners in the towns near the dense area of the water-powered spinning mills in the upper reaches of the Min River, which had a large river drop.

Unable to survive to the point of bankruptcy, reduced to the lowest level of hired labor, or even completely unemployed, and deprived of the last vestiges of the dignity of free laborers, they have enough reasons to flip the table.

Soon after the establishment of the new council, after many proposals were passed, the pickets of the Mexican Party left Mincheng and returned to the mines and party factories to continue their work, and the pickets in the city were no longer armed on a daily basis, but they still kept a large number of weapons in their hands.

Mincheng set up a new "Stability Patrol Loyal to the Republic and Loyal to the Mincheng Civilian Council", many of whom were former street hooligans and some armed employees of the Nanyang Company, and the capitalists paid for the removal of the right of the Mexican pickets to maintain order, and these people became the new patrol in Mincheng.

The council in Mincheng was not completely reasonable and legitimate, and even if it was reasonable and legal, it was limited to Nan'an, where Mincheng and the Moxican Party controlled the grassroots, not the entire Minxian County.

However, Mincheng is theoretically the center of Minjun, and even if the council does not have a wider range of surrounding areas to participate in this meeting, it can still be regarded as Mincheng as Minjun in a sense.

Both the new council and the old council have the same resolutions on certain matters, such as the Prohibition of Smashing Machines Act, the only difference being the abolition of hanging.

When those people satirized this bill and secretly stabbed the Mexican Party at the same time, they questioned the reasonableness of the hanging. Is human life worth or machines worth it?

However, this is an unsolvable problem, those who smash the machine must not be able to afford the machine, and it is impossible to smash the machine if they can afford the machine, so it becomes meaningless to let these people compensate, because they cannot afford to pay.

But the problem is that as long as people don't die, it's still just a matter of property, not life, so hanging is unreasonable.

This involves a question of the right to life, not just a simple bill question, which falls under the category of ideology and is a microcosm of the transformation of the entire parliament from customary legislation to ideologically based legislation.

The significance of this controversy was enormous, not only to abolish the decision to smash the machine and hang the highest sentence, but also to teach a lesson to the general public class in the street debate.

Results...... But not satisfactory. In the end, the maximum hanging for smashing a machine without injuring anyone was abolished, but the final result was that all those who smashed the machine were imprisoned until they died, and all their property was confiscated for compensation.

Enlightenment such as the ideological right to life in Mincheng did not spread to the outside on a large scale, and it took time, so many spinning craftsmen outside Mincheng were angry - what is the difference between this and hanging?

A new council was formed, and those who should have speculated were still speculative, those who should have gone bankrupt were still bankrupt, the handmade yarn that should have been difficult to compete with the hydroelectric factories was still unsalable, and the price of cotton was still being manipulated when the price of cotton should have fluctuated......

There may be a lot of new places, but for a particular group of people, there is no change in the slightest, so the initial excitement turns into disappointment and anger.

Since you can set up a new council in Mincheng, why can't our town? Anyway, the spinning water workshop is not in Mincheng, but with us.

Your new council does not have the permission of the real people's assembly of the Republic and the king, then we can disapprove it.

Don't blame us for doing the fifteenth year of junior high school!

When will you be able to build the spinning machine you fantasized about in the city, driven by coal and steam, and then make your Mincheng the center of Min County!

With this search for loopholes, whether out of anger and revenge, or the darkness that someone is secretly manipulating and fueling the trouble, or the restlessness of some young people out of conscience and pity, a table-turning operation unfolds.

At a spinning and water-powered factory in the valley of a tributary of the upper reaches of Mincheng, hundreds of people read out the resolutions of their town's councils, declaring that smashing machines was legal and refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the Mincheng council's resolutions.

Four spinning mills have already been smashed, just not killed.

The security patrol team in Mincheng and the armed employees of the Nanyang Company, who had already obtained their qualifications, immediately went to the towns upstream.

Many of the people who followed asked who was the leader, but they didn't want the hundreds of people to answer in unison: "Each of us is the leader, each of us is the general of this 'riot', come on, come and arrest us all and hang us!" ”

Seeing that nearly a thousand people were violent, and there were not many people going, they retreated back in a gloomy manner.

That night, the mill owners of Mincheng got together and scraped together a large sum of money, and more than 800 armed street hooligans and armed employees of the Nanyang Company were given the task of "catching these lawbreakers".

This is done in accordance with the law and does not require the authorization of the council.

Four bronze cannons accompanied the march, saying that they were necessary to prevent "the angry lawbreakers from rebelling in arms, but if they were willing to accept punishment for the loss of the smashed hydroelectric workshop, or voluntarily surrender to serve the forced labor of life imprisonment, they should not shoot or fire." ”

Hearing the news, Hu Lin exclaimed in surprise and ran to the new council overnight, begging Yuanshan to stop this action that was bound to shed blood.

However, he told him not as the deputy governor of the county, but as the chairman of the new council: "The council has no right to interfere with the implementation of the laws and regulations that have been in force, and this was determined from the beginning." It is perfectly legal at this time, and there is no reason to stop it. Moreover, this is only to capture the lawbreakers, not to massacre. ”

In a word, the new council, which had been shaken, completely collapsed in Hu Lin's heart, and rushed to the street regardless of it, grabbed a carriage, pumped the horse until it was about to go crazy, and ran madly in that direction.

A man, a carriage, just stopped in the middle of the road.

He stretched out his arms.

Behind him was the road leading to the tributary valley area, and the water next to it was clear, but he seemed to see red blood.

In front of him were eight hundred armed patrols, four shining cannons, and the sacred right of the statutes drawn up by the council.

But all this is not the thing that beats in the chest of this small, outstretched man with open arms, wrapped in blood.

He called it ...... Conscience.