When the people of the capital were still talking about how lively the grand ceremony of the triumphal ceremony of entering the city, which had been rare for decades, Huang Liji, the first assistant of the Ming Dynasty, was holding a newspaper into the palace and urgently asked to see Chongzhen.

Chongzhen, who was reviewing the folds in the study of the Qianqing Palace, saw Huang Liji, who was anxious, hurriedly walking into the room, and couldn't help but ask with some curiosity: "What happened?" Why do you look so anxious Mr. Huang. ”

Huang Li saluted very quickly, and then took the newspaper in his hand and said, "Your Majesty, have you read this issue of the Daming Times?" Lao Chen thought that there was an article that was too extreme, completely distorting the original intention of the saint, confusing the superiority and inferiority, and it can be described as confusing people's hearts.

For this article, Chen personally summoned the chief writer of the Daming Times, but Sun Longfu not only refused to take back this issue of the Daming Times, but also refused to hand over the author of this article, Su Changqing, which was really a little lawless..."

Zhu Youzhen was stunned, and then persuaded him: "Mr. Huang doesn't have to be in such a hurry, if you have something to say slowly, the sky can't fall, even if the sky falls, it will fall on my head first." Steward Lu, you sit down for Mr. Huang to serve tea, and the others go out first, I want to talk to Mr. ”

Listening to Chongzhen's words of persuasion, Huang Liji finally calmed down, and stood in place waiting for Lu Qi to command the people to sit down to make tea. Several little eunuchs quickly cleaned up a seat opposite the emperor, and then quickly pushed out the room and closed the door, leaving Lu Qi alone in the room waiting for the two of them.

For the Daming Times, the cabinet's dissatisfaction has been a long time. For a long time, there were three forms of political commentary on the Ming Dynasty: the imperial court newspaper, the unveiling of posts, and the collection of essays, or the speech in the literati's gatherings.

The newspapers of the imperial court are mostly reports and edicts on the political affairs and dynamics of the imperial court, and some of them are also selected to publish some of the memorabilia, and there is no obvious political tendency.

Although the posts and anthologies have a strong political tendency, most of them are based on criticism and attacks on a certain political event or an individual official, because the target is a single and narrow target, so it will have a great impact in a short period of time, but after the incident becomes quiet.

Literati associations, on the other hand, focused on making friends with similar aspirations, and such gatherings often began with poetry and eventually became literati associations that supported certain political ideals. However, because such literary societies have a small audience and are not strictly organized, they tend to be mere formalities in the end and cannot exert any influence on the government.

For a long time, the officials of the Ming Dynasty have been accustomed to these methods of disseminating public opinion, and they also have various means to deal with these public opinion criticisms.

However, the emergence of the Daming Times, and the various tabloids and pamphlets that have emerged with the Daming Times, are now subverting the inherent understanding of public opinion among Daming officials.

The previous form of public opinion dissemination determined that the fermentation of an incident requires a long period of dissemination, as well as the propaganda of well-known people, and a powerful article is indispensable. Because of this, as long as the person concerned has the heart, he has time to defuse the public opinion criticism that is unfavorable to him.

Of course, in such a public opinion environment, officials with strong social connections naturally have an advantage in public opinion. For example, if a Donglin Party member attacks an official who is not from the Donglin Party, he can mobilize dozens or even hundreds of people to criticize him, but the other party can make few voices.

From the perspective of onlookers, it is obvious that those who have attained the Tao have much help, while those who have lost the Tao have little help. Even if it was the Donglin Party member who ignored the incident, under the pressure of public opinion, the outcome would be completely different.

Most of the Donglin Party members are from good backgrounds, and most of them are gentlemen from the south of the Yangtze River, and their relatives, friends, teachers and friends are not members of the Shilin, and they like to talk about the same spirit and branches. Once an official provokes a person, it will often be like stabbing a hornet's nest, attracting an all-round attack by a large group of soldiers.

It is precisely because the Donglin Party has the power of public opinion in the Ming Dynasty that it has been repeatedly suppressed by the Eunuch Party but still survives tenaciously. Of course, it is precisely because of the domineering and arrogant public opinion of the Donglin Party that those non-Donglin Party members in the court have to huddle together to keep warm, and they have become a eunuch party headed by Wei Zhongxian.

When Chongzhen ascended the throne and changed Dongchang into the Daming Times, the civil officials of the court ignored this matter and did not think so. Dongchang's gang of fans, let them go to find out other people's private or torture to extract confessions, let them learn from scholars to run a newspaper, God knows what ridiculous articles will be published on it.

The officials of the DPRK and China had a reason to despise the Daming Times, because they did not believe that there would be a brilliant literati who wrote articles for the Daming Times, thus ruining their own innocence;

The second is that newspapers are always published to be read by people, and in the Ming Dynasty, except for readers, few people can understand a classical Chinese article, unless it is written directly in market slang. And as a reader of natural justice, who would interpret the article for the newspaper run by Dongchang? It is estimated that the final fate of this Ming Times can only be used to package goods for merchants on the street.

The conjectures that the civil officials scoffed at have become a reality in the Daming Times. The Daming Times not only used the so-called vernacular language, that is, the slang of the market, but also used punctuation and simplified Chinese to reduce the reading burden of readers.

In addition, the main teaching material for the literacy campaign ordered by the emperor to promote was the Ming Times in each issue. In other words, under the emperor's coercive policy, the Daming Times soon became popular among the burghers who knew a few words, but were not considered scholars.

In the past, the local people had a natural awe for the scholars, and this awe was not only because these scholars might become officials in the future, but also because the stars of Wenqu in the sky came to the world. More importantly, these scholars have the ability to interpret the major policies of the imperial court.

The local people had to rely on these scholars to know what had happened to the imperial court and how the newly issued policies of the imperial court had affected them.

However, the emergence of the Daming Times is, to a certain extent, equivalent to depriving the reader of this part of his political identity. To some extent, the Daming Times replaced these scholars and became the link between the imperial court policy and the lower classes.

Although some officials in the court and central government have not yet seen what has changed in the local area, there have been more and more cases of businessmen with the Daming Times filing complaints against the Shuntian Mansion in the capital. What's even more odious is that some cases are instigated by the Daming Times, which published the cases throughout the process and explained in detail the reasons why these cases were won.

For these officials, if the Daming Times had not stood behind the former Dongchang, they would have come to the door to seize it. Instigating lawsuits is the most hated behavior of officials. In the performance appraisal of Ming officials, the settlement of litigation is a major assessment goal.

For the actions of the Daming Times, it is not that no officials have impeached, but under the protection of Chongzhen, the Daming Times was only punished, but the lawsuit was removed from the evaluation of officials' political performance.

The emperor's reasons for the abolition were very strong, and he borrowed the allusions of King Zhou Li's prohibition of slander and the people's road to the purpose, and directly refuted the argument put forward by some officials, and the prohibition of lawsuits by local officials was completely to educate the local pure and good folk customs. Chongzhen thought that this was the laziness and neglect of local officials.

The ancients still knew that the mouth of the people is better than the Sichuan. The river collapses, and there will be many injuries. Today's officials, however, only want not to have problems during their tenure, even if the people below have reached the point where the road is the goal, and they are still shouting that the world is peaceful. What is the difference between promoting such an official and digging the roots of the Ming Dynasty.

To be honest, Huang Liji didn't think there was anything wrong with Chongzhen's proposition, on the contrary, he was a little happy that day, and used this incident to dispose of several local officials who opposed him.

If the Daming Times just stopped there, then even if Huang Liji was psychologically uncomfortable, he would not want to run to Chongzhen to complain. After all, the lack of interpretation of imperial court policies and the supervision of local officials' implementation of policies does not shake the authority of the cabinet.

But the Daming Times, which is not supervised by the cabinet, obviously will not be as Huang Liji intended. From the beginning of the year to the middle of the year, the articles on the debate of benevolence and righteousness published in the Daming Times continuously, to today's article that the Son of Heaven is ordered by the people, which completely touched the bottom line of Huang Liji and the cabinet.

Although the civil officials of the Ming Dynasty at this time were not as complete as the scholars of later generations, the Confucian scholars summed up the complete theoretical system of Taoism and legal system. However, the understanding of the power of the emperor who came out of the law to rule the law is already ingrained in their minds.

The only way that the civil officials of the Ming Dynasty could rely on to check and balance the supreme monarchy was the code of conduct and political ideals set for the politicians handed down from Confucius and Mencius and other Confucian sages, that is, the Taoism that later generations said.

The Daming Times set off a debate of benevolence and righteousness and the monarchy's command to the people, which was not only an attempt to tamper with the Taoist system in the hands of the Ming civil officials, but also a reconstruction of the legal system that the Ming gentry were familiar with.

If the two articles on the debate of benevolence and righteousness and the command of the monarchy to the people were written by the literati and the great confucians, this struggle would be just another fierce ideological clash between the literati of the Ming Dynasty, just like the struggle between the doctrines of science and mind, at least it would not set off a political storm.

But whether it is Liu Jingting or this Su Changqing, they are not serious scholars, and they don't seem to be serious Confucian disciples, plus the Ming Emperor is behind the Daming Times, so Huang Liji has to hurry up to Chongzhen, wanting to prevent this ideological debate from developing into a political dispute in the court.

After sitting down, Huang Liji took a sip of tea lightly, adjusted his breathing, and then stabilized his mood and said to Chongzhen: "Your Majesty, this Su Changqing's article seems to quote Meng Sheng's remarks everywhere, but in essence, his purpose is to attack the sage rites of the Three Platforms and Five Constants. It can be said that the treacherous is like loyalty, and the big fake is like the truth. ”

Zhu Youzhen looked at him with a strange expression and said, "Mr. Huang, are you talking too much, I don't think this Su Changqing is so out of line as you say." ”