Yuan Keli, the secretary of the Criminal Department, made a statement at the meeting of the state party that was completely unexpected by the Donglin party, and after the meeting, several officials wanted to stop him and ask him what he meant by the statement he had just made at the meeting.

However, as soon as the meeting ended, Yuan Keli left in a hurry, not giving the officials a chance to question him at all. When he returned to the Criminal Department, he gave an order to the porter of the Criminal Department, and except for the officials of the Ministry who asked to see him on official business, he did not see anyone else.

Yuan Keli's order was really prescient, and one or two officials followed him to the Criminal Department to ask to see him, but under the insistence of the porter, several officials finally left after more than half an hour.

However, Yuan Keli's strange behavior that day was revealed a few months later. After the end of the salt case, the Lianghuai Salt Farm imitated the Changlu Salt Farm and changed to a joint-stock company system, and Yuan Keli's relatives and his friends with the Henan Township Party all bought shares in this company.

Afterwards, these Henan gentry also defended their behavior vigorously: "When the imperial court investigated and dealt with the chaos case in Henan, the Jiangnan gentry took the opportunity to buy land in Henan, and most of these lands were near the railway lines to be built in Henan. Now they are just reporting and reporting. ”

These disputes after the fact only allowed some imperial historians to take the opportunity to impeach the Shangshu of the Criminal Department and brush up their own reputation, and they could not let these Henan gentry spit out the shares of the salt company that they had swallowed. Although in modern times, the boundaries between agriculture and industry are not as clear as those at the beginning of the country, it is still a taboo for the gentry to personally run the lowly industry.

Therefore, even if many of the officials in the DPRK and China come from merchants, they will never contaminate their family business from childhood to avoid being attacked by others and proving that they are not qualified to enter the official career. As for the family's property, it is either in the name of the brother or clansman, or it is run by the domestic slaves and the wife's family.

The salt industry is very profitable, and the people of the Ming Dynasty are very clear. But even if the clan and nobles still dare not blatantly run the salt business, those Jiangnan gentry naturally need to change hands through the salt merchants to make profits for themselves. The two Huai salt merchants have a capital of 30 million and a profit of 9 million a year, and on the surface, it seems that these interests are all attributed to the salt merchants.

However, with the annual net profit of 5 million yuan obtained by salt merchants, every 10 years is 50 million benefits, the rise of the salt industry in Lianghuai began from the abolition of the Chinese law more than 100 years ago, and the longest salt merchant family in Yangzhou has gone through 4 or 5 generations.

Even if these salt merchant families took out 10,000 taels of silver as their capital, at a growth rate of doubling every 10 years, their assets should be more than 5 million taels today. After all, until now, the output of the Lianghuai salt industry has not been able to meet the demand of the market. Theoretically, as long as the capital is continuously invested, it will continue to pay off until the market demand is satisfied.

But in fact, although the salt merchants in Yangzhou are wealthy, there are only seven or eight merchants with more than one million two properties, but the number of salt merchants between 50 and 1 million taels exceeds more than 20 people. More than 100 years ago, there were more than 100,000 taels of merchants operating salt business in Lianghuai, and there were almost 10 people.

It can be seen that in the past hundred years, more than half of the net profits of the Lianghuai salt industry have flowed into the hands of the clans, nobles and Jiangnan gentry behind the salt merchants. But in the eyes of the world, this salt profit has been swallowed by the salt merchants, which is the reality of the Lianghuai salt industry.

Although the proportion of the population of the Henan gentry in this province is larger than that of other regions, but after leaving Henan, there is no influence, and Henan has always had little tradition of doing business, although the salt industry of the two Huai is profitable, but it has always had little to do with the Henan gentry.

Now, with the outbreak of the Lianghuai Salt case, the Henan gentry who reshuffled the Lianghuai Salt Industry and got the promise of being able to take a stake in the Lianghuai Salt Industry naturally immediately forgot the pain of being taught by the emperor before.

The Ming gentry class, which was built on the economy of feudal manors, has never been a class that can be united. After all, the essence of feudal manors is that they are independent small kingdoms. In their own small kingdoms, the landlords and gentry held the power to kill and seize the lives and deaths of the people at the bottom, but there was a social law between them.

This time, the imperial court took advantage of the investigation and handling of the Henan rebellion case, and carried out a beating on the gentry and heroes in various counties in Henan, deprived many gentry of their land, and directly exiled them to overseas desert islands. Except at the beginning, some local tyrants and inferior gentry who were used to running rampant in the local area once used force against the officers and soldiers of the imperial court.

But when they realized that those Zhuang Ding who were summoned by them could only bully the honest people in the countryside who could not pay the rent on weekdays, and only sent the officers and soldiers of the court to death, and would also anger the current emperor, these Henan gentry immediately chose to submit to the court, and then help the court to identify how many landowners in this county had always disobeyed the orders of the court, and how much land they could be confiscated.

Although the imperial court would eventually confiscate the majority of these fields, the gentry were able to divide the rest of the land and keep their land and property. It can be said that the gentry and landlords of the Ming Dynasty never had the spirit of tenacious resistance and unity. Even if the neighbor's house is on fire, as long as the fire has not yet burned to one's own house, even if it is a wooden barrel lent to fight the fire, it is necessary to calculate the money.

Not to mention that this time the imperial court gave them a chance to enter the Lianghuai salt industry, just mentioning that those Jiangnan gentry entered Henan to buy land on a large scale, which had already touched the interests of the Henan gentry first. With such a good excuse, how could they be willing to hand over the shares of the Lianghuai Salt Industry Company.

And because of the turmoil caused by the Henan rebellion case and the two Huaiyan cases, the Henan gentry who were originally slightly inclined to the Donglin Party completely fell to the emperor's side. Most of the Jiangnan gentry and the Henan gentry have become hostile to each other.

On that day, the emperor's view of the unity of the monarch, the people, and the society was put forward in public at the meeting, and it appeared on the front page of the Daming Times the next day, and became the hottest topic among the people and scholars in the capital.

For a long time, the terms emperor, court, and officials have been awe-inspiring and mysterious words for ordinary people. The Ming generation had a higher literacy rate than the previous generation, and the Ming Dynasty script was the most widely circulated in the market. And in these, the emperor is always high above and rarely makes mistakes. Even if the emperor made a mistake, it was the result of being seduced by traitorous ministers.

It is because of these that the emperor is the last hope of the people, a saint who knows right from wrong. But even in the most absurd, the emperor will not have anything to do with ordinary people. A solitary king could not have had any contact with the people other than collecting taxes.

The so-called emperors are all star monarchs who are favored by the mandate of heaven, and they are not ordinary people. Just like the people like to call the reader Wenqu Xing, the emperor is Ziwei Emperor Xing. The star monarch in the sky, does he still care about the lives of ordinary people? It can be recognized that the people are precious and the king is light. The emperor of truth is already a rare good emperor in the eyes of the people.

The Trinitarian theory, which regarded the emperor as the representative of the interests of the people, soon received opposition from many theorists. They believe that such remarks not only undermine the Mandate of Heaven inherited by the Ming Emperor.

The emperor is very human, but he is the son of the real dragon, and the gods in the sky have descended to earth, this statement has been completely deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Now that Chongzhen is quick to talk and connect the Son of Heaven with the people at the bottom, he can give up the majesty of the court and the psychological deterrence of the ambitious people in the world.

If everyone is a mortal man with two nostrils, two eyes, and a mouth. So, why can the throne only be inherited by the bloodline of the Zhu family? If everybody wants to be emperor, they are making the country chaotic and disorderly. This is clearly not what physicists and scholars want to see.

Therefore, although the Ming Times vigorously advocated this article of the emperor, there was never much reaction to this article among the scholars of the world.

However, the students at several universities in Gyeonggi were very interested in the emperor's remarks about the trinity of the king, the people, and the society. Especially Xia Yunyi, who was famous among the scholars in the capital last year because he was praised by the emperor for his high moral character.

From the articles published by the Daming Times last year when it was first published, such as serving the people of the Ming Dynasty, to the general discussion of the general principles of civil affairs issued by the Criminal Department this year, the discussion on the basic rights of people.

The scholars of the north, represented by the students of Yenching University, began to raise their heads from the way of Confucius and Mencius as told in the Four Books and Five Classics, and observed the real society around them.

The policy of governing the country described by Confucius and Mencius is completely from the point of view of the superior, requiring the emperor to love the people with benevolence and let the people live and work in peace and contentment, so as to create a harmonious world from top to bottom.

In such a harmonious world, everyone is required to fulfill their duties, the king has the responsibility of king, the courtiers have the responsibility of courtiers, the parents have the responsibility of parents, and the children have the responsibility of children... When everyone fulfilled their responsibilities step by step, the world of Datong appeared.

But in the world that the sages depict is never told what are the rights of each one? It seems that the world of Datong is just a society in which many people are constantly paying obligations and have no rights.

Such a society sounds wonderful, but it is clearly an unattainable paradise. In such a society, it is necessary to ensure that everyone is a sage who sacrifices himself for others, but if there are one or two such selfish people, the whole world of Datong will no longer exist.

Since last year, in the articles advocating benevolence and righteousness in the Ming Times, obligations and rights have been linked. These essays describe the previous model of governance of the Ming monarchs and virtuous ministers, but instead raise a discussion about the obligations that the Ming people should fulfill, and what kind of individual rights they have at the same time.

In these articles, the author, Su Changqing, kept mentioning a point of view over and over again. That is, the degree of civilization of a country does not depend on how many policies issued by the superior to protect the people, nor on how many clean officials the country has, but whether the people of the country know their obligations to the country and their personal rights.

If the entire population of a country is aware of their rights and obligations, and is willing to protect their rights and fulfill their obligations to the state. Then neither the king nor the officials can go beyond the power conferred on them by the law to infringe on the interests of the people, and the strength of the state can be expected.

Therefore, the world of great harmony is not the gift of the superiors, but the struggle of ordinary people to defend their rights.

These articles deeply moved Xia Yunyi, and even made him refuse to return to Jiangnan to participate in the establishment of the Restoration Society. There are many young students like Xia Yunyi at Yenching University.

When the Daming Times, which published the Trinity Theory, appeared at Yenching University, it immediately became the focus of heated discussions among these scholars. And Xia Yunyi also quickly shifted from the previous supporter of the equality of all the people under one monarch to the support: the theory of the unity of the monarch and the people, and the king should be the caretaker of the interests of the people.

The name Su Changqing, a special commentator of the Daming Times, finally began to be often talked about by the scholars in the capital.