With a wise monarch like Wei Wenhou, there are still a group of capable ministers who come up with advice and win a thousand miles. Most of these capable ministers come from the land of the Xihe River, and most of them are disciples of the Confucius wise wise man Bu Zixia.

Usually when talking about Confucianism and when talking about Confucian scholars, people always think of those scholars with wide crowns and wide belts and full of etiquette and righteousness. This is actually a misunderstanding. When Confucius imparted knowledge to his disciples, he did not blindly emphasize complicated etiquette and righteousness, but often taught his disciples the knowledge of being practical. For example, Zixia inherited Confucius' knowledge and cultivated many talented people who practiced the world. Li Jue, Wu Qi, Duan Mugan and others were among the best.

Zixia was the only living scholar among the second generation of Confucius disciples at that time. In order to enhance the appeal of culture, Wei Wenhou invited Bu Zixia, who was nearly 100 years old, to the land of Xihe and worshipped him as the imperial teacher. The world was shocked. Let’s talk about Xihe, which was close to Qin, and the Qin people had intermarried with Rongdi, with barbaric customs and were regarded as barbaric by the Central Plains countries. However, because of the backward culture, they yearned for Central Plains culture more. Therefore, Wei Wenhou chose Xihe as the place where Zixia gave lectures and taught, and had a clever plan to intimidate the Qin people from a cultural perspective. His far-sighted and thoughtful mind made people beat him.

Zixia is old and is in pain of losing her son. So the real teaching in Xihe was his two disciples, Gongyang Gao, a native of Qi, and Guliangchi, a native of Lu. These two are the authors of "Gongyang Spring and Autumn" and "Guliang Spring and Autumn". The legend of "Spring and Autumn" was deleted and compiled by Confucius. Gongyang Gao and Guliangchi explained "Spring and Autumn". The knowledge passed down and became "Gongyang Spring and Autumn" and "Guliang Spring and Autumn". Of course, there is another more famous "Zuoshi Spring and Autumn" which is also one of the three "Spring and Autumn". However, when it comes to political influence, it is undoubtedly recommended "Gongyang Spring and Autumn" as the highest. Because scholars in this school are best at commenting on politics, criticizing personnel, paying attention to real political life, and most of reforms and proposals for reforms - but just like the Legalists and other pre-Qin schools, their reforms and reforms were carried out under the banner of "retro".

After years of cultivation, Xihe has produced a large number of talents, and the Wei court behind Xihe Academy naturally became their first choice for loyalty. Perhaps Wei Wenhou saw that the court was full of complacent and urgently needed to display his talents and achieve his dreams, and would also have the pride and excitement of Emperor Taizong of Tang that "heroes in the world will enter my territory". However, among all the talents, Wei Wenhou valued the most was Li Ke, who laid the foundation for him to compete for hegemony.

According to the two masters of historians, Bai Shouyi and Li Dongfang, Li Ke was the famous Li Ke, the first person in the Warring States Reform. Generally speaking, most people included Li Ke as the Legalists. People may wonder that Li Ke was originally a disciple of Zixia, and Zixia was one of the seventy-two sages of the Confucian school. How could a successor to the Legalists? In fact, this is not surprising. Because Confucius was a firm supporter of Zhou Li, he always wanted to restore Zhou Li, so that the world could return to the peace situation where the Zhou emperor was respected and the princes were arched. However, the law was derived from rituals, and the two were always called Confucius.

There is no lack of rule of law in thought. For example, he has a famous saying, "Tao it with politics, generalize it with punishment, and people are exempted from shameless." This means that Confucius also saw the effectiveness of severe punishments and ruling laws, but he valued benevolence and etiquette more, so he felt that the practice of "similarity with punishment" was a bit too much, because it would make the people "safe and shameless". In addition, after becoming the Grand Secretary of the State of Lu, Confucius first killed Shao Zhengmao, who he believed was "the treacherous hero of man". It can be seen that he was not a permanently kind Confucian scholar imagined in the minds of some people, and he also understood the means of criminal law.

But the reason why Li Ku became the first person to reform during the Warring States Period was that he was influenced by Confucius' criminal law ideas handed down by Zixia, and also because the changes in the land of the Three Jins, the frequent wars were still

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Li Ku had to embark on this path of reform. Everyone knows that whether it was his predecessor, Guan Zhong, the first Legalist in the Spring and Autumn Period, or his later generations, Shang Yang, who made the barbaric and backward Qin State become the overlord of the world, their proposals were all to enrich the country and strengthen the army, and this was all because of the pressure brought by survival.

With the support of Wei Wenhou, the newly appointed Prime Minister Li Kui began a vigorous reform in Wei State. The "Tao" of the Legalists is different from Confucianism. Confucianism emphasizes "king ways", while Legalists emphasizes "dominance". The so-called dominance means enriching the country and strengthening the army - first enriching the country, then strengthening the army, and only enriching the country can strengthen the army. So, how to "rich the country"? The word "rich" does not lie in the amount of money - money is just a medium of exchange and a certificate of social credit. The ancients said "gold, stone, pearls and jade, hunger, cannot be eaten, and cold cannot be worn." It is said deeply and thoroughly. If one-sidedly thinks that money is wealth, then it is enough to keep minting coins, but this may cause inflation, because there are no physical commodities equivalent to the minted currency in the market. Therefore, social wealth is actually commodities.

So, which commodity is the most important? It is grain. Therefore, the first policy of Li Kui's reform is "the teaching of exercising the land power". The so-called "the teaching of exercising the land power" has two meanings. One is to further break the state-owned land of "all under the world is the king's land", encourage land reclamation, and transfer part of the cultivated land to farmers in order to mobilize their enthusiasm and increase grain production, and only charge them one-tenth of their harvest as government taxation. The other is

As in the literal way, it is to encourage different treatment of land of different soils and plant different crops on it to ensure the maximization of the final profit. This is common knowledge today, but it was indeed an innovative idea at that time. Sure enough, according to Li Jue's expectations, in the years after the implementation of this policy, the Wei State could have a roughly good harvest, regardless of drought or flood, and the grain in the treasurys in various parts of the Wei State was also piled up higher and higher.

However, the social economy is an organic whole. It is not that the more food, the better the overall social economy will be. With more food, it is necessary to transport and adjust the surplus and shortage through merchants, so as to meet people's different needs. Li Kui had long been aware of this, but he needed to find a balance point in the exchanges and complementarity between the two major departments of agriculture and commerce. This balance point is a reasonable price of grain. Because Li Kui found that if the food is too expensive, it will hurt merchants' enthusiasm for doing business; on the contrary, if the food is sold too cheaply in the market, farmers will definitely not be willing to grow grain, and they will think of other ways out, for example, learning from merchants to do business, so agriculture, as the foundation of a rich country, will definitely suffer a huge blow.

Therefore, in order to stabilize prices, Li Kui promulgated the second policy of the reform: "flat-fighting". The word "flat-fighting" is to "enter" and "rice" below. It can be seen that "flat-fighting" originally meant buying rice, but later extended to "buy". The so-called "flat-fighting" means stabilizing prices. Of course, the most important thing is rice prices. There are generally two ways to stabilize prices, one is administrative means, that is, relying on the hard regulations of power to stabilize prices. However, although this method can work miraculously in the short term, it is not beneficial to market stability in the long run. This is a stupid method, or rescue.

Temporary countermeasures that have to be adopted when urgent needs are urgent. As the prime minister of Wei, Li Kui certainly had to "consider the plan" for Wei, so he adopted the second method: economic means. The so-called economic means is to balance prices by adjusting the supply of various commodities in the market (the operation of the commodity economy was far less developed than it is today, so there is no talk of adjusting the market through monetary means for the time being). How to adjust the supply of commodities? What Li Kui could use was naturally the grain cloths and other goods collected from the official treasury. His method was very simple, to transfer grain at a relatively low price in the bumper years.

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Food is collected and stored. Once a famine occurs next year and the grain is poor, the stored food can be distributed at a low price or free time. In this way, the price of grain will not have a big fluctuation, the lives of ordinary people will be improved, and there will be no situation of "if the Hebei is in bad condition, it will be moved to Hedong" or "if the Hedong is in bad condition, it will be moved to Henoi". When the people's lives are stable, the population will definitely increase greatly. In this way, the Wei State will naturally enrich the country and strengthen the people. Li Ju's "balanced purging" policy has achieved great success.

Abundant treasury and abundance of population are just a necessary condition for hegemony, not a sufficient factor. If a country's economy develops and stabilizes, but the people are in a mess, they cannot be organized and mobilized. Moreover, due to different laws, members of society will continue to conflict, and in this way, the power of a country will be mostly used to maintain the stability of the country. How can we talk about fighting for hegemony outside? The same is true for military organizations. The most terrifying army is not an army with sufficient logistics, but an army that prohibits orders and commands, and generals drive them like arms, which is the kind of army where every soldier can advance or retreat according to the command of the superior, regardless of whether they are facing a mountain of swords or sea of ​​fire. Li Kui's way of "educating" the common people is very simple. He did not invite learned people to open schools to reason, but used severe laws to let the people know what can be done and what cannot be done. In this way, they can understand the principle of advance or retreat.

In fact, Li Kui had already started his "Legal experiment" when he was appointed as the county magistrate of Shangdi. Shangdi and Qin have always been fierce in their customs and have many disputes and lawsuits. After Li Kui became the county magistrate, he cleverly thought of shooting archery through competitions. Whoever shoots accurately will be the winner of the lawsuit, so as to resolve the accumulated litigation cases in the past. As a result, people worked hard to practice archery in order to win the lawsuit. Soon, Shangdi people's shooting skills made a qualitative leap, and then they were facing Qin.

During the war, the Qin people were told to suffer enough with the bow and arrow in their hands. Of course, this was because they were military commanders during the Warring States Period, and because the upper land was a border area - at that time, most of the border areas were acquired for invasion, so many counties were established in the border areas, which was very different from the mainland's counties - so Li Ku's "archery lawsuit" was just a temporary method. When he became the prime minister of Wei, he began to comprehensively consider the legal system of the entire country. The crystallization of his thinking was the famous "Fa Jing".

The "Fa Jing" consists of six parts, including "The Law of Stealing", "The Law of Capture", "The Law of Prison", "The Law of Thieves", "Miscellaneous Laws" and "The Law of Giving Laws", and makes very clear provisions on all crimes and their punishments. It is particularly worth noting that the "Fa Jing" clearly states that not only the action is carried out, but even if someone wants to steal other people's property, he must punish the slaughter or the punishment for the punishment, which shows how harsh the legislation is.

The "Fa Jing" can be regarded as the first written law in ancient my country. Later, Shang Yang's reforms made the Qin State and used Li Ku's "Fa Jing" as a reference blueprint when he formulated the laws and regulations. Qin destroyed the Han Dynasty and the Han law also inherited the Qin system. Since then, the laws of all dynasties have gained and lost on the basis of Han law. This shows that the "Fa Jing" is of great significance in our history.

All the reform initiatives of the pre-Qin schools mentioned the selection of virtuous people and appointing talents. The so-called "selecting virtuous people and appointing talents" is a hereditary system of "classical nobles and tribes" in the Zhou Dynasty. Therefore, although the law is based on etiquette, it is different from etiquette, because the basis of etiquette is blood relatives. The Legalists opposed etiquette to break the system of selecting officials based on blood relatives. So, if you do not rely on blood relatives to be an official, how can you "select virtuous people and appoint talents"? "In order to serve the country, food is labor and wealth is rewarded, and punishment is required." This is the answer given by Li Kui.

After Li Kui's series of reforms from top to bottom, Wei State has already possessed strong strength. This rising giant is about to let out a shocking roar, making the whole world notice his existence.

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Chapter completed!