The Legalist thought caused a trembling heart
During the reign of King Zhao of Qin, there was a great famine in the state of Qin.
At that time, Fan Sui, a famous minister, found King Qin Zhao and said, "There are edible vegetables, dates and chestnuts in our Wu Palace (the big garden of the royal family), which can save many people, and ask King Qin Zhao to distribute them to the hungry people as soon as possible.
Unexpectedly, Fan Sui's proposal was immediately criticized by King Qin Zhao:"The law of our Qin State is to reward the meritorious and punish the guilty. If today we distribute food to these people in the Five Palaces, we are actually rewarding those who have no merit, isn't this a violation of the laws of our Qin State?
As a result, King Qin Zhao allowed all the vegetables, fruits, and other foods in the five palaces to rot, and allowed the hungry people to starve to death.
Today, this kind of behavior of not treating people as human beings seems completely abnormal to us.
But this is the Qin law, which only recognizes military service.
Confucianism believed that rulers must strive to win the hearts and minds of the people.
But this is not the case with lawyers.
Han Feizi said: The government and the people obey each other, and the beginning of chaos is also.
So, if the rulers listen to the people, that's the beginning of chaos in the country.
Han Feizi thinks like this: if rulers must start ruling after the people support them, then what is the point of the existence of politicians?
How do lawyers view ordinary people?
Here's what the lawyer said: The king is above men, and he uses his death in times of danger and his power in times of peace.
So, what is the point of the existence of ordinary people if the monarch is the supreme ruler? When the country is in trouble, the role of ordinary people is that of an instrument of war. When the country is at peace, ordinary people contribute with their own labor.
To put it bluntly, ordinary people are the tools of the rulers, plowing the land and fighting wars for them.
Lawyers believe that human nature is inherently evil.
Han Feizi said:"No one can be trusted. Couples who have lived together for decades cannot fully trust each other, nor can fathers and sons who are related by blood fully trust each other. As for the others, it can no longer be trusted.
Shang also developed a system to encourage couples to report each other. If the husband commits a crime and the wife reports it, the wife's property shall not be confiscated; If the wife commits a crime and the husband reports it, the wife's property is used as a reward for the husband.
In today's world, of course, this is against human morality, but this is the Qin system.
After Legalism became dominant, Qin abolished the Han Dynasty and banned merchants, and merchants were almost extinct in Qin.
What are people doing? There are only two things. One is to plough the land, the other is to fight.
During the critical period of the Battle of Changping, King Qin Zhao mobilized all adult men in the country to participate in the war. These people were the men of the Qin State, peasants in peacetime and soldiers in wartime.
Therefore, the Qin State finally unified the world through the military service system and the farming and warfare system.
There is a famous one in the Book of Shang Jun"Qi Min Six Arts", teaching rulers how to restrain the people.
I won't mention all of the articles here, but I'll focus on some of them.
Shang Ying said:"The key to the rule of the saints is to get people back to farming.
This meant that if the king wanted to run the country well, he had to get the peasants to think about farming.
How to deceive? The first is to deceive common sense. To put it bluntly, you are not allowed to study, you are not allowed to see the outside world, and you will listen to whatever the king says.
Shang Ying believed that the ignorant peasants could not learn well, so he suffered a loss.
These stupid peasants don't understand anything, they don't like to read, they just farm.
Ideas alone are certainly not enough, Shang Ying must use concrete solutions to get farmers to work in the fields.
Shang Yang proposed"The weak hurt the people"The idea that the peasants produce grain every year, leaving only the part for their own use, and the excess goes to the state. This forced the peasants to work for many years, and once they stopped farming, they had to starve to death.
It must be emphasized that if the peasants were left to fend for themselves by the underdevelopment of agriculture, the rulers would not save them.
Not only that, but all the mountains, forests, and lakes were nationalized, and wild fruits, wild beasts, and fish in the mountains and forests were nationalized, so that the peasants had no food to eat but their own cultivated land**.
It's a pretty good trick. It made the peasants work in the fields spontaneously every day, with no time for other things, and they worked until the cattle died. Not only that, but after my father's death, his children and grandchildren also repeated this life.
At the same time, iron tools and livestock were also strictly controlled, and the two most important commodities of the peasants were controlled by the state, and the peasants were under the control of the state.
Shang Ying stipulated that when plowing the land, the eyes could not see, the ears could not hear, the mouth could not speak, and the head must be buried in the soil.
Finally, the Qin Law stipulates that anyone can report a violation of the Qin Law, and failure to report it will be punished as a crime of conspiracy. Positive whistleblowers will be rewarded. This will lead to a loss of trust and a state of extreme fear and self-preservation.
Through this series of measures, the grassroots peasants became the instruments of grassroots conquest and the victims of grassroots power.