Chapter 336 Excitement

After the Lantern Festival, the spring ploughing season began. Perhaps because the manuscripts were used up, the Water Margin, whose background was too sensitive, finally slowed down its update. However, the series of incidents that arose in the court had just begun.

Among them, the person who first made a targeted response, or the first person who jumped out was quite unexpected to everyone, and it turned out to be the Imperial Censor Li Jing.

The point that Li Jing targeted was also extremely interesting.

During the spring ploughing season, the Cuju competition was suspended as usual. Therefore, the Cuju competition schedule, which was originally used as a carrier for the serialization of "Water Margin", also changed. The event information disappeared, "Water Margin" moved from the back to the front, and the back was restored to the advertisements of the drinks and takeaways of various regular stores.

Widely advertising was naturally the work of Emperor Zhao, and it appeared behind the Cuju competition list very early on. Usually, the regular restaurants boasted that their wine was the best, the scenery was the best, and the takeaway prime minister said it was delicious... Instead, the "Water Margin" of unknown origin replaced these advertisements.

However, it was these advertisements that had appeared very early on in connection with the Cuju match list, which completely replaced the Cuju match list and triggered the first wave of turmoil in the court during the spring ploughing period.

In late January, the censor Li Jing suddenly wrote a letter of impeachment, saying that this kind of leaflet, which was half advertisement and half novel, violated the state law.

Li Jing's logic is simple and direct:

According to him, the Cuju competition was a semi-official group activity in which Kaifeng Prefecture participated. In this case, the distribution of flyers to explain the situation of both sides and mark the date and seats of the game was an official announcement. Whether it was an advertisement or a novel, taking advantage of the space on the back of the flyer was a harmless act of attachment.

But now, without Cuju matches, this leaflet consisting of advertisements and novels is no longer a Cuju leaflet. It no longer has the nature of an official printed product and is just a privately distributed banned newspaper or periodical.

We cannot allow this kind of thing to appear just because it is harmless at the moment. Otherwise, it will surely be taken advantage of by evil people and used to mislead the public in the future.

It has to be said that after working as an imperial censor for many years, Li Jing finally learned his lesson. The logic of his impeachment this time was clear and correct, which left many people speechless, including Emperor Zhao, who worked hard to update the novel.

By the way, it also forces everyone to face the real crux of the problem - whether or not to lift the ban on newspapers?

After all, long before the New Year, Li Jing's elder brother Li Gang had publicly petitioned for the lifting of the ban on newspapers. Once the ban on newspapers was lifted, the biggest beneficiaries would undoubtedly be the Taoist academies in the south and a large number of retired officials from the south, because they were the only ones who could maintain a popular newspaper with a wide audience and great influence in addition to the official gazette.

Correspondingly, even if the literati in the Central Plains had the intention, they would find it beyond their capabilities to produce a civilian newspaper when they already had a government bulletin. Moreover, Guanxi and Bashu had never been very prosperous.

Therefore, the court has always refused to discuss this topic. In addition, Emperor Zhao fled to the army, so the matter was shelved.

Back to the present, actually, if we only talk about novels, there are still many ways, such as making an official leaflet or simply printing the book in another place. These are all feasible, but you can't escape the danger...the issue of newspaper ban must always be faced.

This time, Emperor Zhao did not dodge the incident, but openly sent Li Jing's impeachment to the provincial capital. There was no need for Li Jing or Li Gang to write a special memorial to point out this issue. He directly asked the provincial capital to discuss the ban on newspapers based on this memorial.

The debate was heated, but the conclusion was extremely simple.

Besides, by now, the role of the official reports is beyond doubt. Not only did the people of the Song Dynasty read their own official reports, but the people of the Jin Dynasty also read the official reports of the Song Dynasty, and even the Khitans read them. There are rumors that when Yelu Dashi set out from Lanzhou, he went to the local prefect in Lanzhou city to ask for almost all the official reports that had been received before, and he specifically asked the officials stationed in the Lanzhou Grand Market to copy the official reports and send them thousands of miles to the west.

It can be said that all literate people in the world have become accustomed to obtaining official news of the Song Dynasty from the court bulletins.

Not only that, once the poems, songs, and novels in the official gazette are published, they will become the subject of discussion among literati, and the publisher will immediately become famous all over the world. Is there anything more to say about the poets who have been certified by the official gazette?

The original academic experiments in the court bulletins will be taken out by Emperor Zhao for personal demonstration and study, and will also be replicated in the imperial lectures. There are even rumors that in the next few years, some questions on the original academic experiments will be appropriately added to the Imperial College and even the palace examinations. What does this mean?

Therefore, when someone wanted to make another "New Palace Gazette", they undoubtedly encountered collective opposition from the central government officials... Not only the Wood Party, which has always had a more radical attitude, that is, the Western Palace Prime Minister Zhang Jun's side, but also the Water Party, which has always sympathized with the group of retired officials in the south, that is, a large number of prudent officials represented by the Capital Province Prime Minister Zhao Ding, all expressed formal and serious opposition.

Even the Chief Censor of the Censorate, Li Guang, had a clear disagreement with Li Jing after listening to the advice of several other censors and the opinions of several important officials and friends.

There is no way. This is the instinct of central officials under the centralized system. Although they may have various differences internally, and even serious differences on specific issues, when they face the outer political structure together, they are instinctively unwilling to give up any power and do not want to see any uncontrolled situation.

You can set up secret cabinets and public cabinets in the central government, and publish court reports under the name of the Honglu Temple, which is fine, but if you want to delegate power from the court to the local areas, I'm sorry, take the imperial edict... what are you going to do with it? Find trouble to make Emperor Zhao withdraw his order.

This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading!