In the summer of this year, the king and his ministers went to Beiwudang for vacation again.
In a intensive manner, the three-rank system and salary system were launched.
The discussion was chaired by Empress Dowager Feng himself. This is her official debut for a long time.
First, there was the "salary system". In recent years, Emperor Hongwen first started to eliminate corruption among officials, but small rewards and punishments were only short-term, and it was impossible to eliminate the corruption and bribery.
Emperor Hongwen was determined to overcome the problem, so he issued an edict saying: "All officials who accept a sheep or more than one hu of wine will be executed, and those who bribes at the same time will be punished as a follower. If someone exposes the crime of corruption among officials below the Shangshu, it can be replaced.
The official's position was revealed."
As soon as the edict was issued, many people were scared. This was a very serious punishment measure. If it was put to this point, more than half of the officials might not be able to save their heads.
Everyone quickly jointly elected King Jingzhao and King Rencheng to persuade him. King Jingzhao said: "This method is probably not feasible. In the era of the Zhou emperor, even small officials had to find someone to farm (that is, to hire farmers.
The salary of the farmland. Nowadays, the high-ranking officials and ministers of our dynasty have worked hard but no reward. Your Majesty asked the officials who received the gift to be punished and the person who exposed him replaced his position. The weak minister was worried that the traitor could take advantage of the opportunity.
Loyal ministers will be discouraged. It is too difficult to simplify the government and the people's peace if they want this! For the current plan, we must refer to the laws of the past and issue salaries to honest officials as rewards."
King Jingzhao's suggestion is actually to replace the punishment of "corrupt officials" with rewards to avoid the dangers that may be caused by severe punishment of corruption. It seems that severe punishment of corrupt officials is a pleasure, but if it is actually done, it is indeed very likely to be as he said.
In this way, being used by villains will cause social turmoil.
The phenomenon of corruption cannot be fundamentally solved by means of punishment and reward alone. Only by making institutional regulations and constraints can there be results.
Emperor Hongwen felt that what King Jingzhao said was reasonable, so he had to abolish this law again.
As a result, corruption began to spread again, treating the symptoms but not the root cause, which caused great headaches for Emperor Hongwen.