No official system is absolutely perfect, let alone the Song Dynasty, and even later generations have no absolutely perfect official system.
Whether any kind of system can realize the expected value of the system depends on the people.
When Zhao Xi conceived the reform of the official system, he drew on many practices from later dynasties. He also had to combine the current situation of the country and, on the basis of ensuring stability, try his best to design an official system that is in line with this era and is advanced.
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For example, official ranks, the official ranks of the new official system reform, Zhao Xi borrowed the practices of later generations and set the official ranks as the twenty-fifth level of salary.
The first level does not involve rank and corresponds to the king. The king of the country originally had a salary, but his father was too polite and canceled the salary himself. Zhao Xi just restored it again.
In establishing this level, Zhao Xi also wanted to clarify the false idea of the so-called common world. In essence, it is impossible to clarify whether it is a common world or a family world.
Functionally speaking, the king and his ministers are both part of the management of the dynasty. The actual meaning is very different in fact.
But in this era, there is no controversy and no one disputes it.
The second level corresponds to the rank of ministers, which is the first rank. It has nothing to do with the lord, but is only related to the official, or in other words, to the official salary.
Those in the second level include the prince, queen, prince, imperial concubine and some members of the cabinet. Some veterans who were once listed as three princes and became officials are also among them.
The third level is the current second-rank officials of the imperial court, mainly members of the cabinet, the crown prince, the concubines in the inner garden, and the wives of officials who have been granted first-rank titles.
Levels 4 to 7 are considered to be the backbone of the country, the chief and adjutants of the six civil servants and nine ministers, the chief and adjutants of various governors, the chief and auxiliary officers of the military lecture hall, the workshop city, the supervisory yamen, the royal bank, the state-owned temple, and the city Yi temple.
, even including the chief officials of important state capitals, etc.
Military generals include the heads of various garrison troops, chief instructors of martial arts halls, chief garrison officers of important state capitals, chief officers of some border garrison troops, etc.
This level is basically equivalent to the political level of the country.
The reason why official ranks correspond to dispatches is that Zhao Xi’s purpose of this official reform is to eventually achieve correspondence between dispatches and official ranks, at least for officials of the seventh rank or above, and official ranks must ultimately correspond to dispatches.
The eighth to twelfth levels are the foundation of the dynasty, from the chief officials of various states to the magistrates of counties, from the ministers of the six ministries and nine ministers to the doctors with important functions.
For generals, it includes military chiefs at the military level.
Twelve steps down, from the auxiliary officer of the prefecture to the county captain of the lower county, Bo and so on.
This refers to the rank and salary of the official or official. The reason why it is so detailed and there are different ranks for the same assignment involves a seniority issue.
This is an unavoidable problem in any era. All official systems are in a pyramid model. The higher you go to the top, the fewer positions there are. And there are definitely many more people with the same qualifications than positions.
In this concept, Zhao Xi quoted the practices of later generations of ****. In terms of official and grade salary, it smoothed the way for officials at all levels to be promoted.
This official rank salary will be equivalent to the level salary of future generations, while the dispatch salary will correspond to the position salary of future generations.
Taking the future cabinet members as an example, Fu Bi passed the imperial examination in the eighth year of Tiansheng, Han Qi passed the imperial examination in the fifth year of Tiansheng, and Wang Anshi passed the imperial examination in the second year of Qingli.
They are different in terms of their official positions, or ranks or grades. Han Qi and Fu Bi are in the second level of salary, while Wang Anshi is in the third or fourth or fifth level of salary.
However, in terms of dispatch, they are both members of the cabinet and have the same salary commission.
Similarly, Wang Gui and Wang Gongchen were also Jinshi in the second year of Qingli. Their official positions were the same as Wang Anshi's, but because one could be in the cabinet and the other could be in power at most, their official salaries could be the same, but the gap between their dispatch salaries was huge.
For example, among the group of people in the second year of Jiayou's reign, Lu Huiqing was already the chief official of Shiyi Temple, while Su Shi was a recommended official for Huangzhou. The difference in official salary was not too big, but the salary of dispatch was very different.
But for Zhang Dun, Su Che and others, the dispatches in the Jiangwu Hall are second only to the chief and adjutants of the Jiangwu Hall, and are equivalent to the assistant ministers of the Six Ministries and Nine Ministers. Although the salary of the dispatches is different from that of Lu Huiqing, the difference is not big.
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Once they are all involved in deliberation, they will be directly equal. When it comes to dispatch salaries, the principle is that the higher one will not take the lower one. The cabinet, deliberation, and court meetings determine the dispatch salary.
The reason why this official reform took so long was that most of the time was wasted on formulating dispatch salaries.
The salary of an official or official rank is easy to determine. Taking the fifth-rank officials with the same qualifications in the current dynasty as an example, by counting the highest salary, lowest salary, and average salary of all fifth-rank officials in the dynasty, the salary of the fifth- to ninth-level official can be basically determined.
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However, the dispatch of salary is quite complicated. It basically involves all the current positions in the country. From the court to the localities to the military, it even includes the edicts, wine supervisors, salt and iron supervisors, etc. in various places.
The entire assessment of dispatch salary was finally finalized after two years of deliberation under the leadership of Jia Xian, who obtained a large amount of salary information from the Ministry of Household Affairs and based on the principle of stability.
It was also because of this process that Zhao Xi understood how chaotically the imperial court spent money and food every year.
Maybe most officials don't know the source of their salary at all, and even the doctor in charge of this work in the Ministry of Household Affairs doesn't have a complete understanding.
For example, when an official reaches the rank of Qingli year, he will have his official salary and be appointed as the supervisor. In fact, he may not even have entered the door of the general supervisor, but this salary will be paid to him on time by the household department.
Then, after many years of hard work, he became a member of Zhongshushe, and had a noble official position in the palace, and had specific positions in the state capital or the six ministries and nine ministers.
At this time, the official's salary was completely in chaos.
The official's salary is the official's salary, the Qing noble palace salary, the dispatch salary, plus the dynasty's payment to ministers and workers involving tea, wine, cooking materials, salary, mugwort, charcoal, salt and iron, horse materials, family members, and servants
There is no way to calculate the amount of clothing, materials, supplies, etc.
If there is another Wensanguan or Lord's restaurant...~
Zhao Xi still remembers that after he ordered Jia Xian from Gongfang City to take charge of this work, Jia Xian was really shocked and broke into a sweat when he reported for the first time.
Fortunately, officials in this era were not good at mathematics. Otherwise, loopholes in such a confusing and cumbersome salary method could be exploited at will.
But Zhao Xi had to pinch his nose and admit it, and he had to re-draw the salary ladder on this basis...~
Jia Xian said that once the court regulates salaries, this alone will be enough to save the court hundreds of thousands of money and food every year.
Zhao Xi really doesn't care about saving or anything. The court is not short of money now. He just wants to be clearer, more understanding, and with fewer loopholes.
Zhao Xi's support for Wang Anshi's establishment of a bureaucracy system is to serve the final reform of the official system.
This is also the reason why Zhao Xi can tolerate some of Wang Yu's minor problems... The system formulated by Wang Yu is indeed detailed and practical, whether in terms of taxation or salary.
This time, all subsidies were cancelled, and all were paid in coins, and a salary plan matching the three aspects of rank, dispatch and lordship was implemented. This was clear to the court and ministers.