Because the prison state is here, this place has become a temporary office, and all the government offices in the city have also become temporary offices.
Zhu Yihai once said publicly that wherever he is, the Ming Dynasty will be there.
Although it sounds a bit arrogant, the Ming Dynasty had collapsed at that time. King Lu, who once competed with King Fu for the emperor, was determined not to be a supervisor. The emperor had become a high-risk position. If Zhu Yihai was gone, his court would naturally be gone.
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Outside the prefect's yamen, there are the Qing Army Tongzhi Office, which assists the prefect in taking charge of military affairs, and the Grain Supervision and Interrogation Office, which is responsible for money and food, as well as the Prosecution and Criminal Affairs Office, the Experience Department, the Procuratorate, the Administrative Affairs Branch Office, and the Public Security Bureau Branch Office.
Tixue Road Office.
Others are complete, such as the Sengang Department, the Taoist Department, Medicine, Jiande County Yamen, Yin and Yang Studies, Hefengcang, Cunliucang, Preparatory Cang, etc.
However, Zhu Yihai had almost wiped out all the officials in Yanzhou Prefecture and Jiande County and dismissed them. Now they are all ordered to suspend their duties and write reports, and they are trying to find ways to make up for the shortfall.
The magistrates, magistrates, magistrates, magistrates, magistrates, and county chiefs, as well as Taoists, patrollers, military personnel, food inspectors, Taoists, and even academic officials, and those in charge of warehouses, anyway, not one of them is clean from top to bottom.
If Zhu Yihai wants to catch it seriously, then he should catch a typical example and clean it from the inside out from the beginning to the end, so that there will be no confusion again.
There are so many people in the imperial camp busy with this matter. Some are outside checking warehouses and measuring fields, and some are in the city checking account books and comparing inventory. Some are responsible for interrogation, and some are responsible for searching homes. Anyway, they are not idle.
People here are busy with house searches and interrogations, but relief work has not yet been released over there.
There was a long queue in front of the porridge shed, and people were given work in exchange for relief. Anyone who could work was invited to build city walls and roads, and even helped build water conservancy canals, survey fields, etc. They worked as much as they could, and they paid for the work and took care of the food.
The old, weak, women and children can just help cook porridge and light the fire.
Yanzhou now has a lot of food. With the tens of thousands of grains sent by the Fang family, there is no shortage of food for the time being. Especially since Zhu Yihai has also implemented military control over the city's grain shops, rice stores, barns, etc., forcing them to pay at market prices.
Buying it and then selling it to the people at a fair price has greatly alleviated the problem of high food prices and the starving people who cannot afford food.
Although this is only temporary, the effect is still obvious.
At least Yanzhou seems to be quite lively now, and even people from nearby prefectures and counties came here after hearing the news.
Of course, many ministers from Shaoxing also came.
When they heard that Zhu Yihai slashed Fang Guoan with a sword in Yanzhou, and then attacked powerful local people, they were all frightened.
Song Zhipu, Liu Zong, Zhou Qi Biaojia, He Tengjiao, Ke Xiaqing, Chen Hanhui, Chen Meng and other ministers, as well as the internal ministers Pang Tianshou, Li Guofu, etc., all came in red.
"Dear ladies, take a seat."
Zhu Yihai had a smile on his face and was holding a book in his hand.
Liu Zongzhou had good eyesight and saw the cover at a glance, "Regulations on Xingge". As the censor of Zuodu and the leader of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, how could he not know that this was written by Hai Rui and Haigangfeng, and that the Regulations on Xingge were written by Hai Rui here?
When Yan Zhou was the magistrate of Chun'an County, his records of political affairs in the county were completed in the 41st year of Jiajing and were later included in the collection of Hai Rui.
This revolutionary regulation clearly records all aspects of Chun'an County, including local rules and customs. Bribery is common in the local area, officials are corrupt, and even all aspects of corvee details are recorded.
have.
Liu Zongzhou has read this book, and the data above are very true. From the above, it can be seen that during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the local government was in great chaos, and the people's burden was extremely heavy.
There are many problems exposed, but no one can solve them.
For example, Hai Rui said that the Chun'an County Magistrate has as many as 23 routines, and the total annual income of the routine is 2,723 taels. This is only gray income and is not illegal.
Not counting corruption, exploitation, expropriation, etc., it is very common for a county magistrate to embezzle tens of thousands of taels of silver a year.
When Hai Rui was in office, he made drastic reforms, such as breaking the rules and no longer accepting gifts for Shangguan officials, etc. However, these things could not be supported by the court.
In fact, if you read this investigation report carefully, you will know why officials in the Ming Dynasty were fond of corruption. The salary was really too low. The Chun'an County magistrate's monthly salary was only seven and a half shi of rice, and three shi of classics and history, while the economic official in the county
, was also forced to pay only one tael per month, and no excess was allowed.
He has the power in his hands and is in charge of a county. With such a small salary, it is difficult to support himself. What's more, if he becomes an official, then when he becomes a master, who doesn't hire a few masters and several maids to follow him? Who doesn't bring a wife and children?
Who doesn’t take concubines, who doesn’t support his wife, who doesn’t give birth to sons?
Just as Zhu Yihai is reading Hai Rui's book now, what he is looking at is the real original data he recorded, not how he reformed, because his reforms are castles in the air and cannot be successful.
If you abolish all routines and don't even provide any legal gray income, then the officials will live on these few stones of food for a month? Is it possible?
Without gray income, it will inevitably lead to corruption.
Another example is that for those civil servants, the maximum amount of food and drink money they can get is one tael a month. Is that possible?
There are also those Yao servants recorded in the book. Many of them are weak in strength. Although they can be exchanged for silver later, there are many problems. For example, if you are assigned to the job of guarding a warehouse, if you are assigned to exchange silver for the job, hire someone for this job.
On the surface, it is only one tael per month, but the problem is that the actual number of employees is more than this. The warehouse guard is also responsible for the comprador task, that is, he has to be responsible for purchasing some things used in the warehouse. This is also borne by the servant.
Then the procurement problem becomes even greater.
Originally, the treasury had one tael of silver for work and food, or twelve taels a year, but it was responsible for purchasing, and the expenditure was as high as four hundred taels. Isn't this a lie?
But the fact is that it is outrageous. A large number of conscripts are very harmful to the people. Even if you don't pay for it, if you go to serve yourself, the burden will still be huge, maybe even higher.
There are various types of servants in the yamen. You can choose some factions. Only some servants do not consume silver, such as men, but most of them consume silver. The silver consumption mainly comes from the comprador supply. That is, if you become a
Kuzi, one tael of silver a month, you click on this job, and then you pay the silver to replace the errand, but the purchasing task is a trap, you still have to bear the burden, and the silver cost is dozens of times and hundreds of taels.
Later, many yamen servants were actually integrated. They calculated how much it cost to hire people for a year, and then how much money was needed for additional purchases, etc., all added together, and finally apportioned by Junyao. This way
It's actually more advanced.
The burden is also relatively even. Your payment will not be discounted by a few taels, but his payment will be several tens of taels.
However, corvee service in the Ming Dynasty was quite abnormal and harmed the people. Its service was very complicated. For example, service was divided according to household registration. Different household registrations had to bear special service. Another example was that various types of service emerged one after another and were not fixed.
It may even have been included in the whipping law, and then it was resumed and added soon.
Another example is the duties of grain chief and other duties that large households have to bear. Anyway, in the final analysis, the root cause of all this is that Zhu Yuanzhang, the chief architect in the early Ming Dynasty, had problems in his design and many inherent flaws in the system. Then the bigger problem is,
On the surface, the Ming Dynasty had very light official taxes, but then most of the taxes collected in this place were shipped and turned over.
There was not much left over in the local area, and the salaries of local officials were set very low.
Not only are the officials unable to support their families and make ends meet with their salaries, but they also have insufficient office funds, let alone the manpower needed to maintain a local government and run some local engineering projects.
Therefore, no matter what they do, the common people must be recruited as errands. If these common people go to work as errands, they will inevitably be exploited and squeezed by officials, and even affect agricultural production.
So later, the government took advantage of the opportunity to make money, so the Yao service became more important than the tax, and the people were miserable.
Doesn’t the court know this?
I know, but I just don’t change it.
Because reform has to start with the ancestral system, and no one is willing to touch the ancestral system. Everyone is even used to the current confusing system. It is easy to fish in troubled waters.
After the Junyao campaign, there were Lijia soldiers, and outside the Lijia army, there were also Pan-military troops. The difference in silver and strength was endless.
"Everyone, I just saw the record of Haigangfeng that there are five stewards in the Fuchun Posthouse in Yanzhou Prefecture. Each person works and eats 10 taels of silver a year, a total of 50 taels. However, the actual silver cost is more than 600 taels.
, the host was only responsible for the promised travel, and was not responsible for the various expenses of the inn, but in fact it was borne by them, increasing it more than ten times. "
If a household were to pay the banker's money, the burden would suddenly increase tenfold, and you know how harmful it would be to the people.
Anyway, there are too many such things, and even the Ming Dynasty has not changed at all for hundreds of years.
"My lords, corvee labor is exhausting the people, and the burden is many times more than the taxes. The people are living in dire straits."
The ministers who originally wanted to come to the Jianguo for advice did not expect that as soon as they met, they were thrown such a profound question, which tore off the last bit of Ming Dynasty's fig leaf.
"During the Jiajing period of Haigangfeng, these problems were clearly written, but to this day, no matter whether it is a whip method or any method, they have not been able to solve these local problems. After I came to Yanzhou, I conducted a careful investigation.
I found that the problem was even more shocking than what was written in this book.
"The people can no longer survive, and the guard station has long been depleted. Do you know who owns the fields in Yanzhou Prefecture? Do you know how much food is worth per stone now? Do you know how much silver a little girl sells for?
"
"If we don't face up to these problems and change them immediately, we will also perish without the Tatars coming!"
He promoted the Revolutionary Regulations, "I read this book carefully for seven days. There are not many words, but I saw two words in it: cannibalism!"
"The word cannibalism is not written on every page, but cannibalism is remembered on every page."
"The people have endured it for more than two hundred years and have become very tolerant, but I can't bear it anymore after seeing it alone."
"Change, must change, change now, can't hesitate for a moment, can't wait any longer, it's imminent."
Liu Zongzhou had thought of countless words on the way, but he couldn't say a single word at this moment.
The same goes for Song Zhipu, Qi Biaojia and other great scholars.
"I summarized the main problems at the local level. The first is the serious land annexation. The second is the scholars abusing the preferential and exemption regulations and even refusing to pay the taxes. The third is that the tax collection is too high and there are too few reserved places. The fourth is that
Official salaries are too low and the quotas are too small.”
"The most important point is that there are too many names for Yao service and the levy is too heavy. It must be simplified and lightened. The whip law has only been used for a few decades, and the miscellaneous taxes on Yao service that were merged back then have appeared again, and even more."
"The problem has been raised. Now you come to tell me how to solve it."