Zhu Yihai killed tigers and swatted flies in Yanzhou and confiscated more than one million taels of silver. He also confiscated more than 4,000 hectares of clear land from his family. It can be said that the results of the war were brilliant.
Even Liu Zongzhou and others chose to remain silent after seeing the copied money, fields, and land.
I originally wanted to persuade Zhu Yihai to be kind, but how could I persuade him when he saw so much money and food? They had been busy in Shaoxing for several months and were stretched every day. They asked them everywhere for money and food, but they tried their best to raise money and food, but they could never squeeze it out.
More money and food are coming.
During Jian Guo's Northern Expedition, they basically raised their own money and food. They couldn't afford to recruit soldiers, buy horses, settle their homes, pay for meritorious service, pay for equipment, or even get pension money. They all found ways to get it by themselves.
For a Yanzhou Prefecture, a year's worth of land and silver are only less than 100,000 taels and less than 200,000. However, with all the troubles of the Supervisory State, ten years' worth of money has come out. Not to mention clearing out the land.
If an acre costs an average of four to five taels of silver, it can be sold for more than one million and two million, which is equivalent to almost ten years of taxes.
It cannot be said that the supervision of the country is an open robbery. After all, it is justified. It is those people who embezzled, embezzled, defaulted, etc., and did not cherish the opportunity they were given.
When the Supervisor State convened a meeting with the ministers and informed them of the distribution method of the money, the ministers were very surprised and very unwilling. Because Zhu Yihai wanted to use the copied money directly as military expenses for the imperial camp.
The cleared fields were even sold to the imperial soldiers, with priority given to the 6,800 soldiers stationed in Yongzheng Town in Yanzhou.
After selling the money, he had to tell the soldiers in the imperial camp that he would marry him personally.
The elders all felt sad when they heard this. The imperial camp is really the treasure of the country, but the soldiers from other provinces and towns are not? The Beijing camp is not it?
Furthermore, there is no shortage of money nowadays, and the imperial court is also short of money. If you are in Shaoxing, there are always discounts for asking for money and food.
"You have to use your money wisely!"
Zhu Yihai still said the same thing. Now in other provinces, the cabinet proposes to build a palace in Shaoxing. This is unnecessary. Now is not the time to talk about ostentation.
"When the two capitals are recovered, will you still worry about not having a palace?"
"If you don't repair it, you don't need to repair a palace. The original sub-inspection yamen is good, just use it. It's important to save the money to pay the soldiers and build ordnance."
After Song Zhipu handed in his 108th resignation but was still not approved, he was summoned by Zhu Yihai to talk about their feelings for half the night, and finally they pulled him together and slept together. Now he is very motivated and doesn't say anything anymore.
If you resign, you will lose your prestige if you don't say that your qualifications are low.
Zhu Yihai didn't use any great reasoning to persuade him, but told him that now is not the time to rank based on seniority. If you can't be the chief minister based on seniority, then I can't be the supervisor.
It is history that has chosen us, so we have to face the difficulties, ignore what others say, be ourselves seriously, and let them shut up. The more they talk, the better we have to do.
Song Zhipu received strong support from Zhu Yihai, so what else could he say, he could only grit his teeth and charge forward.
"The lords and the princes also have separate tasks. The lord is in charge of military affairs, recruiting troops, and commanding the prisoners. The princes stay behind and are mainly responsible for internal affairs, money and food. They must implement the taxes in place and collect them truthfully. We must do our best.
It is very important to apportion the people into the acres this time. This is the foundation of the Ming Dynasty. When the soldiers on the front line fight and work hard, they rely on the support of money and food from the rear. There is no apportionment of the people into the acres, and there is no integration of taxes and servitude.
, If we don’t levy money and food, and if we don’t have Tatars attack us, we won’t be able to survive three to five years.”
"All of this is for survival!"
"Only if we are alive can we have hope of defeating the Tartars and regaining the Central Plains, and can we say that we can revitalize the Ming Dynasty and revitalize China. Otherwise, it will all be like a mirror in the water and a dream in the water."
"Make money, your only mission now is to make money!"
But we can’t do it like what we did in Chongzhen. Just relying on extra rations is useless. Although the Liao rate increase of 9 cents per acre is indeed not much, as is the increase of 10 jins of grain per acre. But the problem is that in the end, it will be done
What did it look like?
In fact, how much did the people pay in the end? Ten kilograms? It was more than a hundred kilograms, and they were forced to leave their homes and flee because they couldn't survive. So, could this be ten kilograms of food?
The problem now is not about increasing taxes. As long as the taxes can be truly collected, even the tax amount of the Wanli period and the whipping method will be enough.
Where there is insufficient money, we can make up for it with lijin, industrial and commercial tariffs, etc. We can no longer just stare at the people and apportion it.
"If you can't figure it out, just give it to Gu, and Gu will send his troops from the royal camp to help you carry it out. Catch those who should be arrested, kill those who should be killed, and copy those who should be copied. It's time like this, and all the money is buried in
Are you waiting in the cellar for the Tatars to come and offer them to you?"
"It's now like this, and you still think about not paying the arrears of money and food all day long, and only asking the people to pay taxes. If the taxes are not enough, then you will create more names and keep apportioning them. If the officials don't force the people to rebel, who will rebel?"
Wanli's one-whip method initially combined the names of many laborers and levied taxes together, which was convenient for the court and the people. In the end, the original tax amount was maintained, the convenience of collection was improved, and the cost of taxation was reduced. Measured across the country
, it is also based on maintaining the original amount, and does not mean to reset the actual clearing land amount.
But Huang Zongxi and Zhu Yihai also chatted all night, while sleeping. When talking about a whipping method, he summarized the tax system of past dynasties and said a very insightful saying, that is, every major tax system reform in the past dynasties would combine many types of taxes.
, and there will be a short-term tax reduction effect, but soon, the taxes that were merged and levied together will appear again under a different name.
Therefore, tax upon tax will increase the burden on the people.
For example, the Two Taxes Law of the Tang Dynasty replaced the Tax and Yongdong Regulations. Its original intention was to merge various miscellaneous taxes and reduce the burden on the people. However, within twenty years of the implementation of the Two Taxes Law, various exorbitant and miscellaneous taxes that had been merged into the Two Taxes appeared again.
In the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, the old miscellaneous taxes were merged into the land tax, and the old miscellaneous taxes were abolished and new miscellaneous taxes were prohibited. However, in the Chongzhen Dynasty, various new miscellaneous taxes emerged in endlessly.
Now Zhu Yihai has fixed the many new miscellaneous taxes that emerged after the whipping law and spread them over an area. This seems good on the surface, but Huang Zongxi said that according to historical laws, it will definitely take less than a few decades to spread it over an area.
In addition to the fixed land bank, there will definitely be many new taxes, etc.
For example, the new tax introduced by Zhu Yihai was originally just this kind of new tax.
Huang Zongxi made a suggestion, which was to overthrow everything in the past and start over.
For example, the land tax was re-established, and the official land was taxed one for twenty, and the private land was taxed one for ten. It was levied in its original form, so you reap what you sow, and there was no need to deduct money. At the same time, industry and commerce were no longer suppressed and treated as the basis, and industrial and commercial taxes, customs duties, and salt taxes were levied reasonably.
taxes, etc., to supplement fiscal revenue.
The last step is to live within one's means and plan expenditures based on income in order to achieve a balance of payments, instead of always imposing additional taxes and stipends on the people to harm them.
This idea is insightful, but not completely correct. For example, if the land tax was changed to a tax without silver, it is not entirely good. Although the tax and silver tax actually brought great hidden dangers to the Ming Dynasty, especially after Wanli, the import of silver from the West was sharp.
After the reduction, it caused a big problem.
But if all the land taxes are levied on grain, the cost of collection will be greatly increased. You must know that after the middle of the Ming Dynasty, except for a few granaries where natural grains were levied, the land taxes in other places were reduced to silver, which reduced transportation, warehousing, etc.
The cost, and even the process of collecting money, can reduce corruption and other situations compared with collecting grain.
That night the two had an in-depth exchange of ideas.
