Wanli Xinming

Chapter 215 Whip
Perhaps it was Zhu Yijun who developed bodhicitta and gained blessings by trying to solve the problem of drowning.At the end of the seventh year of Wanli, Zhuang Jingjia scored twice, and finally gave birth to the eldest son of the emperor. For fear of death, he was not named for the time being - but he was given the title of the King of Luo County.

The birth of the eldest son and direct son of the emperor did not directly seal the prince, but also set an example for the parties involved in the reform of the clan.As for the issue of the emperor's succession, Zhu Yijun assessed Ben Time and Space's own body and thought that he was not in a hurry for the time being.Moreover, this problem should be solved when the Empire implements the government reform.Zhu Yijun judged that there will be a lot of competition in the future.

On the birth of the Luo County King, Zhu Yijun did not give amnesty to the world, but only received congratulations and gifts from all the ministers and vassal states, and issued rewards to congratulate him.It also issued an edict that stipulated the conditions for future pardons:

Except for the empress dowagers of the two palaces and the emperor who are sick and need amnesty to pray for blessings, the court will no longer grant amnesty to the rest of the world in cases such as canonization of queens, birth of princes, and establishment of princes.

According to the emperor's promise to the two palaces, after the queen confirmed her pregnancy, Zhu Yijun began to let the harem's concubines and concubines soak in the rain and dew.Because the medical school has studied and understood the relationship between a woman's pregnancy and her menstrual period, the Harem Shangyi Bureau made corresponding arrangements for the emperor's concubines, and the results were unexpectedly good.

In less than three months, Yifei was diagnosed with a happy pulse.Afterwards, good news spread frequently that Concubine Wang Zhao, Concubine Zhang Duan, Concubine Li Jing, and Concubine Chen Shuconi were pregnant successively, which made the queen mothers of the two palaces think they were living in a dream.

Zhu Yijun changed the difficult situation of the descendants of the royal family after Emperor Xiaozong, and most of the subjects in the world rejoiced.In particular, the honorable and noble officials saw the emperor so capable, and they all liked to change their color—the congratulations seemed like a snowflake.

In the past dynasties, the descendants of the emperor's family were not only a personal issue, but a top priority related to the stability of the world and the sustainability of peace.Therefore, an emperor with strong fertility is very worthy of praise and encouragement, and Zhu Yijun made so many concubines pregnant with dragon seeds in one breath, which is simply an example of the emperor, the elite of the emperor.

At the beginning of the eighth year of Wanli, after more than two years of pilot projects, and summed up experience and lessons, the plan was improved.Zhang Juzheng, the minister of the Prime Minister's Cabinet, requested the decree, and Zhu Yijun approved it, and introduced a whip law across the country.

At the beginning of the reform, Zhang Juzheng pointed out that the smooth implementation of the one-whip law depends on the results of clearing land and reorganizing households.

With the strong support of Zhu Yijun and the strict punishments and strict laws, the nationwide clearing and registration of households that began in the sixth year of Wanli was finally completed at the end of the seventh year of Wanli.

In this clearing and reorganization of households, a total of 900 million hectares of newly added land was cleared across the country, which is three times the result of the original time-space clearing of the land; the national population statistics finally fell to 900 million, nearly half more than the original time-space.

The achievement of such great results is actually inseparable from Zhu Yijun's conscious elimination of relevant resistance in the years after he took power.

Regarding the political pressure faced by Qingzhang, Zhu Yijun did not let Zhang Juzheng fight against the world with the determination and perseverance of "destroying the family and sinking the family" and "death from exhaustion" like Wanli in the original time and space.

On the basis of a nationwide class analysis and a detailed survey of political forces, Zhu Yijun first attacked the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River in the past few years. Using the "Songjiang slave change" as an introduction, he severely cracked down on the gentry who over-occupied land and concealed their household registration.

Jiangnan Jinshen, represented by Xu Jie, was bewildered by the emperor's series of tactics, and the rise of newspapers deprived Jinshen of his right to speak in the clear stream of Shilin, so that their resistance did not make waves at all.

The successive assassinations of the emperor and Zhang Wenming gave Zhu Yijun the legitimacy and pretext to forcefully clean up and suppress Jinshen.The gentry from the north and the south, who had experienced the white terror, completely lost the will to resist the imperial edict's edict, and the degree of acceptance was completely beyond Zhang Juzheng's expectations.

As for the occupation of land and concealment of household registration, Zhu Yijun took the method of redemption.The auction of the salt field, the policy of exchanging land for points, harvested most of Xungui's land.Afterwards, Zhu Yijun let go of the wind and honor, and let the big landlords focus on maritime trade, and the honor, represented by the British prince, spit out a lot of land.

For the most difficult clan, Zhu Yijun used clan reform, sticks and carrots together, and solved the land problem relatively well.

These three parties are the three political forces that Yuan Shikong has the strongest resistance to Qingzhang and the One Whip Law.After being manipulated by Zhu Yijun, Qingzhang's work was carried out very smoothly - even if there were some noise and resistance, it was a local problem and did not cause global fluctuations.For these small problems, Zhang Juzheng used all his methods to make arrangements clearly.

In Zhu Yijun's view, the Ming Dynasty, which started the colonial model, will greatly alleviate the contradiction between man and land in the future.As for why not now go a step further to "the rural gentry pay grain as one", it is mainly for the following considerations.

On the one hand, after calculation, after the comprehensive clearing and establishment of households, the imperial court comprehensively strengthened the management of the tax-free quota for scholars, and the increase in taxes due to the “one-body grain payment by the squires” was very little, which was completely disproportionate to the political price paid by the imperial court.

Secondly, the "grain payment of the rural gentry" is mainly to collect taxes in a one-size-fits-all manner when the management efficiency of the imperial court is low.This is contrary to Zhu Yijun's purpose of adjusting social management by means of tax exemption in the future.And more importantly, the whip law in this time and space has actually progressed compared to the original time and space - the tax exemption for scholars is realized in the form of tax rebates, that is, they pay the tax first, and then the court will return it according to their tax exemption amount.

On the surface, this kind of policy seems to be taking off your pants and farting. Except for a few people such as Wang Guoguang, almost no one in this time and space understands what kind of divine operation this is - it seems that there is nothing to do except increase the workload of the grassroots. usefulness.

But Zhu Yijun, a former tax commissioner, knows that this is by no means superfluous.The most important function of the policy of paying tax first and then refunding tax is to embed the concept of "equal taxation to everyone", so that everyone can develop the habit of paying tax; secondly, with the change of fiscal tightening in the future, the tax refund can be adjusted at any time scope and tax rate.At that time, the data and materials left in the tax refund process will greatly reduce the workload of new tax collection.

Thirdly, "the rural gentry pays grains as one" is still a tax policy in which Yongzheng and Kangxi's so-called "benevolent government" of "never add fu" to the land and mu - this will give rise to industry, commerce and even after the development of urbanization. , the collection of personal income tax has brought great resistance.

The last item, the collection of Dingkou Fu, also protected the achievements of Qingzhang and household registration - making nationwide population statistics a normalized work, which is conducive to the administration of the imperial court.

For the above reasons, Zhu Yijun weighed it over and over again, and after a detailed analysis and discussion with the cabinet, the newly introduced whip law did not go beyond "the rural gentry pay grain as one" - but "seeking truth from facts" dictated.

During the implementation of the original time-space strip whip law, the people in the south of the Yangtze River benefited from it, and most of them thought it was good governance.In the north, the implementation of the one-whip law turned into a bad law in some areas due to the lack of money supply and circulation.

Farmers in the north focus on selling grain during the tax payment season, because the grain market is not as developed as in the south, resulting in a situation where "money is expensive and grain is cheap", which greatly increases their tax burden.Moreover, in the original time and space, the corruption of officials in the north was worse than that in the south, which led to the excessive increase of "fire consumption" by local officials in the process of tax collection, which also increased the tax in disguise.

In this time and space, when Zhu Yijun, Zhang Juzheng and others introduced a whip method, they consciously selected many prefectures in the north and south of the imperial court and the border areas for pilot projects, which fully exposed the problem.

At the same time, because of the relationship of mineral resources, the industrial complex laid out by Zhu Yijun, its production links are mostly located in the north, which in turn strengthens the market economy in the northern part of the empire, and in disguise increases the amount of currency in the northern part of the empire.

Because of the incident of "Li Chaodou jumping into the river to save his mother" in this time and space, the relatively good financial situation of the imperial court greatly increased the salary of Beijing officials, and then put a large amount of silver into the circulation link in the north, which objectively alleviated the "money shortage".

As for the problem of fire consumption in the process of fusing scattered pieces of silver into official silver, Zhu Yijun directly copied Emperor Yongzheng's "Huo Consumption Gui Gong".

In the fifth year of Wanli, the imperial court gave Beijing officials a large-scale salary increase, which led to the dissatisfaction of many local officials - we do the hardest and most tiring work at the grassroots level, and promotion is slower than that of Beijing officials, and now the salary is still a lot worse Jiezi, isn't this forcing us to embezzle?
However, the court at that time was really unable to support the increase of salaries for officials all over the world, and it was a last resort to only take care of the officials of the capital.

But not giving local officials salaries, the subtext is that the local officials have money, they don't need to increase their salaries - this in itself is a bad guide.But before the whip law was implemented, it was impossible for the imperial court to increase taxes on the common people to keep them clean, so this matter has been dragging on for the past two years.

After the strip-whip method was piloted, some local officials took advantage of the fire, and some of the more black-hearted people actually received [-]%, and the taxation of the local people increased.But what about the pilot - this is to fully expose the problem.

Therefore, along with the full implementation of the whip law, there is also the policy of "returning fire consumption to the public and raising clean silver" by the later Emperor Yongzheng.After a large amount of data statistics, the average cost of fire consumption in the pilot state capital is three points due to the difference in silver quality.Therefore, the imperial court clearly stipulated that the fire consumption should be 13.00%, adding one more point would be regarded as a crime of "corruption".

All fire consumptions are collected by the Chief Secretary and distributed to the lower levels after they are published.The decree said: "How can the boss use the fire to support the state and county to support the state and county".

This system has brought immediate effects. First, it directly increases local fiscal and taxation revenue and improves the local ability to deal with disasters. Second, an income system combining salaried salary and honesty silver has been established. The discretion of the government is removed, and gray income is turned into a subsidy on the surface, reducing the risk of corruption.Thirdly, the standard of fire consumption is uniformly stipulated, which also reduces the burden on farmers.

Attributing fire consumption to the Chief Secretary also has the benefit of increasing the power of provincial local governments to control their lower levels.According to the original design of the salt administration reform, the delineation of salt sales areas is based on counties.This policy directly resulted in a situation in which the county was rich while the prefecture and the province were poor, which was not conducive to the control of county governance at the provincial and prefectural levels.

Now that the fire consumption is under the control of the province, the imperial court allows the Chief Secretary to issue the provincial standards for the issuance of honesty silver, which adds a powerful grip to the governance of the provinces according to local conditions.

The issuance of the Yanglian Bank, in turn, widened the income gap between the local officials and the Beijing officials. Take Wang Tingjian, the governor of Sichuan, who was born in the servant's office at the end of the eighth year of Wanli, as an example. Ten times the annual salary.

Although Beijing officials are envious of this high income, they are not very envious.Because the government reform of the imperial court has not been deepened at this time, the staff of local officials and other personnel all need the official salary to be paid by the officials, so Yang Lian Yin can't produce the effect of "three years of clear prefects, [-] snowflakes of silver" for the time being.

(End of this chapter)