prosperous age

Chapter 1102 Chapter 1193

"Brother Uncle, what do you mean?"

Wei Guangde hesitated for a moment, but ultimately did not say anything.

"Measure the land of the world."

Wei Guangde didn't say anything, so Zhang Juzheng took over on his own.

This time, Wei Guangde was silent for a long time before he asked, "Brother Uncle, do you want to solve the problem of inaccurate land use?"

When Wei Guangde asked this question, he actually wanted to find out what the purpose of Zhang Juzheng's economic reform was.

Because Wei Guangde was not familiar with the Ming Dynasty in later generations, when he saw the item of land survey in Zhang Juzheng's reform, he naturally just understood it as re-measuring the land and finding the newly reclaimed fields that had been concealed.

But now that he has come through, he naturally knows many things that he didn't know before.

Not only were the land figures of the Ming Dynasty false, but even the population was wrong.

In later generations, most households had household registration books, which were called household registration stickers in the Ming Dynasty. In later generations, there were also police officers in the police station who were specifically responsible for household registration, namely household registration police. The current government also has the household registration department to connect with this.

According to the practices of later generations, as long as there are strict systems for birth, aging, sickness and death, the problem of inaccurate population will naturally not arise.

But unfortunately, just like the population and land area of ​​the Ming Dynasty, the data held by the imperial court were absolutely wrong.

Zhang Juzheng had talked to him about this matter before, but at that time they only touched upon it briefly.

Now that Zhang Juzheng has become the Prime Minister and holds great power, Wei Guangde believes that since Zhang Juzheng has proposed to survey the land, there must be a deeper meaning, which is the "Yellow Book" that is already full of errors and omissions.

Sure enough, hearing him say this, Zhang Juzheng nodded and smiled bitterly: "Shandai, you should have thought about this issue too, right?"

Wei Guangde's expression remained unchanged, but he did not speak.

Zhang Juzheng saw this and continued, "The biggest problem facing the country's natural resources is actually the uneven distribution of taxes and labor service, and the root cause is still due to land annexation.

In the process of land annexation, there are numerous drawbacks in land tax, the most serious of which are false claims, innuendos, keeping titles, hanging fictitious titles, passing through capitals, and accepting donations. These are transitional means for the wealthy to annex the land of weak self-cultivating farmers in disguise, and they have long been used as their old business.

The result is that the rich have land but no food, while the poor have no land but food, and because they are weak and powerless, they can do nothing about the situation.

When the county magistrate collected taxes, the poor found no way to pay, so the county magistrate had to levy apportionment in order to complete the required tax collection, and the whole country suffered even more.

The imperial court had lost control of land annexation for too long, and half of the cultivated land in the world had been owned by the wealthy. This not only caused a sharp drop in the dynasty's land tax revenue, but also directly led to the bankruptcy crisis of the remaining self-cultivating farmers due to the apportionment of taxes.

Therefore, in order to save the financial crisis and national and social crisis caused by land annexation, we must first clarify the actual ownership of these lands, and thus we must implement land surveying. "

Wei Guangde nodded. One of the important reasons for the uneven distribution of taxes and levies was that when the government formulated the taxation policy, they took the old fish scale yellow book into consideration.

The lands of each household recorded above had actually been passed on to many people many times and had already fallen into the hands of the powerful.

The result of levying taxes according to the Yellow Book was that the bankrupt peasants who had lost their land had to bear the taxes and labor service of the powerful who occupied the land.

Don’t think it’s unreasonable. In fact, this is what the local governments of the Ming Dynasty did.

It was only in the middle and late stages that this led to the re-emergence of drawbacks, instability among the people, and a large number of people fleeing famine and leaving their homes. The government was forced to make a series of adjustments and increase taxes on some of the powerful people.

However, these people have great influence, so it is naturally impossible to collect all the taxes they should pay according to the actual situation. Therefore, only a part of them can be collected, and the remaining tax difference is passed on to other self-employed farmers.

This is actually the result that the gentry and powerful people want.

In this way, although they still paid a little more tax, the bulk of the money still went into their own pockets, easing the relationship with the government.

After paying the part of taxes and labor service that they should bear, those self-cultivating farmers also had to share the taxes and labor service on the land in the hands of the powerful, which naturally increased their burden. They could easily go bankrupt due to some unexpected events and be forced to sell their land and become hired farmhands.

"I also noticed that in some places, because of refugees, the Ding tax was also included in the land tax, which is actually a good idea."

Suddenly, Zhang Juzheng added another sentence.

"Dividing a small family into an acre?"

Wei Guangde said subconsciously.

"Yes, Shandai is right. It is about allocating taxes according to the amount of land."

Zhang Juzheng stroked his hand and smiled.

In fact, the idea of ​​allocating tax based on land was not something Emperor Yongzheng came up with on a whim. Rather, when he was a prince, he traveled to various places on duty and discovered that people in some extremely poor areas chose to become refugees and wander around in order to avoid tax collection by the government.

When a place suffers from a serious loss of population and the government's taxes and levies have reached a limit, the local government is afraid that if it continues to impose taxes, the people will completely lose their ability to bear the burden, which will in turn lead to civil unrest, so it will try to increase taxes from the landowners.

So they included the Ding tax in the land tax and collected them together.

In this way, regardless of whether there is population loss or not, their poll tax will not be reduced by a single cent.

As for the extra part, self-employed farmers will of course bear some of it, but more of it will still be in the hands of large land owners.

However, before Emperor Yongzheng launched it throughout the country, it was just a measure taken out of necessity in some places.

The disaster of refugees actually already existed in the Ming Dynasty, and naturally local governments also used this tactic.

"However, before we implement the land tax distribution, we should first measure the land in the country, and then we can talk about the rest later, step by step."

Zhang Juzheng continued.

Wei Guangde understood that Zhang Juzheng had realized the problem of balance in land ownership and taxation system and was trying to find a solution. Land survey was actually just one part of his envisioned policy.

If Zhang Juzheng had died a few years later, he might have also cut down on the poll tax and introduced the reform policy of distributing the poll tax based on the amount of land used.

"Brother, this matter is of great importance. Do you still remember the Dutian Order?"

It was the first time that Zhang Juzheng described his ideas on land reform in such detail, including recompiling the fish scale book and collecting taxes based on it.

Although Wei Guangde had thought about it, he didn't dare to reach out, because it would be very dangerous once that thing came out.

  Didn’t the ancients know that the reason for the change of dynasties was mostly due to land annexation?

Of course not. It’s just that knowing it is one thing, but actually implementing it is too difficult. After all, everyone is selfish.

Many dynasties would try every means to crack down on local tyrants at the beginning of their establishment, and the one who did it to the extreme was Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang.

In fact, anyone who is familiar with history will find that many of Zhu Yuanzhang's actions in the early Ming Dynasty were actually imitations of the practices of Liu Xiu, Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty.

The Yellow Book of Fish Scales he formulated was actually derived from the "Land Measurement Order" of Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu. After the peasant uprising in the early Eastern Han Dynasty, the land issue was slightly eased. Liu Xiu wanted to solve this problem, so he implemented the "Land Measurement Order" in the 39th year of Jianwu ( AD), ordering all states and counties to check the number of fields, household registration, and age of people, in order to limit the annexation of land and enslavement of people by the powerful, and at the same time facilitate the state to collect taxes and levy corvee labor.

At that time, many large landowners had their own weapons, calling themselves "big-name soldiers." They concealed their fields and the people who depended on them and opposed the investigation.

The local officials were afraid of them, and some of them took bribes, colluded with each other, and allowed the landlords to make false reports.

Liu Xiu ordered the execution, imprisonment, and dismissal of dozens of county and state governors for the crime of "inaccurate land measurement."

As a result, "the big families in the counties and states, as well as the military commanders and bandits" rose up in rebellion, and Liu Xiu suppressed them by any means necessary, moving thousands of landlords and wealthy people to "other counties", thus ensuring the operation of "land measurement" and successfully solving the problem of inaccurate household registration and land area during the Han Dynasty, laying the necessary foundation and conditions for Mingzhang's rule.

Zhu Yuanzhang did the same in the early Ming Dynasty. He conducted a large-scale census at great cost and compiled a yellow book of fish scales as the basis for taxation. At the same time, he also relocated the powerful to prosperous areas such as the capital, in order to prevent them from living in their original places and suppress their influence.

During the war of unification, he also took advantage of the opportunity that these landlords and gentry supported the hostile forces to eliminate the wealthy families in the south of the Yangtze River, and there were almost no wealthy families left in the early Ming Dynasty.

These were important bases for conducting censuses and compiling the Yellow Book of Fish Scales in the Ming Dynasty.

Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu's "land measurement" national action, that nationwide land measurement movement ended up in vain and ultimately failed completely. The reason for the failure was that the foundation of the Eastern Han Dynasty was the support of the powerful families.

In order to wipe out the various power groups fighting for control of the imperial power and ultimately achieve the unification of national power, the powerful families supported Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu's efforts to unify the imperial power. Their motive was nothing more than to establish power representatives that could safeguard their economic and social rights and interests.

Liu Xiu himself was also a member of a powerful family.

In other words, the Eastern Han Dynasty was a regime of powerful families that was gradually becoming aristocratic and gentry.

During this most critical period of the rise of the powerful families, Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu naturally could not use the national policy of "measuring land" to deprive the powerful families of their strong assets and unlimited pursuit of political power. Therefore, his national economic strategy of "measuring land and equally taxing" lost its foundation.

After two hundred years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the powerful landlord class was aristocratized and gentry-like, and finally formed a powerful class with enormous economic and social influence. It eventually came to the forefront of imperial politics and declined after experiencing the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which directly controlled the imperial power.

The failed "Wang Anshi Reform" actually had a plan for the "Square Field Equal Tax Law", but it was not implemented in time and the reform almost died.

Now, Zhang Juzheng's intention has been revealed to Wei Guangde. Surveying the land is the first step. After that, taxes will be levied based on the land owners, instead of collecting taxes based on the useless yellow book.

The second step was to build on the achievements made and include the Ding tax in the land tax, so as to solve the problem of balance between land possession and the taxation system.

In this era, the importance of land is of utmost concern to everyone, so he did not dare to use all means at once, but took it step by step.

Collecting taxes based on land ownership makes sense and is not difficult to implement.

The reason why some people oppose it is actually due to some unacceptable reasons.

As long as the government decree can be issued, the follow-up will rely on the performance evaluation law to push it down layer by layer.

Everyone knows what the current land tax situation is in the Ming Dynasty, and they claim to be righteous under the banner of enriching the national treasury.

As for the reasons that the opposition can put forward, it is nothing more than a waste of time and money, but there is no question of arbitrarily changing the ancestral system.

In fact, according to Zhu Yuanzhang's request, the Ming Dynasty had a system of conducting a census every ten years and updating the Fish Scale Yellow Book.

However, it was not strictly enforced at the local level, and the imperial court was also lax about it, so those officials simply copied the old books to fool people.

After all, it would be too much trouble for so many officials to conduct a thorough investigation.

However, as the Ming Dynasty has developed to this day, the landlords and gentry who disappeared in the early Ming Dynasty have reappeared. They will inevitably become the main opposition force to Zhang Juzheng's reforms, and if things go wrong, there will be a civil uprising.

This is a serious matter. If things go wrong, even the Prime Minister Zhang Juzheng will be in trouble.

Therefore, Wei Guangde mentioned Emperor Guangdi Liu Xiu's Land Measurement Order, which was actually achieved through the use of force to suppress the rebellion.

Moreover, although it was implemented at that time, it was soon abandoned. After all, there was too much resistance from below, and the officials were also worried about themselves and did not dare to strictly implement it.

"That's why I proposed to survey the land, and not involve other things for the time being."

Zhang Juzheng spoke up and said that of course he knew about the land measurement incident and was also trying his best to avoid confronting the local powerful families too early.

"Now that the national treasury is depleted, we have no choice but to survey the land to supplement the fiscal revenue. Clearing the excess grain is the top priority. Otherwise, the excess grain will burden the people and cause disaster sooner or later."

Having said that, Zhang Juzheng took out a piece of paper from his sleeve and handed it to Wei Guangde, motioning him to take a look.

Wei Guangde took it and took a look. It was some things Zhang Juzheng had thought of for this purpose. It was simply categorized and not written down, but the meaning was still understandable.

"Measure the land according to the acreage and distribute the compensation evenly. The amount of compensation will be determined according to the height of the land. The original quota will be used as the basis. The longer amount will be used to compensate the shorter amount. The land of officials and civilians will be measured and the original amount will be compensated. However, the officials have not distributed the compensation evenly to the same state."

After a quick look, Wei Guangde knew that land surveying was an important reform project of Zhang Juzheng, and it created conditions for increasing the court's revenue, so he naturally would not object.

Moreover, according to his memory, although some incidents may have occurred during the land survey, overall no major disaster, that is, civil unrest, occurred, so it was naturally feasible.

Wei Guangde believed that what was recorded in history books was definitely not complete, which meant that Zhang Juzheng's implementation of the land survey would not be so smooth, and he didn't know how many disturbances there would be during that period.

"Brother Uncle, this matter is too big. I have no objection, but I still hope to wait a little longer.

The most urgent matter for the court now is actually the affairs of the southwest. Once the affairs of the southwest are resolved and the prestige of Your Majesty and the court is greatly increased, it is better to slowly make plans. "

Wei Guangde said.

"Yes, that's what I meant, but I'll let Shandai know in advance. You can think about it when you have time and check for any deficiencies."

When Wei Guangde heard what Zhang Juzheng said, he nodded slightly.

"Brother Uncle, do you have a place in mind to try this strategy?"

Wei Guangde asked.

Just like the Single Whip Law, the land surveying cannot be implemented nationwide right away. One province will be chosen for trial implementation first, and then the surveying rules will be worked out.

"How about letting Jiangxi and Nanzhili try it out first according to the order of the Single Whip Law?"

Zhang Juzheng suddenly said.

"inappropriate."

Wei Guangde immediately said: "Although the Single Whip Law has matured, the court has not yet issued a document to promote it nationwide.

If there are mistakes in the survey, it may affect this law, which is not appropriate. "