prosperous age

In the capital of the Ming Dynasty, in the duty room of the Cabinet Prime Minister, Zhang Juzheng sat there alone, thinking about things silently.

Ever since Wei Guangde met him two days ago and brought up the issue of land survey, Wei Guangde pointed out that the population of the Ming Dynasty was also strange. For more than a hundred years, the population had not increased. The implication was very clear.

Zhang Juzheng naturally knew that there were serious distortions in the Yellow Book, but relatively speaking, he was more concerned about the land that was related to the court's finances.

Besides, no matter how large the population of the Ming Dynasty is, it still has to follow the rules set by Taizu, and each prefecture and county has a quota for the poll tax.

Even though the population increased dramatically, the Ding tax still had to be evenly distributed. Finally, after the land was surveyed, it was directly compiled into the Yi Tiao Bian Law and taxes were collected according to the land.

Of course, it would be helpful to conduct a population census so as to reduce the corvée labor of the civilians.

After all, many civilians who were not included in the Yellow Book avoided the corvée labor that they should have undertaken.

However, Zhang Juzheng still did not think it was necessary to do so. It was just that Wei Guangde mentioned that the court should have carried out a large-scale yellow book compilation in a few years. Using this opportunity to re-check the population of the Ming Dynasty accurately would not bring any burden to the court.

Zhu Yuanzhang formulated the Yellow Book system, which can be said to be the "best" policy implemented after the founding of the Ming Dynasty. Starting from the 1381th year of Hongwu, that is, AD, the Yellow Book was revised every ten years, and it has never been interrupted for more than a hundred years.

In fact, until the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the compilation of the Yellow Book every ten years had never been interrupted. This has to be said to be a miracle. After all, it had been implemented for more than two hundred years and had never been delayed no matter what major events occurred.

The next time the Yellow Book was compiled was in the ninth year of the Wanli reign, which was 1581 AD.

Although Wei Guangde's proposal was not excessive, the Yellow Book should definitely be compiled according to the actual situation among the people, but in fact, due to the financial constraints of the Ming Dynasty, the funds invested in the compilation were seriously insufficient each time, so various problems arose.

Yes, Zhang Juzheng knew how those yellow books were made, and many of them were copied.

When copying, some officials would pay attention to deleting the names of some elderly people. After all, it is impossible for an old man who is one or two hundred years old to be recorded in the book, but more people would just copy it down as it is.

This is really ridiculous.

As for the most important thing, it was that students from all over the country went to the countryside on behalf of officials to actually check the population situation. However, because the government subsidies were not in place, those students adopted a confusing method and did not go to the countryside to actually check and record the changes in the population of each household.

In this case, even if the officials above want to do their job seriously, they cannot conduct a thorough population check in their jurisdiction.

The data they obtained from the students' reports were false in themselves, so how could they compile the Yellow Book objectively?

Zhu Yuanzhang spent a lot of time designing the Yellow Book system, but the people's wisdom was endless and they ruined the system.

If we give some specific examples, we will understand how the "Yellow Book of Taxes and Services" was ruined.

For example, there is a man named Zhang San who made money through business, so he bought fifty acres of land and then wanted to evade taxes.

He could buy two pounds of pork from the head of the village and ask him to divide forty acres of his fifty acres of land into the names of forty poor people.

These poor people were illiterate and easily deceived. They had others fill out the yellow books for them, so the fact that each person was taxed an extra acre of land was not very obvious.

This method of reporting false information is called "flying and scattering".

In addition to "flying and scattering", you can also use the methods of "dead mail" and "drop mail".

The so-called "death loan" means that if a fellow villager dies out and the land becomes wasteland, and no tax is required, Li Si can put part of the land under his name to evade taxes.

The so-called "land granting" means that the gentry who were studying or holding official positions at that time did not need to pay taxes, so Li Si could register part of his land under their names. This was called "land granting".

You can report false information during registration and tamper with the data after registration.

For example, when Li Si registered, he deliberately wrote the number of people in his family incorrectly. There were clearly five people in his family, but he wrote it as four.

When the reviewer sees that there is an error, he will mark it and ask you to go back and correct it.

Li Si got the yellow book again and changed the population number correctly, but at the same time he also changed his land data, from 50 acres to 5 acres.

The yellow book was handed back and the inspectors checked it again. They corrected the errors in the marked places and did not look at the other information because they had already checked it. Li Si successfully evaded taxes.

Not only could Li Si make changes himself, he could also bribe others to do so. There was even a case in the Ming Dynasty where the personnel transporting the Yellow Book accepted bribes and the vehicle stayed on the road for several days, waiting for the briber to tamper with the Yellow Book.

In addition to falsifying information and tampering with data, they also destroy the yellow book so that you have no evidence.

At that time, there was a case in which a manager was bribed and tore off several pages of a yellow book. As a result, the man was searched and found out when he left Xuanwu Lake, and his cheating attempt failed.

In fact, Zhang Juzheng just wanted the localities to re-check the land area, that is, to separate from the Huangce system that had been broken by the court.

However, Wei Guangde wanted to recompile the Yellow Book as well, so things naturally became a little complicated.

Apart from anything else, even if the local authorities really report the data, it is still real data, but the yellow book still has a hurdle to go through when it reaches the Ministry of Households, and that is the review.

After the Yellow Book is submitted to the Ministry of Revenue, the central government needs to send people to conduct data review, and conduct horizontal comparison between the village books, county books, prefecture books, and office books, and vertical comparison between the Yellow Book submitted ten years ago and the newly submitted Yellow Book. This step is called "refutation check."

The review was done by students of the Imperial Academy. One review involved 1,200 students and took three months to complete. On average, each student reviewed 50 books.

But in practice, the students only completed their tasks seriously at the beginning. Later, they procrastinated in various ways, delaying the work. Three months delayed to one year, one year delayed to three years, three years delayed to ten years. When a new issue of the yellow book was submitted, the previous issue had not been completed yet.

Later on, there were not even enough people to go around, and the students asked for leave one after another, taking sick leave, marriage leave, maternity leave, or mourning leave, trying every way they could to avoid labor.

Why don’t the students like to work?
Because the treatment and working environment are too bad.

The Yellow Book cannot be given to the students to take home and read. They have to go to Xuanwu Lake and check it in the Yellow Book warehouse.

In order to maintain confidentiality and prevent fire, the Xuanwu Lake Yellow Book Warehouse has many special designs.

The environment around the warehouse is humid and fires are not allowed. It is extremely cold in the winter and there are many mosquitoes in the summer. After working on the island for three months, nine out of ten students will get sick.

Also, because of the strict control of entry and exit, people are not allowed to leave the island at will if they are sick. Not only can they not receive medical treatment, but even their bodies cannot be transported out if they die.

It is understandable why, in the end, everyone knows the secret of the Yellow Book, but no one is willing to mention it. In fact, this is the reason.

In fact, Zhang Juzheng had also consulted with others over the past two days about the issue of the Yellow Book of Taxes and Labor Service, but no one supported him in actually making a large-scale Yellow Book. It was too troublesome, and there would be great resistance from both the upper and lower levels.

Everyone knows about the problem with the Yellow Book, but no one supports it, because they are well aware of its seriousness.

The local governments were unwilling to spend so much energy on this. The Ministry of Revenue in the imperial court had the biggest reaction, and the reason was the same: there was no way to send more people to conduct the investigation.

Soon, the clerk outside the door came in to report that Lord Wei had arrived.

Zhang Juzheng stood up and welcomed Wei Guangde in.

After a round of greetings, Zhang Juzheng said directly: "Shandai, you suggested taking advantage of this opportunity to create the Yellow Book to clarify the population and land issues. I'm afraid the difficulty is greater than you think."

"Oh."

Wei Guangde was called over by Zhang Juzheng, and you were guessing his intention, but you didn't expect it was for this matter.

"Why? In a few years, the imperial court will have to recompile the Yellow Book. Since my uncle wants to survey the land, why not take this opportunity to recompile the Yellow Book of Fish Scales?"

Wei Guangde continued.

"Shan Dai, you should know that the land survey I want is actually different from the compilation of the Yellow Book. They are two completely different things. The original intention is to ask the local governments to hand in the White Book, and at the same time, to survey the land that the rich and powerful have concealed, and the court will levy taxes based on this. Implement the Single Whip Law, evenly distribute taxes and labor service, reduce taxes for the people, and at the same time, change taxes from the original physical goods into silver and money to expand the court's treasury.

But if we bring the population into the mix, the recompilation of the Yellow Book of Fish Scales will definitely be met with strong opposition from all levels.”

Zhang Juzheng said seriously, "I know what you mean, but the land survey has a huge impact. If we mix the population survey into it, not only will people below complain about the huge workload and the land survey cannot be carried out, but it may even delay the land survey.

In my opinion, we should discuss the population census later."

Zhang Juzheng made his attitude clear. At first, he did not agree to Wei Guangde's request for a population census, but only promised to think about it.

After discussing with others, he felt that it was too difficult, so he decided to confront Wei Guangde.

This cannot be done.

"What about the court increasing its investment?"

Although Zhang Juzheng had made his attitude clear, Wei Guangde still wanted to fight for it.

“Shandai, even if the Yellow Book is revised, it will not actually help the court’s finances.

After all, after signing, only a part of the Ding tax would be included in the whip tax, and the Ding labor would ultimately be supervised by the local authorities.

Although the new law allowed those who were required to serve to pay for their service with silver, the government would recruit people to serve.

Even if the population increases by 10 or 20 million after the census, the labor service included in the whip tax will remain unchanged and will ultimately be distributed among the farmland.

As for corvée labor, local governments naturally took turns to recruit people. They did not select people according to the Yellow Book, but the head of the village and the head of the village selected people based on the households.

Although I also want the Yellow Book to be accurate, the opposition is too strong, and you and I have to consider the consequences."

Zhang Juzheng bluntly said that this was not what Wei Guangde had in mind at all, not a matter of the court spending more money to hire people, but a matter of trouble and breaking the unspoken rules between the court and the local government.

'However, if the imperial court does not have a grasp of the true population situation, many chaos are bound to occur when local governments collect taxes and labor service.

Just corvée labor alone can destroy many families.'

Wei Guangde sighed and said.

Wei Guangde was not making this up. Many families were torn apart and destroyed because of the corvée system.

Looking back on history, the corvée system has a long history.

The so-called corvée refers to the state's conscription of civilians for free labor. The corvée system already existed as early as the Warring States Period, and by the Qin Dynasty, this system had become increasingly perfect.

Generally speaking, corvée labor can be divided into three types: official corvée, prisoner corvée and civilian corvée.

Among them, the common people were required to perform civil labor, which is what we usually call corvee labor.

In ancient times, large-scale engineering projects often involved large-scale conscription of corvée labor. This included not only the construction of palaces for the royal family, but also the construction of cities and river dams, all of which required the extensive use of corvée labor.

Before the Ming Dynasty, the corvée labor undertaken by the people also included garrisoning the border, which meant going to the border to serve as soldiers to guard the border.

The first peasant uprising in ancient China, the Dazexiang Uprising led by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, was directly caused by "heavy rain, blocked roads, and missed the deadline. According to the law, those who missed the deadline would be beheaded."

This meant that they would not be able to reach their destination on time due to heavy rain that blocked the road, and according to Qin law, those who failed to meet the deadline would be put to death.

It can be seen that the policy implementation of corvee labor in ancient times was very harsh.

When it comes to mobilizing the people's power, it is basically the rural gentry and the head of the village who have the final say.

The exemption of gentry from military service has been ruined by someone.

Originally, only a few places were given, but in fact they were infinitely magnified by them.

In the end, corvée labor had to fall on the poor people. Although Zhang Juzheng's new law allowed the people to pay silver to offset the corvée labor, how much money did the people have?
In a service, ten people taking turns and five people taking turns are two completely different concepts.

The imperial court was unable to grasp the size of the civilian population, and injustice was inevitable when it imposed corvée labor.

Moreover, due to the influence of clan forces in the countryside, many families inevitably bear heavy burdens, and the government has no way to verify it.

You have to know that corvée labor was free of charge. Not only did the government not give silver, but people even had to bring their own food. Therefore, those who performed corvée labor in ancient times were in great danger of death.

Heavy labor during the day, poor eating and sleeping, and no money to treat illnesses can be life-threatening.

Although the saying "one life in nine" may be a bit biased, the mortality rate of those performing corvée labor is indeed relatively high.

Suddenly, Wei Guangde suddenly thought of the system of allocating capitation taxes to the land that was proposed by Yongzheng. In fact, Zhang Juzheng's "One Whip System" had already allocated part of the capitation taxes to the land, but not all of it.

If all the labor service was allocated to the land, and the country needed people to perform labor service, it could just pay the money directly instead of conscripting rural laborers. Wouldn't that be better?

Anyway, after the Ming Dynasty divided the military households, it was equivalent to separating the border defense from the previous corvée labor.

"Brother, what about the Ding tax that you mentioned before, which is distributed among the land? If we distribute all the Ding taxes borne by the prefectures and counties among the land, what will happen?"

Wei Guangde said.

He no longer mentioned a census of the Ming Dynasty's population, but instead wanted to monetize the head tax and corvee labor and include them in the measurement of land.

"Ok?"

Zhang Juzheng looked at him in surprise.

So Wei Guangde expressed what he was thinking.

"In this way, the country's revenue and taxes all come from land. If the people have land, they pay taxes, but if they don't, they don't have to pay taxes.

The Book of Rites says, "Where there is land there is wealth." How can the people without land get the money to pay taxes?

All taxes and labor service are paid from the land. The government collects taxes. When the local area needs labor, it can just spend money to hire people, and it doesn't have to bother the local people. Isn't it the best of both worlds? "

Wei Guangde suggested.

"Dividing a small family into an acre?"

Zhang Juzheng uttered a word and then nodded slightly.

Indeed, he felt that what Wei Guangde said made sense.

The common people work just to make a living, but they can't save any money at all, and all the money goes to the landlords.

It is indeed a bit excessive to levy taxes based on the number of people. It seems to be a good idea to distribute the taxes based on the amount of land. (End of this chapter)