Xuande

Chapter 818 Officials and Officials

In the next period of time, Liu Bei was very busy and spent almost all his time on work.

After the war, a series of aftermath work was complicated, and the work of comprehensive land acquisition and subsequent granting of land was also complicated, requiring a large number of officials to devote themselves to it, including him, the emperor, who would not have any time to rest.

During this wave of chaos, many officials were either rebelled and killed, or they were not capable enough to deal with difficulties, and they lost their positions and caused too much local losses, so they were dismissed from their positions. It has changed the positions of tens of thousands of officials.

This is definitely a good thing for the country in the long run, because those who are incompetent or dissatisfied will be exposed and will be properly punished, and there will be no more worrying things.

But for the short-term situation, the problem is still quite big.

Busy, just busy, the aftermath of the war, the selection and replacement of officials, one after another, all of them were busy things, and the whole first year of Zhenguan passed like this.

But such busyness can also bring great benefits, such as the great progress in the collectivization of agriculture.

In the past, because there was no mandatory means of execution, the principle of voluntariness was mainly followed. Of course, the land confiscated by the court and the freed slaves were all arranged in collective farms, which existed as proofs at the local level for free farmers to choose.

Some people saw the benefits of agricultural collectivization, so they chose to join, while some people insisted on family production and did not want to join. They always felt that the officials in the court had no good intentions.

Of course Liu Bei is tolerant, you are willing, I accept if you are not willing, I will not force you, if you want to leave, I will let you go.

Keeping this loose policy and rules, the degree of agricultural collectivization in the entire Jiangbei region presents a situation of high in the west and low in the east.

The degree of agricultural collectivization in Kansai is very high, especially in a place like Liangzhou, where the degree of agricultural collectivization is almost [-]%.

The degree of agricultural collectivization in Guanzhong area and northern Yizhou is also very high, generally exceeding 80.00%, or even 90.00%. Due to the long-term war in Bingzhou and Youzhou, it is logical to promote agricultural collectivization after the settlement. Security requirements are also generally accepted.

In Jizhou, the degree of agricultural collectivization in northern Jizhou is relatively high, reaching over 70.00%, while in the south it is relatively low, even less than 30.00% in some areas. This is also the reason why the situation in southern Jizhou is particularly serious during the Dutian Rebellion one.

In the Central Plains, however, the degree of agricultural collectivization varies. Overall, it can be over 50.00%.

Not to mention the south of the Yangtze River, there is not much difference.

After the Dutian Rebellion, because the outstanding performance of the collective farms during the war was very eye-catching, the free farmers saw the superiority of the collective farms and their strong ability to resist disasters, so they collectively voted with their feet. Large batches are required to join collective farms.

Because there were so many people who asked to join the collective farm that the government was short of manpower, they could only be asked to line up, one village at a time.

However, the more this is the case, the more people want to join, the more they can't get it, the more they want to get it.

When the government worked hard to promote it before, few people were tempted. It can only be said that this is an exposure of human nature.

It takes a lot of time to manage and deal with collective farm affairs, because the other party is in a hurry, so Liu Bei announced that the local government can ask for help from the county soldiers. If they don't have the ability to pull them over, it is equivalent to thousands of clerks out of thin air.

Isn't this person enough?
It is impossible for me to recruit more officials. It is not so easy. There are only tens of millions of people, and there are 20 to 30 officials and [-] county soldiers.

Moreover, with the spread of collective farms, the number of government representatives will also increase. It will not be long before the number of officials will exceed 17. In addition, there will be 30 troops in charge of fighting, and there will be 67 people who eat financial food.

There are also court servants and maids in the palace, and there are many semi-official government animal husbandry employees on the northern border. There are all kinds of people, and soon there will be 70 people eating financial food.

The probability of the current population of the Han Empire has not exceeded 7000 million, and at most it is close to 7000 million, which means that an average of [-] people needs to support one person who eats financially. Judging from the current productivity, it is almost the same, and it must be given to the future. Leave a little space, we can't use up the expansion quota now.

Otherwise, the Great Han Dynasty under his control will also be left with the name of "redundant officials and redundant soldiers" in history.

Therefore, Liu Bei did not agree to some people's request to expand the number of officials, but instead incorporated the county soldiers into the local governance system, asking them to help when necessary, and to suffer himself. The happiness is the broad masses of the people and Emperor Liu .

Liu Bei led the cabinet members to start the nine-nine-six overtime mode, working overtime to deal with the influx of government affairs processing requests from the localities, and at the same time distracted from the selection of officials.

Although it is not the right time to hold the imperial examination at this stage, because the personnel power has been completely controlled by him, no one can question his personnel power, so in terms of personnel, Liu Bei has begun to use the examination method to select new officials.

The personnel power of the empire now belongs to the Ministry of Officials, and the Ministry of Officials holds all the power of selection, and the main selection targets are students from Luoyang Taixue and other states. With this status, if you think your knowledge is good, then you can come to participate An internal examination held by the Ministry of Officials in Luoyang.

And those selected by the examination are basically officials. This is Liu Bei's determination of some basic rules for the selection examination of the Ministry of Officials.

Because the responsibilities of officials and officials are different, the responsibilities of officials are obviously heavier, and the responsibilities to the people are also very heavy. It is difficult to be a good official without experience.

A major drawback of the ancient imperial examinations was that some pure newcomers with no official experience were selected to serve as local officials, so that many funny things happened.

Therefore, after Zhu Yuanzhang conferred officials on the Xinke Scholars, he also distributed to them the must-read manuals for being county magistrates in the local area, and provided them with temporary training, so as to prevent these idiots from being deceived by the local officials. To count their money.

Zhu Yuanzhang's ability to issue such a patch only shows that such things have happened more than once before, and have even become a serious problem that the emperor takes seriously.

It is really not easy for a newcomer to be a good county official. Although the population of the place is small these days, the officials are also responsible for the lives of these places.

Therefore, Liu Bei's plan is to limit the personnel selected by the examination to the category of officials, and then open up the selection ladder from officials to officials, so that officials can become the reserve army of officials.

If you want to become an official official, you must first pass the official examination as a low-level official, accumulate sufficient experience, and then make achievements, and then pass further official selection examinations, thus becoming an imperial official.

If you think about it, there are nearly 17 civil servants in the empire. There are only more than 7000 serious officials and dignitaries.

It is these small officials who mainly deal with the people and implement the government's governance goals.

Could they be unimportant?
Can their quality and behavior not be important?
Their performance can basically represent the people's views on the imperial court. The strength of their execution represents the strength of the imperial court's ability to govern. Their various performances basically represent everything about the Han Empire.

In the past and in the future, officials and officials cannot communicate with each other.

In the Song and Ming Dynasties, officials were unable to become officials, but because of the establishment of the system of floating officials, the local foundation of officials was far less than that of officials.

It is true that this is beneficial to the governance of the court, because the status of officials is higher after all. If they hold too much real power, it will make the court worry. Although small officials have real power, they have no status. The big picture of the whole place.

So it is better to let officials and officials fight each other.

It's just that the further back, the greater the negative impact.

If you think about it, you can understand that the local county magistrates serve for two or three years, and then leave, and some small officials can even serve more than a dozen county magistrates from birth to death, so that there are so-called iron-clad officials. The official theory of flowing water.

In the later stage of development, many official positions actually became hereditary positions of some small and medium-sized local families. Relying on the monopoly of these official positions with certain local real power, some local families in turn became an important support for the court officials. Without their If you cooperate, it will be difficult to govern the place.

They don't have a high status, but they are the uncrowned kings of the locality. Three, five, ninety official families are linked together, enough to monopolize the basic real power of a small county, and deal with those nerds who have studied hard for ten years. Son.

Of course, they will not fight against officials in an open and honest manner. After all, they are completely different from officials in terms of status, but as long as they are well coaxed, they can be deceived. As long as they can be deceived, they can do a lot of things. want to do.

Therefore, Liu Bei absorbed the experience and lessons in this area, and believed that the imperial court should also have a basic control over the quality and appointment of local officials. Only more than 7000 officials and dignitaries cannot govern the world, and there is no remaining 16 officials. Execution is not good for politics.

Just as Liu Bei set up a law school to assess and train the quality of 20 county soldiers, and basically control them, because he knows that the existence of county soldiers is crucial to local governance, and now, the existence of officials Quality and quality are equally important for local governance.

That's why Liu Bei asked the Ministry of Officials to fully control the selection and assessment of officials from all over the country. Don't control officials first. Officials can be handed over to higher-level control. In fact, the appointment of each official can be passed through the emperor. Come and control it, but the number of officials is too much.

A round of screening and appointment is conducted through examinations. Although it is impossible to filter out scumbags, it can filter out scumbags with insufficient ability to avoid technical problems in local governance. Don’t make it difficult for the local government to adjust technically and collapse completely. It’s fun up.

As for the scum problem, its own laws can be used as a means of response.

An exam can solve half of the problems of national governance, which is a great contribution.

According to Liu Bei's rules, the content of the internal examination of the Ministry of Civil Affairs is similar to that taught in Taixue and academies. Except for a few theoretical contents, most of them are practical in nature.

Because the selection is mainly for officials, they are all service positions, so the requirements for practical operation are relatively large, and because most of the job requirements are in the localities, in collective farms and county governments, generally speaking, there is a large demand for agricultural knowledge It will be extraordinarily large and demanding.

Knowledge related to agricultural production, including astronomy and geography, including hydrological environment, including the types and growth habits of crops, etc., are all important things.

Of course, for this aspect of work, there are also requirements for tax officials. This wave of official examinations also has a large demand for tax officials.

Because of the new situation brought about by the successful promotion of the Dutian Decree and the promulgation of the new tax law, at present, the imperial court needs a considerable number of tax collectors to implement the requirements of the new tax law.

Because he didn't want to expand the recruitment too aggressively, Liu Bei had already initiated the reorganization of some idle departments in the imperial court in advance.

Many idle departments with nothing to do, such as librarians, were abolished on a large scale by Liu Bei. Basically, nine out of ten positions were abolished.

Liu Bei thinks that those idle departments have nothing to do. It is really a waste to sit for a whole day with a cup of tea and a book, take the salary of the court for nothing, and do nothing serious.

So after the Dutian Order was initiated, Liu Bei asked the Ministry of Officials to count the Qingshui Department and the number of officials in the Qingshui Department in the imperial court, as well as the things they were responsible for, carefully inspected it, and then came to a conclusion.

If there are ten people in these idle departments, what it needs to do and the responsibilities it shoulders can actually be completed by only one person working overtime, and the remaining nine people are equivalent to defrauding the court of money. necessary.

It is said that certain positions did not exist at the beginning of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, but were gradually added later for the division of rights and responsibilities. However, after adding people, not only did the work efficiency not improve, but also because of the imperfect division of rights and responsibilities, it led to mutual arguing and shirking question of responsibility.

As a result, the number of officials increased, but the efficiency of work decreased.

Idle departments began to become lazy departments, becoming more and more bloated and useless. What's more terrible is that these people are often officials, not officials, and generally have higher welfare benefits.

Liu Bei could not tolerate these people no matter what, so Liu Bei decided to promote their transfer, and by the way, cancel these meaningless official positions, streamline official positions, reduce the court's expenditure on official support, and optimize the input-output ratio .

After the success of Du Tian's decree, Liu Bei launched a liquidation against the lazy officials in these idle departments with the power of victory over the world, and successfully hit 90.00% of the idle departments, that is, 90.00% of the officials in the idle departments were forced to change jobs. Ten percent can be retained to continue their original work.

Even so, due to the huge reduction in manpower, the remaining [-]% can no longer be idle. They have to live a relatively stressful life, and the affairs of the entire department are on their heads. Although it is simple, it requires They worked overtime to get it done.

Gone is the idle life of the past.

However, they didn't dare to have any opinions, and they were even glad that they were retained and did not change jobs.

(End of this chapter)