People in the Song Dynasty were lawless

Chapter 340 They thought the court was reasonable

On February 4, the sixth year of Qingli, four people, Gong Xu, Pan Shi, Wang Wei, and Zhang Ruohai, gathered in the Gong family manor in Wuxian County, Suzhou.

This time, in addition to the four major families, more than ten family heads have been added.

They are all big local families in Suzhou, and almost every family owns more than 30,000 acres of land.

The sages in feudal society were the landlords, who held the main wealth.

Different from the wealth of capitalism, the concept of wealth of the landlord class is land and being an official, so they pay attention to farming, reading and passing down the family.

Farming makes money, you have money to study, you study and become an official, you become an official and you are greedy for money, you are greedy for money and buy land, you buy land to grow food.

This forms an endless cycle, whereby the more land you control, the more social wealth and "money" you have.

In later generations, "money" is a general equivalent and an exchange item. But in ancient society, money was not only an exchange item, but also a commodity in itself.

Because money is a kind of precious metal, it has its value. The core of bureaucracy and capital in feudal society is actually land. The more precious metals and land, the more money.

At this moment, the four major families of Gong Xu, Pan Shi, Wang Wei, and Zhang Ruohai were gathered in the house, as were more than a dozen Suzhou landowners.

The protection of tenants in the Song Dynasty was relatively good, except for some remote areas, such as some deep mountains and old forests in Sichuan, Guizhou, Guangxi, and Fujian.

"If this continues, our fields will soon turn into barren fields, and our land will turn into wasteland."

There was a faint fragrance of tea in the room, but it was also filled with silence.

Gong Xu sighed and said.

"Brother Gong, we have to find a way. It won't be a problem if this continues."

"Whose family doesn't have it? Which of us doesn't have hundreds of hectares of farmland and thousands of people living there? How many are left now?"

The landlord class is different. There is only so much land, and the cake is only so big. Once the land is annexed by the landlord class, the landless poor will become the main force in the rebellion, causing social instability.

These "side households" and "local guests" not only have to pay physical land rent, but also provide labor services. They "lived together for several generations" and were "regarded as slaves."

Everyone was talking to each other.

Therefore, under the explicit and implicit attacks from the court, the landlords in Jiangsu and Zhejiang suffered very heavy losses.

But the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas were different. As the agricultural and economic center of the Song Dynasty, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas had always been firmly controlled by the imperial court. The government had greater control, and the laws were naturally more sound and perfect.

As soon as he said these words, he seemed to have opened up the conversation box, and the others also complained one after another.

So in the final analysis, capitalists are hateful, but they can make society progress. Landowners are nothing but disgusting. Even conscientious landowners have indirectly caused land annexation and harmed the poor in the process.

After all, for the poor who have lost their land, it is not because they do not work hard, but because of natural and man-made disasters, a severe drought, a flood, or collusion between the government and landlords, which can make them impoverished.

Everyone had an expression of extreme helplessness on their faces.

The tenants here are not attached to the landlord, nor are they accessories to the landlord. The relationship between the tenants and the landlord is just a simple lease relationship.

In the morning, several officials pointed out the dangers of sharing the land with their own children, but the next day, Zhao Zhen ordered him to be dismissed and investigated because he stepped into the Chui Gong Hall with his right foot first.

"The imperial court is only happy to force us to death."

It wasn't like they hadn't thought about it before. They went to the transfer envoy's Yamen gate to protest.

As a result, customers account for a high proportion of the total number of households. The number of "side households" and "local customers" served by wealthy families and big surnames often reaches hundreds or even thousands.

I also visited familiar officials and stakeholders.

In addition, the ruling class also recognized the legal status of tenants. Legally, landlords did not have many privileges over tenants, and landlords did not allow and could not interfere with tenants' own behavior.

But their existence is different from that of capitalists.

For example, Edison was a capitalist through and through, but this did not prevent his inventions from influencing and changing the entire world.

Therefore, since the beginning of the fifth year of Qingli, policies have been promoted to continuously suppress landlords and harm their interests from explicit and implicit aspects.

Under such circumstances, the landowners in Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas are suffering terribly and are now very uncomfortable.

Therefore, the existence of capitalists will increase productivity and expand the cake. Even if most of the cake is eaten by the capitalists, there will still be some soup left for the people below.

Needless to say, in terms of explicitness, when a small family is divided into an acre, the tax they have to bear is much higher than that of ordinary farmers. The hidden aspect is that the court took away all their tenants, leaving them without anyone to cultivate the land.

After a long time, Zhang Ruohai suddenly said: "In the past year, less than half of the tenants in my farm have left, and they were all expropriated by the government to build the river."

They even wanted to plan large-scale riots.

Everyone looked helpless.

This is the vulnerability of the smallholder economy.

During the Southern Song Dynasty, the landlords on Kuizhou Road not only enslaved the tenants themselves, but also their families, and even interfered with the marriages of their wives and daughters, making these tenants effectively in the status of serfs.

Therefore, in essence, the largest capitalists in the feudal period were these landlords.

Find officials you are familiar with, or even someone you can talk to in the court.

"You are only half a year old. There used to be more than 600 households in my farm, but now there are less than 300 households left. I only stayed because I lowered the land rent."

These places, like the Chuanxia Road with Kuizhou Road as the center, are sparsely populated, backward in production, and slash-and-burn cultivation is practiced in many places.

Although capital breeds evil and drips blood and filth from every pore, it can also promote social progress. Many emerging technologies and industrial revolutions are promoted and invented by capitalists.

If Zhao Jun wanted to change the Song Dynasty, he had to destroy the landlord class. Even if he couldn't completely eliminate it like later generations, he still had to make it so vital that it could no longer shake the foundation of the country.

But during the protest, Du Qi, the transfer commander, was polite at first, but later just ignored him.

Then the Constitutional Yuan passed the edict at the speed of light, and the Zhongshu Ministry had no intention of rejecting it. It was lost in confusion.

Naturally, no one spoke for them anymore.

The last thing is to plan riots.

As a result, we happened to encounter Zhao Jun who was cracking down on gangsters. The local gangsters in Suzhou City and Hangzhou City were arresting and killing them.

Even several of their friends were taken away and executed, and all the property and land in their names were confiscated.

After all, for ancient landowners, it was definitely unrealistic to avoid being involved in gangs. Naturally, they would have thugs under them, and it was not impossible to even have a few desperadoes.

While they were organizing people and planning riots here, they were arresting people everywhere and causing chaos.

Seeing that some landowners who were originally brothers and sisters were dragged to the execution ground and beheaded by being labeled as the leaders of the evil forces, the riots they originally planned naturally stopped.

If you stir up trouble at this juncture, isn't that simply costing someone's life?
They wanted to protect their own interests and were not stupid enough to send their whole family to the guillotine.

"Oh, I have thought of everything I should think of, no matter what I can think of."

Gong Xu said helplessly: "Now I don't even dare to hide the rent and pay less taxes. The tax collectors in the village are watching."

"Didn't you do something like one or two?"

"It was fine before. I only needed to deal with their leaders. The tax collectors below were nothing to me. But now? If I deal with their leaders, they can report them to the county government or even the state government in the blink of an eye." "Yes." , now we are no longer staring at us. If we want to take care of it, the county government, the county tax bureau, the Imperial City Department, the Yushitai and even the state capital, if we take care of it, we might as well pay taxes."

Everyone sighed with their heads hanging down.

In the past, their taxes were only under the jurisdiction of the county government, so as long as they established good relations with a few officials of the county government, such as the county magistrate, chief registrar, and county lieutenant, they would just send some money to the officials responsible for collecting taxes, and the cost would be the same. Not big.

What now?
Although taxation has been allocated from the county government and is now under the jurisdiction of the Local Taxation Bureau and the National Taxation Bureau, tax payment is also an achievement of the county government. If there is tax evasion, the county government will also keep an eye on it.

At the same time, the Imperial City Department and the Yushitai also monitor many local departments. Once any member of the tax department discovers that their superiors are helping people hide taxes and reports them to the Imperial City Department and the Yushitai, they will be sure to report them.

After all, local officials are now paid, and local fiscal revenue greatly affects their salary income. And if such reports and revelations are meritorious and documented, they are allowed to be recommended as officials.

Although becoming a civil servant does not have any privileges, it is just like a scholar who passes the provincial examination and becomes a civil servant. He is qualified to take the civil service examination. Once he passes the civil service examination, he is equivalent to being a Jinshi and officially becoming an official.

Therefore, all officials in the world dream of being recommended as officials. Not only do they work hard and make progress, but they also immediately report corruption when they find it, which greatly improves their enthusiasm.

In this case, it would be difficult for them to pay a bribe even if they wanted to.

"Everyone."

Pan Shi suddenly said to everyone: "Now the court only gives us two options. One is to sell the land to the government. We will become rich ourselves, but we will be sitting on nothing and have no land. How can we make any income?"

"You can still go into business. I have a friend of the same age who we took part in the Jiaxu imperial examination together. Although we both failed, we still have a deep friendship."

Someone said: "After he failed several times, he settled down to run a business at home. Now he has more than ten shops in Yangzhou, with a net worth of hundreds of thousands, and his life is no worse than ours."

"hehe."

Wang Wei sneered and said: "Being a businessman is a cheap job after all, not to mention how risky it is to do business. You all know that if you are not careful, you will lose everything."

"But the imperial court is still promoting commerce and supporting industry and commerce, and there are quite a few preferential treatment for the government."

"So what? Think about it, everyone, we have land in our hands, and as long as there are people working on it, we can make a profit without losing money. Why do we need to engage in low-income businesses?"

"That's true."

"That's true. If it were me, I wouldn't want to take risks to do business."

"If Brother Liu wants to do business, feel free to go. I won't go anyway, what do you think?"

"Yes, when a businessman is precarious, how can he be as comfortable as we are?"

"Uh, just pretend I didn't say that."

The landowner who proposed that he could do business was attacked by a group of people and was speechless.

In the final analysis, although the Song Dynasty abolished the lowly and slave status, the classes were still there, with scholars, peasants, industry and merchants, and merchants having the lowest status.

Especially since ancient times, agriculture has been emphasized over business. The landlord class is mainly engaged in agriculture and naturally discriminates against business.

Besides, as the saying goes, money is hard to make and shit is hard to eat.

Doing business involves a lot of risks, and when the market goes bad, it is common to lose everything.

Landowners like them are different. Although there are natural disasters, as long as the land is still there, the harvest will be guaranteed by droughts and floods. It is nothing more than a matter of making more or less.

"But now the court's second option is to let us become businessmen, saying that we are allowed to invest in steel plants and cement plants."

Pan Shi spread his hands and said, "Isn't this ridiculous?"

"Anyway, I don't want to choose either path. Why don't we all come up with a charter and come up with a solution."

someone said.

"In my opinion, it's not impossible."

Gong Xu glanced at Pan Shi, Wang Wei, and Zhang Ruohai. This was a plan that the four of them had discussed long ago.

"Oh?"

The other family heads all looked over, and someone hurriedly said: "Brother Gong, if there is a countermeasure, it would be better in the morning."

"I think that the reason why this matter has continued to this day is because our request has not been taken seriously by the government and the court."

Gong Xu said in a deep voice: "We also went to protest before, but what happened? They ignored us and even sent people to drive them away and arrest us, so that we had to stop our activities."

"But our power was not strong at that time, and many wealthy families and their surnames were not connected together, so the government underestimated our power."

He looked around and continued: "Now the idea of ​​​​taking small acres into acres has been promoted throughout Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the government is trying every means to take away our tenants and landowners. If this continues, we will be left with only a piece of barren land. I believe , we can see that so many wealthy families in Jiangsu and Zhejiang will not be unaware of it."

"What does Brother Gong mean?"

Someone asked in surprise: "Unite many wealthy families and put pressure on the government and the court?"

"Exactly."

Gong Xu nodded: "Only when the court sees how many of us there are and how powerful we are, will it truly consider how harmful it will be to us."

"This"

Someone hesitated and said, "What if the court charges us with rebellion?"

"It doesn't matter."

Zhang Ruohai smiled and said: "Firstly, the law does not punish the public. Secondly, we did not raise troops, but went to Hangzhou Fucheng to protest and demonstrate. The court must also be reasonable, otherwise wouldn't everyone in the world be in danger?"

"Yes, this is indeed the case. If we just stand on the streets to protest and they arrest people at will, then where is the legal principle? Where is the justice?"

"I don't believe that there are thousands of wealthy families in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and there are so many people in Jianghuai, they will really kill them all. I also agree with Brother Gong's opinion, now let's contact people everywhere?"

"Don't panic, everyone. I have actually contacted a lot of people. Everyone will go back. Next month, take your tenants with you and gather in Hangzhou. By then, everything will be turned upside down."

"Okay, it would be great if Brother Gong upholds justice."

Everyone agreed.

They actually protested at first, but the court didn't do anything to them, which made them feel that the court was still reasonable.

Secondly, if someone takes the lead, if the court turns against them, the worst case scenario is that the person in charge will be pushed out.

Anyway, a dead Taoist friend is not a poor Taoist.

What's more, there are tens of thousands of landowners in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Does the imperial court really want to kill all of them?

Unrealistic.

Now everyone no longer hesitated.

After listening to Gong Shi's words, he agreed again and again, and decided to go back and gather people to make a big fuss in Fucheng, Hangzhou.

(End of this chapter)