Southern Ming: A boy soldier at the beginning, supporting the world

Chapter 48 The Mystery of Taxes
After the criminal secretary left, only Cen Danchu, He Yun, Wei Shizhong, and a household secretary were left in the hall of the prefecture government. The four of them sat opposite each other in a quiet and solemn atmosphere.

Danchu glanced at Hushu.

He was slightly younger than Xingshu, about thirty-five or thirty-six, with a calm face and a calm look in his eyes. After what happened just now, Hushu knew that Danchu had no intention of accusing him, and he felt much more at ease.

Danchu spoke: "I have heard that the household secretary has the most power, the most benefits, and is the most relied upon by the state officials. The household secretary is the only one who knows everything about the population, land, money, grain, taxes, corvée, relief, etc. of the state and county. It is passed down from father to son and is kept secret. Today, everyone in the hall is our brother. If I have anything to ask you, you must tell the truth."

They all started to call each other brothers. Xing Shu remained calm and said respectfully, "Yes."

What Danchu was most concerned about was not the amount of grain and farmland in Yong'an Prefecture, but a question that had troubled him for a long time: How did the financial crisis in the late Ming Dynasty come about? And what was the solution?
His expression was calm, like the night wind blowing the pine trees, and he asked, "I have heard that since the reigns of Wanli and Tianqi, the imperial court has been increasing taxes and levies. Officials and nobles have been annexing land without paying taxes. Farmers have been losing land, but the tax burden has been getting heavier.

"Finally, civil unrest broke out, with Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng, and Zhang Xianzhong following one after another, leading to the Jiashen Rebellion. What do you think of this?"

Hu Shu was greatly surprised. He looked at Danchu and then at Wei Shizhong.

Wei Shizhong also looked at Danchu and admired him greatly. Although the two had only known each other for two days, Wei Shizhong had seen that Danchu had great ambitions and was definitely not an ordinary person.

Hu Shu thought for a moment and said, "In reply to your question, my knowledge is limited, so I dare not speak rashly about the rise and fall of dynasties. I can only try to explain something to you based on what I know."

"Yes." Danchu nodded and said, "What I want to hear is the truth. Just try to tell me based on what you know."

"Yes." Hu Shu replied.

Dan Chu clapped his hands, and his personal soldiers brought him some tea, then he left.

The clerk sorted out his thoughts and said, "The taxes in our dynasty are mainly divided into regular taxes and corvée fees. Regular taxes are tax grains, and only the royal estates, royal estates, and estates of nobles are exempt from regular taxes.

"All other people, whether they are high-ranking officials in the court or the nobles in the opposition, must pay the regular tax. The rumors that 'the whole country's efforts are used to support the Zhu family' and 'most of the land in the court belongs to the royal family' are actually untrue.

"The imperial farm was not the emperor's private land. It was managed by officials and rented to farmers. The farmers were actually the owners of the land, but they did not have property rights. The tax rate was similar to that of ordinary farmland, but the income did not go to the national treasury. After Jiajing, the tax on the imperial farm was about 100,000 taels of silver per year, which was generally given to the empress dowager, who used it to provide relief to disaster victims.

"The royal estates are similar. The princes usually did not actually own the land, but only enjoyed the rent and taxes from the land. For example, Emperor Wanli wanted to reward Prince Fu with 40,000 hectares of land, but the ministers argued hard and reduced it to 20,000 hectares.

"The Prince of Fu's fiefdom is in Henan. There are many princes in Henan, and the land is small and the population is large. The court had to allocate 4500 hectares from Shandong and 4400 hectares from Huguang. But the Prince of Fu did not own these two hectares of land, but only enjoyed the income from the land, which was about taels of silver every year.

"According to the rumors among our household secretaries, during the Chongzhen period, the court spent about 150 million taels of silver on the royal family every year, which was not a high amount. There were many poor people among the royal family. Therefore, since the Chongzhen period, the royal family has been committing crimes more and more. Some people just want to go to jail, and some people even rebel." Danchu suddenly realized that reading books is worse than having no books. What the books say is not entirely true. More investigation and research, and more in-depth visits to the grassroots level will undoubtedly help us explore the root of the problem.

He continued, "Then the problem is not the regular taxes, but the corvée fees?"

"Yes," Hu Shu said, speaking eloquently. He was much calmer and more talkative than Xing Shu, and continued:
"The regular taxes were paid to the imperial court, not a cent less, and there was no room for exemption. The corvée fee was mainly the silver discount for corvée labor, and the income went to the local government. Later, other local taxes were mostly included in the corvée fee.

"During the Wanli reign, Zhang Taiyue implemented the Yitiaobian reform. Corvée labor in various places was gradually converted into silver, and the government hired workers to perform the labor. The corvée labor in this dynasty was particularly heavy, and the corvée fee increased year by year, gradually exceeding the regular tax, and became a huge burden on the people."

Danchu was quite fond of Hushu and said, "Brother, you are a capable official. May I ask your name?"

Hu Shu was a little flattered and said, "In reply to the commander, my surname is Li and my given name is Gong, Li Gong."

Wei Shizhong also served as a bookkeeper and was well aware of the drawbacks of taxation. Seeing that Li Gong had gained common sense, Wei Shizhong was not willing to lag behind and interrupted:
"General, I would like to say a few words. In this dynasty, the gentry are exempt from taxes, but not from regular taxes. They are only exempt from corvée, which is called preferential exemption. It originated during the Hongwu period. The great ancestor sympathized with the low salaries of Beijing officials and granted them preferential exemption from corvée.

"After the Hongwu reign, the scope of exemptions became wider and wider, from officials in the capital to local officials, and even to students with meritorious service. The amount also became larger and larger. During the Zhengde reign, the exemption for a first-rank official was 400 mu of land, and during the Wanli reign it reached 10,000 mu.

"The people also adopted various methods to evade corvée, such as false posting, flying, splitting, deceiving and hiding. The most common method was false posting, where grain farmers falsely claimed that their fields belonged to officials and gentry, thus evading corvée.

"The heaviest labor service was transporting grain to the north and distributing grain. Especially in Jiangnan, the grain tax was very heavy, and a large amount of grain had to be delivered to the capital every year. The labor service was particularly heavy, and the gentry were exempted, while the common people were forced to bear the labor service of transporting grain to the north and distributing grain, often pawning their wives and daughters, and even their families were broken up."

Li Gong added: "In addition to forced labor, there are also bad policies such as paid labor and free labor. The so-called paid labor means that one person is listed as a regular laborer, and other hard laborers help to complete the labor. For example, there are regular prisoners, small prisoners, and wild prisoners in prison. Among these three types of prisoners, only regular prisoners do labor in prison, while the other small prisoners and wild prisoners do not do their jobs properly, but only disturb the people and extort money.

"So-called free labor refers to laborers who do errands for the government office for free without paying any money. Officials are happy not to spend money, but the laborers are mostly ruffians who rely on their errands to cheat and extort the people..."

Danchu understood. No wonder there was a large-scale uprising of slaves and tenants in the Jiangnan region at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Before the Qing army arrived, the tenants and slaves spontaneously rose up in rebellion and killed their masters and landlords first.

The corvée labor was so severe and the clerks extorted money in many ways. Rather than being forced to death by the government, it was better to rebel.

It seems that in order to eliminate the malpractice of taxation in the future, we must first reduce corvée labor. Isn't this what Yongzheng did to distribute the tax on each acre, return the fire consumption to the public, and pay taxes as a whole? Even if we don't implement equal distribution of land and exemption of taxes in the future, we can learn from Yongzheng's reforms.

The second thing is to crack down on the clerks. This is not difficult. To cure a serious disease, you need to use strong medicine. To deal with the clerks, you need to use severe punishments.

(End of this chapter)