Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 2216 Prime Minister ([-]) Who will be struck first?

Li Zhizao's understanding of the emperor was naturally not as good as Gao Pragmatic's. In Gao Pragmatic's view, it was actually very simple to convince the emperor, because to this day, Zhu Yijun only cares about two issues: first, whether it will help make money; second, Is there any damage to reputation?

If we have to go deeper into the discussion, it is a trade-off between making money and losing reputation.

To put it simply, if you make both money and fame, you don’t have to think too much about this good thing and just agree immediately; if you make a lot of money but your reputation will be somewhat lost, that’s not a big problem and you can still agree; if the money you make is limited, But the damage to your reputation is huge, so you need to think twice before taking action.After all, I am about to be granted the title of Zen. It is not cost-effective to do something that would damage my reputation now... Why don't we wait until the title of Zen is over?

Therefore, Gao pragmatically wanted to convince the emperor. In the final analysis, he had to grasp these two points: not only to make the emperor feel that the matter was profitable, but also to make the emperor feel that he would not be scolded - at least he would not be scolded too harshly.

Profitability is Gao Pragmatic's consistent principle of doing things, and he will always work hard to ensure that it is not only profitable for himself, but that everyone who can cooperate with him can share the benefits.

Cooperation must be profitable for both parties in order for it to be long-lasting. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be on the same level as Ah San, who is so short-sighted that he only knows how to kill pigs?
Cooperation with the emperor is also cooperation.The emperor can make money without affecting his reputation. He is pragmatic and can not only consolidate power but also promote political ideals throughout the country. This is win-win cooperation.

So, how can adding an "arithmetic elective test" item to the current imperial examination system make the emperor profitable?It's very simple, because Gao Pragmatic will tell the emperor that after these talented people who are good at arithmetic slowly enter the political arena, the efficiency of the court's tax collection will be greatly improved. From then on, many taxes that could not be collected in the past can be collected. .

Isn’t it true that no matter how much tax the court collects, it is all spent by the court? Is it directly related to the emperor himself?Of course there is, and it’s very relevant.

As mentioned before, a large part of the emperor's internal funds was called gold and silver.This system of gold and silver is very complicated to talk about, but if you summarize it, you can roughly extract this: the income of gold and silver is actually positively related to the amount of the court's grain tax.

To put it bluntly, the higher the court tax, the more gold and silver the emperor collected at a relatively fixed ratio.Note that the "relatively fixed ratio" mentioned here, that is, the ratio of the "emperor's commission" can indeed be adjusted, but in general it is relatively fixed and cannot be adjusted just by saying it.

As mentioned not long ago, the gold and silver that the Wanli Dynasty entered into the internal funds was "about 100 million taels a year, but it was basically earmarked for the expenses of the concubines, eunuchs and maidens, including rewards, and there was usually no balance."

"No balance" is very telling: the money has always been in a state of "only less but not more".Considering that the expenses of concubines and eunuchs and maids are flexible expenses, and even the number of concubines and eunuchs is very flexible, for the emperor, even if this sum of gold and silver is as huge as 100 million taels, But it's still an investment that can never be too much.

After explaining this, the problem is very clear: as long as the "arithmetic elective test" is greatly beneficial to tax collection, and the excess tax collected is not an additional levy, but just plugs the holes of previous tax evasion. , the taxes were returned to the court, and the emperor's gold and silver income would also be greatly increased.

Isn’t this “profitable”?Based on his pragmatic understanding of Zhu Yijun, this emperor who believed in the original history that it was not a bad idea for businessmen to submit to Zhu Yijun as long as they were willing to pay taxes, was absolutely willing to support the "arithmetic test."

So, now that the profitable problem seems to be solved, it's time to consider the question of reputation: Will this matter affect the emperor's reputation?
Gao Pragmatic believes that it is generally not possible, because one of the most critical points is that the nominal ultimate purpose of the arithmetic test is just to collect the taxes that should have been collected in the first place, and does not involve any There was no reasonable reason to criticize this, both inside and outside the court and among scholars.

Of course, the stated reasons are always superficial. If Gao Yuanfu could only see this, then his years in officialdom would have been in vain.The real root of the problem is never the rhetoric in name, but the ownership and distribution of interests behind it.

Where did these taxes that were supposed to be collected actually go?Of course it went to the hands of the powerful and the gentry.

The dignitaries here generally refer to the Zhu Ming clan and the two noble groups of Founding and Jingnan. Of course, it also includes other families who have obtained sporadic titles - Gao Wuchen is now one of them; the gentry and squires actually refer to them in general. People who gain fame through studying and their families are a group.

However, as I said before, many people think that the Ming Dynasty did not collect commercial taxes at all, which is not true.The Ming Dynasty actually collected commercial taxes, but firstly, there were very few items collected, and secondly, the proportion collected was too low.

In fact, in many places, officials are allowed to adjust the tax rate on their own, so the final result is that although the tax is levied, it is not much better than no tax at all.The most typical example is "the annual tea tax in Jiangnan is 24 taels of silver" which became a joke in later generations - why did you keep these 24 taels? Are you planning to make the emperor angry to death?
This is the Jiangnan area, where the cultivation of cash crops far exceeds the cultivation of food!The annual tea tax only collects 24 taels of silver?It's better to avoid bringing down all of them, at least to gain a good reputation!
However, there is another misunderstanding here, that is, nobles and nobles (here and below generally refer to scholars with meritorious status) are exempt from tax.In fact, this is not the case. According to the regulations of the Ming Dynasty, only those who are earl or above are exempt from tax.

In other words, the earl (or marquis or duke) himself is exempt from tax, but the earl's family is not exempt from tax - for example, your father is a certain uncle, but you are not the eldest son, and you have not been mixed into the title (this is normal, because There were no barons and viscounts in the Ming Dynasty), and now that you are married, you have received part of the land your father gave you.Sorry, your properties are not tax-free.

Due to the high pragmatism of the Zhu Ming clan in the past few years, the problem of Lumi expenditure has been basically solved by opening the vassal ban (it has not been completely solved, but only two levels of Lumi are issued to the prince and the county king, so the burden is greatly reduced). However, the vassal kings have invaded fertile land. The problem has not improved much, which is what Gao Pragmatism is targeting.

Some people may say that the vassal king Zhu Yuanzhang stipulated not to pay taxes. What reason did Gao Pragmatic have to target them?

Of course, Gao Pragmatic has no way to touch their "legal property", but it doesn't matter, they have a lot of illegal property in their hands, and these are the bulk of their real infringement of people's interests.If all the vassal kings in the world only have the land granted during the enfeoffment, the impact on the local economy can actually be controlled. The real trouble is that they rely on their power and position to obtain black property in their names through various means.

However, Gao Pragmatic would not let the emperor know about the vassal's illegal property for the time being.Zhu Yijun was very fond of his relatives. Even though many of these vassal kings had been married to him for a long time, the Confucian concept of kinship was here, and the emperor would never want to casually check the illegal products of the vassal kings in the world.

The key to this is that it is different from imposing a vassal ban.Although the ancestral system was changed with the introduction of the vassal ban, the miserable situation of the lower-class clansmen was there, and so was the income of the imperial court. If you couldn't support them, you couldn't support them. This was an objective reality, and you couldn't pretend to be dead even if you wanted to.

Therefore, when Gao Pragmatic presided over the opening of the vassal ban, on the one hand, he could use his own prestige and the force of the court to suppress the vassal kings. On the other hand, he indeed gave the middle and low-level clan members a way to survive, so he was able to establish a vassal state within a few years. Push forward internally and accomplish great feats.

However, if you want to check the feudal king's illegal wealth, it's different.Although this is definitely a fair and just thing on the surface, the emperor will definitely refuse it directly in the name of loving and protecting his clan members - the truth has been said before, "kissing relatives", "ruling the world with filial piety", etc. And so on.

Therefore, Gao Jingshi did not plan to tell Zhu Yijun now, but first cultivated a team of talents and investigated other things that were easy to investigate first. He even quietly investigated the vassal king's illegal properties but did not tell them about it, and finally found an opportunity for a showdown.In short, reform must be carried out step by step, with easy steps first and then difficult ones.

This is no different from some battles where it is possible to achieve an "overwhelming" momentum by first getting difficult and then getting easier. If the enemy's core force is defeated in one fell swoop, the more numerous weak soldiers or servants may collapse directly.

This is not the case with reforms most of the time. Only by starting with the easier and then the harder can we get positive feedback from the beginning. For example, in the early stage of reform, everyone is waiting to see the results. If you pick the most difficult thing to change first, it will not move forward, and everyone will see that there is no hope. If they don’t support it anymore, won’t this reform fail?

It won't be like this if it's easy first and then hard. First pick a soft persimmon, squeeze it, and share this persimmon with everyone.When everyone sees it, it is really sweet, so they cheer up and follow you. This reform will become a trend and a general trend, and it can continue to be implemented.

So now the situation is very clear. The first step of reform cannot be to kill the feudal king, because killing the feudal king is equivalent to indirectly killing the emperor.For the same reason, it is not possible to cut off the nobles, because as I said before, the nobles are not only the face of the court, but also the staunchest supporter of the imperial power. Cutting down the nobles is still equivalent to killing the emperor.

In the original history, Chongzhen was able to easily kill the powerful Wei Zhongxian as soon as he came to power. What was the reason?It was because Wei Zhongxian could not take away the power of Jingying and Jinyiwei from the hands of the Xungui Group, and the Xungui Group only recognized the emperor's imperial edict.

Therefore, it can be said that the emperor of the Ming Dynasty has always been under the protection of the Xungui Group, and in turn, the Xungui Group also knows that the source of its power is and only the emperor himself.The emperor and the nobles are truly both prosperous and devastated. It is impossible for the emperor to turn a blind eye to the situation where a sword is struck at the noble group.

Even if the high-pragmatic military reform created the Guards, and the Guards were not directly controlled by the Xungui Group in name, in fact the emperor and the Xungui Group did not lose control of the Guards - the pay and weapons of the Guards were all It is provided by the Production and Construction Corps controlled by Xungui Group, and its armory and arsenal are also controlled by the Production and Construction Corps.As for the mobilization of the imperial guards, it has long been said that half of the tiger talisman from the palace must be available.

So who will be struck first?It seems that only gentry scholars are left.

However, as we all know, the scholars of the gentry are actually the strongest - the civil service group can even check and balance the imperial power, how can it not be strong?
Therefore, we can't just slash the first sword at the civil servant group stupidly.Gao Pragmatic's reform principle has always been to "unite the majority and attack a small group" rather than making a show of force and acting as if he wants to break with the civil service group - Gao Pragmatic himself is also a member of the civil service group, and he also There is no way to do this.

So having said that, the question focuses on one thing: Who will be the first to be attacked?

As I said just now, the general principle is to "unite the majority and attack the small group." However, the "majority" and "small group" here do not necessarily depend on the number of people, but on the strength of the absolute power.

The civil service group is not easy to move at the moment, at least not in the first batch, because no matter whether Gao Pragmatic likes it or not, he has to admit that without the cooperation of the civil service group, the imperial court's decrees will not be able to inform the capital, or even the cabinet. Can't get out.

The first batch of people that can be attacked are only the unlucky general group.Or to put it more bluntly, it is to attack the Weishuo general family group that has embezzled military fields.

Why are members of the Weisuo general family the best candidates for surgery?There are several reasons:
First, their behavior of embezzling military fields directly led to the virtual establishment of the defense system, the nominal foundation of military force in the Ming Dynasty.This is the main reason why Gao Pragmatic wanted to move them, because if they were not moved, further military reform in the Ming Dynasty would be out of the question;
Secondly, the Weisuo military generals' families are not loud enough in the court, and almost all of the most prolific families have served under Gao Jingshi, and are even simply Gao Jingshi's "direct descendants" in the military.Therefore, high pragmatism has a strong enough deterrent effect on them, and conversely, high pragmatism is more effective in being gentle to them;

Third, highly pragmatic next-step military reform measures can make up for a lot of their losses, thereby achieving a state of "beat them up and give them a date" and better control subsequent risks.

Fourth, once the group of generals in the garrison is solved, the next step of military reform can be carried out. When the "A Army", "B Army", "C Army" and other forces are clearly organized in the future, the military power in the world will be further consolidated, and each army will be able to The combat power is further strengthened, and things will be much easier to deal with when we go back to deal with the gentry scholars - Mr. So-and-so, those Qiu Ba outside are just waiting for a word from you. Do you think we are writing this matter, or are we here? Martial?

To sum up, the first sword must be struck on the head of the general family of the guard, but it does not need to be hacked to death. If it is hacked to death, it will be difficult to deal with the subsequent matters.
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(End of this chapter)