A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Emperor Yuan Cong

Chapter 674 Wei Zheng’s new method

"Limited field?"

In the Hall of Wude, Li Shimin was a little surprised when he heard the word "limited land" spoken by Wei Zheng.

"Your Majesty, Wu Qingyang tried out the new two-tax law in Sanyuan, and re-inspected and reported the land area of ​​Sanyuan registered residents. The investigation was very careful. I found that more than [-] hectares of land in Sanyuan County have been almost annexed by the powerful nobles, and the poor have no place to stand.
The imperial land equalization system has long existed in name only in Sanyuan. Since the Zhenguan Dynasty, Sanyuan County has almost never allocated land to the people. Only the people in the early years of Wude caught up and were allocated thirty or forty acres of land."

Wei Zheng took Wu Huaiyu's statistics and wrote another memorial, saying that the land equalization system had collapsed and the land annexation by powerful powerful people was too serious. According to his statistics, [-]% of the land in Sanyuan County was already in the hands of ordinary households.The so-called situational households are the aristocrats and bureaucrats, as well as many imperial soldiers, government soldiers, small and medium-sized landowners, and self-cultivated farmers. They are many in number, but they only occupy about [-]% of the land.
The remaining [-]% is mainly public land, with many common people occupying a little bit of land.

And the merger momentum continues.

The land equalization system itself has a limited land quota. Ordinary people are limited to a hundred acres of land.

For those who have both official titles, titles, and honors, the one with the highest standards will be selected and given without double counting.The prince is awarded 100 hectares, the first-rank ministerial officer is 60 hectares, the duke and the second-rank minister are 40 hectares, and 30 hectares is the maximum for the Shangzhu Kingdom, and it decreases downwards. From the fifth rank to baron and ministerial officer, there are still 5 hectares, and the honorary The minimum official rank is 30 acres.

According to this system, even nobles could only occupy a maximum of [-] hectares of land.The maximum amount of land granted is the land occupation quota.
Even under the equal land system, land is not allowed to be bought and sold at will. Ordinary people are granted land, twenty acres of permanent land, and eighty acres of land. If the land is divided, the land will be taken back after death and cannot be bought or sold. Yongye land can be bought and sold, but the buyer is not allowed to occupy more than the land. Forehead.

But by now, this system has long been a dead letter. No one from the big aristocrats, big bureaucrats, or even powerful families has paid much attention to their land. Even in his early years, Li Yuan once rewarded Prime Minister Pei Ji with a thousand hectares of land at once.
Even the common people sold their Yongye and even Koufentian when they were in poverty.

This is also the reason why land annexation has become very serious only a decade or so after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and this force is getting more intense.

"Your Majesty, even if the rent is changed to the new two-tax law, the land restriction order still has to be implemented, otherwise the land will be annexed to the hands of ordinary households, and great disaster will occur."

Li Shimin frowned.

Land annexation has always been a big trouble, but the problem is that it is not easy to control annexation. Water flows to lower places and people go to higher places. Land annexation is also inevitable.

Of course, it’s not possible to limit it.

But we have to consider whether it can be implemented. Without conditions, forcibly issuing certain orders that cannot be implemented will not do any good and may even cause unrest.

"Does Prime Minister Wei have any good suggestions?"

The prime ministers all looked at Wei Zheng. His attack was sudden and he didn't get angry with the prime ministers beforehand. This behavior was very bad and caught the prime ministers a little off guard.

However, Wei Zheng has always been like this, and everyone is used to it. This is why Wei Zheng is not very popular in the court.

"Comprehensive land restrictions."

"How to implement it?" Li Shimin asked.

"Fields are limited according to status. If you have both official title and title, the one with the highest rank will be given to you. There will be no duplication of calculations."

Xiao Yu couldn't help but said bluntly, "If this is true, the prince only has one hundred acres, the first-rank ministerial officer only has sixty acres, the second-rank ministers such as Duke and Zheng only have forty acres, and the baron and ministerial officers from fifth rank only have forty acres. It’s only five hectares,
Officials of rank five and below, as well as officers of rank twelve, each have permanent careers.

However, those below the sixth rank were not originally granted Yongye fields. "

Xiao Yu asked Wei Zheng, how to enforce this Tianhe restriction that no one has enforced for a long time?In fact, which aristocratic bureaucrat has not exceeded this quota?
"What does Wei Shizhong plan to do with the land that exceeds the quota? Do you want them to clear out the land? Who is willing to do this?"

Xiao Yu was also a stubborn man, similar to Wei Zheng in the court. He was disgusted with others and couldn't get along with anyone, but what he said hit the nail on the head. Like those great scholars, let’s restore the well-field system.”

This means that the offensive is fierce. In fact, all dynasties had land restriction orders. During the Han Dynasty, when they were fighting powerful people, they kept imposing land restriction orders. Of course, they never had any effect.

It is even more ridiculous to say that the Han Confucians were bent on restoring ancient times and wanted to restore the well field system. The so-called well field system is to divide a large piece of land into nine fields, with the middle one being public land, the surrounding eight fields being private fields, and eight people cultivating one well field. If you cultivate a piece of private land and then jointly cultivate a piece of public land, the proceeds from the public land will be turned over to the public, and the proceeds from the private land will be yours.

The practice of using eight households as wells and raising common fields as early as the Spring and Autumn Period could no longer be practiced.
The reason is simple. Any system must conform to the productivity at that time. If the system cannot conform to the productivity, it will naturally not be implemented.

By the Han Dynasty, the well-field system was nothing more than a Confucian utopia.

There is another reason why Xiao Yu opposes Wei Zheng. Xiao Yu is also a big noble, big bureaucrat and big landowner. On the contrary, Wei Zheng has been the prime minister in the past two years and his economic conditions are better, but he doesn't own any land, and it mainly grants him shares. Official Yongyetian,

The third rank of Shizhongzheng, 25 hectares of Yongye land, because this prime minister was only appointed during the Zhenguan Dynasty, and there was no land to be granted in Guanzhong, so he was granted Kuanxiang, which is actually a land outside the heart of the Central Plains. This land was granted in his hometown of Xingzhou, Hebei Giant deer.

His nine hectares of land was not even allocated to the actual person. He was given two buckets of millet per mu, or 180 shi of millet a year.

Wei Zheng's current income is quite good, with a salary of [-] shi a year, a monthly salary of [-] dan, food and miscellaneous supplies, and various benefits. He also gets twelve sheep hair every month.

But Xiao Yu is different.
Once during a palace banquet, the emperor gave wine and everyone was competing to get the first glass. Xiao Yu stood up and said that only I would drink this glass of wine because I was the most noble of all the ministers present.

He said something at that time, and everyone let him drink the glass of wine.

"I am the emperor of the Liang Dynasty, younger brother of the empress of the Sui Dynasty, Zuopushe of the Tang Dynasty, and a relative of the emperor."

After hearing this, Li Shimin also gave him a high-five and drank the wine directly as a reward.

Xiao Yu, the son of Emperor Ming of Western Liang, was granted the title of King of Xin'an at the age of nine. Although the Western Liang Dynasty at that time was actually completely controlled by the Sui Dynasty, his status was noble after all.Even if Xiliang is gone, the Xiao family is still the famous Xiao family in Lanling.

In the seventh year of the founding of the Emperor, when the Sui Dynasty abolished the Western Liang Dynasty, it was relatively mild and did not experience many wars. Therefore, even if the Lanling Xiao family entered the Sui Dynasty, they still retained a lot of wealth and land.
Even Nanchen, who was conquered by the Sui Dynasty across the river, did not experience the same land equalization as in the north, because the land in the south was basically private land and there was no public land, making it difficult to equalize land.

Later, the Sui Dynasty carried out inspections and land surveys in the south, which also triggered a great rebellion in the south of the Yangtze River.

Xiao Yu was a big landowner, and the land under his name was not much less than that of Pei Ji, the prime minister of Wude Dynasty.

Although Xiao Yu's landowners are mainly in the Jingxiang, Jianghuai and Jianghuai areas, he is indeed a big landowner.

According to Wei Zheng, he can now occupy at most forty hectares of land, but Xiao Yu's actual land property is a hundred times that, and of course he is not happy.

In fact, seeing how Xiao Yu always raised the issue of enfeoffment with the emperor, we knew Xiao Yu's position. He liked the idea of ​​enfeoffment and aristocratic families.

Except for Wei Zheng, all the prime ministers and ministers who are standing in this hall today to discuss with the emperor's court have exceeded their quota.

Even Mr. Wu, who is not in the court, has been collecting land and buying it in recent years. Although a large amount of land is located in the borders of Longyou, Shuofang and Youyan, the amount is really amazing. Now there are thousands of hectares of land,

The prime ministers are all seriously over-represented. As you can imagine, everyone else is the same.

Wei Zheng had come prepared.

After several years in the central government, Wei Zheng's position as prime minister was not for nothing. He was no longer just relying on words to criticize people in his early years.

"Your Majesty, I have thought about it for a long time and have come up with a plan." As he said this, he launched a memorial, which was his land restriction policy.

The chamberlain forwarded it to the emperor on his behalf.

Li Shimin flipped through the pages, and the more he read, the more surprised he became. It must be said that Wei Zheng was quite bold, while Wu Huaiyu was very cautious when implementing the new two-tax law.

But Wei Zheng has the momentum to move forward boldly and boldly.

His land restriction policy was divided into several parts. First of all, he reiterated the land quota. From the prince to the common people, each had a corresponding land quota. The highest prince had a land limit of [-] acres, and the lowest common people had a land limit of [-] acres.

Fields are limited according to grade and cannot be over-occupied.

Of course, the current situation is that everything is over-occupied, so what should we do?
Wei Zheng's method has already exceeded the limit, and there is no need to clear out, take back, etc., but the excess cannot be in vain. Instead, the excess land is classified according to the status and the amount of land, and taxes are added. He proposes nine levels of progressive tax rates for the excess.Those within the land quota are considered first-class, which is the normal tax standard.

If it exceeds a certain amount, it will be upgraded to one level and the tax rate will increase, up to the ninth level.

For example, for a first-class landowner, the land tax is four liters per mu, and for a land that is upgraded to the first class, that is, more than but within double the original land amount, the land tax is increased by one liter to five liters per mu. Local taxes, including free warehouse grain, land rent, fire consumption, etc., will naturally increase accordingly.

Take the government official and the second-grade official as an example. The original land amount is [-] acres. Within the land amount, the land tax on the land is four liters per acre. If it exceeds [-] acres and is less than [-] acres, the land tax will be increased by one level, and the land tax will be charged per mu. The local tax is five liters.

Those with more than [-] acres and less than [-] acres will be upgraded to the third level, and the land tax will be levied at six liters per mu.

Going all the way up, up to the ninth level, with a limit of [-] acres, the land tax per mu also increased from four liters to three liters per dou.

Dukes and second-grade officials can occupy up to [-] acres of land. What if they exceed that?Wei Zheng's method was to sell Chao's land and allow them to transfer it.

Secondly, if the land is in Kuanxiang, it can be calculated as two or three acres divided into one acre. The so-called Kuanxiang here refers specifically to the border areas with vast land and sparsely populated areas, and does not include Shandong areas (Hebei, Henan, Shandong), Jianghuai, etc. These places were once the most densely populated during the Sui Dynasty, but during the Sui Dynasty, they were also the places that suffered the most serious wars and famines. Today, the population has been greatly reduced.

But Wei Zheng said that these places are the heartland, so his Kuanxiang specifically refers to the border states along the Longyou River, the border states in Shuofang and Yanyun in the west of Longyou River, and even the border areas of Lingnan, central Guizhou, and Nanzhong.

For example, in the border areas of Hebei, two acres can be converted into one mu. In the border areas of Lingnan and Nanzhong, three acres can be converted into one mu.

In this way, the actual land occupation can be increased a lot.

If it is reclaimed frontier wasteland, we can relax it a little more, maybe three or four acres or one acre.

However, Wei Zheng added another one. For example, the land limit for Dukes and second-grade officials is four thousand acres. Although the maximum can be up to thirty-six thousand acres, in the hinterland of the Central Plains, especially in the capital, the land limit cannot exceed [-] acres in the same land. The original land limit was four thousand acres.

For example, on the Guannei Road, he could only have a maximum of four thousand acres of land. Anything beyond that would have to be replaced with border land or sold.

He even suggested that in a specific state, a maximum of [-] acres of land could be owned.The maximum limit within a district is four thousand acres, and the maximum limit within a state is one thousand acres.

As for the righteous villages that are now commonly established by many nobles, he also demanded that they be restricted to a maximum of [-] acres, no more than [-] acres in a district, and no more than [-] acres in a state.

After Li Shimin finished reading, he was silent for a long time.

(End of this chapter)