A Millennium Aristocratic Family Starting from the Shang Dynasty

Chapter 590 Is this the founding emperor?

The two-level management system of the Sui Dynasty increased the number of officials in the court several times. Although it successfully weakened the power of states and counties, it would become very troublesome once there was war. If it was an ordinary banditry, it would be fine. If it was a large army, The states and counties are simply unable to fight.

In addition to these problems, the Sui Dynasty carried forward the inspection censor system of the Qian Dynasty. In order to prevent those officials from acting recklessly, the number of inspection censors in the Sui Dynasty was almost the same as that of the Qian Dynasty.

It's just that Yang Jian didn't know that patrolling the censor was not omnipotent, otherwise the Daqian would not have set up embroidery envoys.

Although there are many children from aristocratic families who hope for peace in the world and professional ethics, most of them turn a blind eye or are complicit.

I don’t know since when, these aristocratic families, classics scholars, nobles and powerful people no longer regard ordinary people as their kind.

Also, those aristocratic families have wine, meat and delicious food, servants and concubines, fair skin, and are well-read poetry and books, but the common people have rough skin, face to the loess and back to the sky, the range of activities in their lifetime may not be more than a few dozen miles, and even the way of speaking and thinking is different. completely different.

Apart from the genetic similarities between the two, they are completely different in other things. How could those powerful families regard them as the same kind?

The word 'people' has gradually changed from common people to their powerful families. And the people of the world are just talking tools to them.

This trend of thought naturally also affected Yang Jian, who came from a wealthy family. Yang Jian was not a commoner. His father may have been born in a poor family in Guandong, but he was later granted the title of Duke of Suiguo due to his meritorious service. Basically, I have lived among the people, so I naturally don’t know the sufferings of the people.

Therefore, the policies promulgated by the Sui Dynasty were not so friendly to the people at the bottom.

Although Wang Xuanze was at the level of a paper craftsman and not a talented person in the state, he could still see the flaws in these policies.

The Wang family has divided talents into several levels internally. Those who can govern a county, let the people live in peace and prosperity, become the talents of a county, then the talents of a county, the talents of a state, and the talents of the prime minister and auxiliary, and the top level is the talent of a county. He is an unparalleled talent.

Most prime ministers in history have not been able to do this. If they could do it, the world would not get worse, but would steadily improve.

Don't think that the ability to govern a continent is low. In fact, in the history of the Xia Dynasty, the prime ministers in most periods were almost at this level. Only a few prime ministers and assistants who can weigh the world can be higher than them.

Although the descendants of the Wang family no longer govern the country, they have not put down the various books on governing the country that have been collected over the past thousand years. This is a must-read for the descendants of the Wang family.

Talents of this level are great talents who can reverse the power of the country, suppress the world, and complete reforms. Throughout the ages, there have been few talents of this level in the world, and even the talents of prime ministers and assistants are pitiful.

Although Wang Xuanze had just returned to the Central Plains not long ago, he had already collected a lot of information on the official system, tax system, and military system of the Sui Dynasty. But the more he looked, the more he frowned.

Therefore, although Wang Xuanze has never governed a court, he has a complete understanding of the way to govern a country. According to the internal pacification of the Wang family, he can at least govern a state. Of course, the state here refers to the state during the Qian Dynasty.

After all, according to Wang's standards, the prime minister and assistant should be able to govern the country to make the country prosperous, not the paper framers.

The most serious problem in the Sui Dynasty was the tax system.

Because the world had been in turmoil for many years, the Sui Dynasty promulgated the land equalization system and rectified the household registration system, but its tax system was extremely strict. Yang Jian ordered people to make a register to record the household registrations of the people, and stipulated that all people must pay taxes.

Of course, this has been the case throughout the ages, and there seems to be no problem. Then, under the equalization system, common men were granted 40 acres of Yongye land and 80 acres of bare land. When women got married, they were granted 40 acres of bare land. According to this calculation, a family would be There are 160 acres of farmland, which is five times more than the 30 acres granted during the Great Qian period. It seems to be quite good. Yongye fields can be passed down to descendants, while exposed fields can be taken back by the state after death. Based on this calculation, a family needs to pay three shi for grain, two feet of silk, and three liang of cotton.

Seriously speaking, this tax is lower than during the Qian Dynasty. If it is implemented according to this, he will be more wise and caring for the people than Emperor Qian Wen!

But is this really the case?

In the Sui Dynasty, there were now 50 million people in the civil register, and there were 20 million people in the hidden areas of the rich and powerful families in various places. The powerful families in this period were very powerful. They controlled a large amount of land and the population was hidden.

The Sui Dynasty did not have that much land in its hands to distribute to the people. Not to mention open land, even Yongye land was not enough. Wang Xuanze went out of his way to find out that the people in the Central Plains generally only had twenty acres of farmland, and many even had fifteen acres of land.

What should I do if the allocated land is not enough? It's easy to handle. If the land is not enough, just issue a land arrears document, which means that the court owes you so much land. Do you, a plain-headed fellow, dare to ask for it?

If so, that's it, but in order to prevent local officials from being perfunctory, Yang Jian stipulated that if local officials want to be promoted, taxation is the first criterion, which means that local officials are forced to collect taxes.

So local officials collect taxes based on the data in the household registration and field rolls. You said your family only has 20 acres of land? Impossible. I remember that this field is clearly one hundred and sixty acres in my land register. Do you want to evade taxes?

Why do you say Tian didn't give enough? Did you also give documents to the debtor? What kind of land arrears document? The court does not have this official document. You must pay taxes based on one hundred and sixty acres!

Twenty acres of land are taxed as 160 acres of land. You can imagine that the land tax has increased more than eight times. That is to say, now that the world is at peace, the people can barely afford it. If there is a year of famine, I am afraid that there will be refugees everywhere immediately.

In addition to these, Emperor Yang Jian of the Sui Dynasty was afraid that the people would hide the population, so he asked officials to conduct household registration checks every few years. Those who were more closely related to each other than cousins ​​would be divided into households, and the people were encouraged to report each other. Originally this was aimed at the wealthy and powerful, but it turned out to be aimed at the common people.

In the Sui Dynasty, taxes were collected on a per-household basis. By dividing households in this way, more taxes could be collected. According to the imperial household registration and land area data obtained by Wang Xuanze, just last year, in the ninth year of the founding of the Sui Dynasty, there were more than 7 million households in the country and 19.5 million hectares of land.

When Wang Xuanze saw this data for the first time, he asked the secret guard several times and got the same answer.

A household registration of 7 million is nothing, but a land of 19.5 million hectares completely shocked him.

Wang Xuanze still remembers the number of acres of land during the heyday of Daqian, which was 3.8 million hectares. There may be hidden fields among them, but it is estimated that it does not exceed 4.5 million hectares at most.

Then in more than three hundred years, the number of acres in the world quadrupled? What a joke! Now the territory of the Sui Dynasty is smaller than that of Daqian. You tell him that the number of acres has quadrupled? Did you level the mountains, lakes, and swamps in the world?

Wang Xuanze was shocked at the time. 1.9 billion acres of land. If there were so much farmland, it would be more than enough to prosper for another 400 years, let alone 400 years.

It was also because of this that Wang Xuanze specially sent people to search among the people and asked about the people's fields. Only then did he understand the truth about the fields in the Sui Dynasty.

It can only be said that the moral integrity of those officials did not exceed Wang Xuanze's expectations at all. They were as bad as ever. Such an empire was actually at the beginning of its founding.

Wang Xuanze now doubts whether the Sui Kingdom can have a century-old national destiny.

(End of this chapter)