If I fail to overcome the tribulation, I can only return to the Ming Dynasty and become a prince.

Chapter 332 Farming?The more you plant, the poorer you become

Regarding whether to lift the sea ban, everyone in the Ming Dynasty chose to ignore the ancestral system in the face of 400 million taels of silver and twenty times the profit.

Although it is called an ancestral system, the "Ancestor Instructions of the Emperor Ming Dynasty" formulated by Zhu Yuanzhang has only been passed down to two generations of emperors, and it does not exceed 20 years. It is actually easy to change it. It just depends on whether Zhu Di is willing to abide by it.

However, in order to flaunt himself as Zhu Yuanzhang's legitimate heir, rather than usurping the throne, Zhu Di decided not to be so direct.

And it is true that this matter cannot be decided by the emperor, so in the end the issue of whether to open the sea ban and how to open the sea ban was put to the court meeting for discussion by civil and military officials.

After all, the formulation of a policy, especially a national policy that will affect the entire country, still requires consultation between various departments in the court to come up with a plan acceptable to all parties.

In order to come up with a reasonable plan, Zhu Di even ordered the Shui Jing to be moved to Fengtianmen, and specifically notified Zhu Zhanquan in advance to participate in the court meeting through Shui Jing. Obviously, he wanted to hear his opinions and let Zhu Zhanjun came to persuade those in the court who had objections.

"If Huang Kao is still here, he will abolish the sea ban policy when he sees the benefits of today's sea trade." At the beginning of the meeting, Zhu Di took the lead in setting the tone for opening up the sea ban. A warning to those who speak out.

Zhu Di is Zhu Yuanzhang's biological son. Do you dare to say that you understand Zhu Yuanzhang's meaning better than him?If you dare to speak, I will kill you!
Although there are indeed some people who oppose the lifting of the sea ban, after such a long period of fermentation and the temptation of 400 million taels of white silver in front of them, no matter how much they oppose the lifting of the sea ban, they know that the general trend can no longer be stopped.

The only thing they can say is that the "Ancestor Instructions of the Emperor Ming" prohibits the sea. If the imperial court relaxes the sea ban, the people will not think about working and will all go to business. As a result, no one will cultivate the country's fields, and the soldiers will have no intention to fight. Everyone is thinking about one night. If you suddenly become rich, your country will be ruined.

Therefore, the municipal shipping department should be established by the imperial court, and maritime trade should also be handled by dedicated personnel.

This suggestion is of course a mature idea for seeking a country, but it will not work no matter how good a person is when implementing policies.

Just like this establishment, the Municipal Shipping Department has a dedicated person in charge of maritime trade. Who exactly this dedicated person is will have a lot of room for maneuver.

What the imperial court seeks is profit. As long as Shibosi can pay the court a satisfactory amount of money every year, as for how much Shibosi earns, it is not the people in charge who have the final say.

When the time comes, it's not impossible to join forces with the imperial court, right?
And this was the early Ming Dynasty. If they did this when Longqing was switched on and off in later generations, those responsible would even make the Shipping Department unable to make a penny, and later tell the court that sea trade could not make any money.

However, after all, there are still a few people who think like this. Most of the officials above the Ming Dynasty today are still working. They are not at the level where the civil servant group controlled the government in the middle and late Ming Dynasty and even the emperor dared to kill at will.

After all, Zhu Di's control over the imperial power was not comparable to that of the unscrupulous descendants of the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, Zhu Zhanchun, who attended the meeting across the water mirror, just watched with cold eyes and did not participate in the discussion.

Although there was a lot of noise and disagreements among all parties, under the premise that everyone agreed to engage in maritime trade to make money, all parties were still reaching a consensus bit by bit.

Xia Yuanji, the Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, was originally one of the six ministers, and his status was only under Qian Yi, the Minister of the Ministry of Personnel. Now with the increasing financial revenue of the Ming Dynasty, the good operation of the Ming Dynasty money bank has also gradually begun to make treasures from a piece of waste paper. With the transition to money orders, the status of the Minister of Household Affairs has naturally risen, and he is now on par with Qian Yi.

Therefore, when Xia Yuanji became the first among the six ministers to stand up and clearly support the opening of the sea ban, the trend of this discussion was naturally affected.

Seeing that the discussion was pretty much the same, Zhu Zhanjun said: "Sea trade is very profitable, which is a good thing for the government's finances and the people. Maritime merchants need to transport porcelain to the sea for sale, so they need to have Kiln workers fired porcelain, and the profit they could make by firing porcelain was naturally better than farming.

But when kiln workers need to know how to burn kilns, people who don't know how to burn kilns will naturally not be able to become kiln workers, let alone go to sea to become merchants.

Therefore, what you said that opening up the sea ban will make the people not want to farm, and the soldiers will not think about fighting, which will eventually lead to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty. This is purely false.

And even if there is such a thing, are all of you who are living as officials and herdsmen in the Ming Dynasty just living without food?

When the people are stupid and cannot distinguish right from wrong, you need to educate and guide them, instead of just banning sea trade and leaving the people in poverty and farming! "

Zhu Zhanjun's words were somewhat serious, but no one in the court dared to offend His Highness Prince Zheng, and could only bow their heads and accept his questioning.

After all, no one wants to admit that he is a corpse-eater and will only blindly ban people.

"And it can be done without any prohibition by law. Even during the Hongwu period, Taizu did not prohibit the people from running some small businesses. Even the city gate officials did not collect taxes from them. It would be unavoidable to blindly prohibit the people from engaging in business. It goes against Taizu's original intention." Zhu Zhanquan then added another sentence, which once again stopped these civil servants from using "Huang Ming Zu Xun" as an excuse.

However, some people still refused to give up and still stood up and asked Zhu Zhanyu: "But if the sea ban is lifted, even if not all the people go to do business, [-]% of the people will go to do business, and it will be the same for our Ming Dynasty..." "If If [-]% of the people can make a living without farming and make a lot of money, then our Ming Dynasty will be prosperous and prosperous!" Zhu Zhanquan directly interrupted the man's words, and then said: "Hongwu The sea ban was implemented during the year. On the one hand, the remnants of Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng fled to the sea. In addition, there were Japanese pirate attacks along the coast, so the sea ban was adopted as a defense.

Moreover, during the Hongwu period, the population of our Ming Dynasty was very depleted after the wars at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, and large areas of the fields were deserted.

If the imperial court did not legislate to restrain the people and let them go back to farming, then our Ming Dynasty would indeed be in danger of overthrowing, and we would not be as prosperous as we are today.

However, it is already the year of Yongle. Not to mention how many times the population of our Ming Dynasty is that of the Hongwu Dynasty, at least I know that after decades of recuperation, the fields of my Ming Dynasty are no longer enough for the people of the world to cultivate!
At this time, we should gradually loosen the restrictions on the people, so that they can engage in other jobs to make money to support their families!

Rather than being able to only guard the limited acres of land, they end up living increasingly poorer lives.

Prosperity of all industries is the way to make the country rich and the people strong. Blindly emphasizing agriculture and suppressing business will only make the people who farm the land become poorer and poorer!It should be noted that the total number of acres in the world is limited, but the growth of the population is unlimited! "

Zhu Zhanjun's words can be said to run counter to the Ming Dynasty's long-standing herdsman policy, but the knowledgeable people in the court can understand the truth.

This is actually easy to understand. When the Ming Dynasty was founded, people's livelihood was in decline, and a large number of acres of land were deserted and uncultivated. The court's first priority at that time was to restore production and restore the population.

So at that time, a couple could share ten acres of land, and as long as they worked hard, they could have enough food and clothing.

But as time went by, the couple had three more children. At this time, there were more mouths to eat in the family. Although they could still survive, their living conditions would inevitably begin to decline.

And when the three children grow up, the man will marry and have children, and the girl will have to buy a dowry. After all this trouble, the couple may have all the money they have accumulated over the years.

And the most important thing is that after many years of recuperation at this time, most of the originally barren fields have been cultivated by people, and the newly added population cannot be allocated new fields.

That is to say, the family still only has ten acres of land, but the number of people they have to support has changed from two people and three children in the past to at least four people, or even six or eight people.

At this time, this family will gradually become poor from a relatively well-off family.

Of course, in previous dynasties, the extra people in this family could do other things to subsidize the family.

For example, you can go to the city to work as a clerk in some shops, be an apprentice to a carpenter or a blacksmith, or wash and mend clothes for neighbors, etc. If you have a loom at home, you can spin cloth and sell it.

Or you can use part of your family's land to grow vegetables in the right season and sell them in towns.

Some of these things were allowed even in the Ming Dynasty. Although Zhu Yuanzhang prohibited people from engaging in business and even prohibited farmers from engaging in craftsman's work, he did not prohibit people from using vegetables grown in their own fields, textiles, or They sell the game and other things they catch in the mountains, and they even exempt them from tax.

It's just that children from ordinary families who want to make a living by working as craftsmen can't even think about it. The craftsman household system established by Lao Zhu completely blocked this road.

Changing from a private household to a craftsman household is something that will affect future generations for several lifetimes. Even if they really can't survive, farmers in the Ming Dynasty will not give up their identity as a private household easily.

In fact, they couldn't give up. Changing from a private household to a craftsman household did not require the neighborhood committee to register the change of household registration. They only had to go through a few times to complete the formalities.

Therefore, if the people of the Ming Dynasty relied on farming for a living, it would really happen that they would become poorer as they farmed.

And this does not include the landless farmers caused by land annexation. If these are included, the people will really have no way to survive as they farm more land.

This was an almost unsolvable problem in the feudal dynasty with limited productivity.

Because the overall productivity of society is limited, the closed small-scale peasant economic model also allows most farmers to be self-sufficient and lacks demand, making it difficult for new growth points to emerge.

In this case, lifting the maritime ban can be regarded as an effective means to stimulate the overall economic development of the Ming Dynasty.

(End of this chapter)