Rebirth of Zhu Di's son

Chapter 236 Reform begins with the memorial system

Zhu Gaoxu has now become the emperor, and Zhu Di became the shopkeeper after he ascended the throne.

Zhu Di didn't even want the title of Supreme Emperor, and was focused on planning a cruise. In recent days, he often recalled the past with overseas kings and learned about the interesting stories of the kings establishing their kingdoms overseas.

Zhu Gaoxu knew that if he wanted to implement the New Deal and reform the court system, he had to do it step by step.

Otherwise, if one thing affects the whole body, it will have a huge impact and even lead to an uncontrollable situation.

What Zhu Gaoxu wants is for Ming Dynasty to become stronger and stronger, not for internal strife, internal strife, and internal fighting to continue.

Therefore, he decided to start reforming the memorials that the emperor reviewed every day.

Memorials, also called memorials and memorials, are the collective name for the documents used by officials of all dynasties to express their opinions to the emperor. They are official documents.

Before the Warring States period, officials and bureaucrats submitted to the monarch were collectively called shangshu, and after Qin unified the six kingdoms, it was called zou.

Letters written by officials in the Han Dynasty were sometimes called Shangshu. Shu means dredging, which is extended to the analysis of problems.

After the Tang and Song Dynasties, the Shangzuo documents are collectively called Zuoyi, and most of them are called Zuoshu.

In the Han Dynasty, there were Zhang, Zou, Biao, Yi, etc. as names for the genres of memorials. In the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, in addition to Zhang, Biao, Yi, etc., Qiwen was added. In the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties, two types, Biao and Zhuang, were generally used. In the Song Dynasty, Zhazi was added, which was a relatively simple style of writing for ministers to submit in advance before going to the palace to perform memorials. In the Yuan Dynasty, there were memorials, qihe and Biaozhang.

Historically, in the Ming Dynasty, there were four types of memorials: title version, memorial version, table, note, and qi.

During the Hongwu period, subjects only used memorials to express their opinions to the emperor. After the 20th year of Yongle, it was stipulated that officials with urgent matters could not present them in person. They were allowed to have inscriptions, stamps, and deposits, and they were used exclusively for official business.

That is, the title book is used for routine business affairs, and the memorial book is used for personal and private matters. The title book must be stamped with the official seal, and the memorial book does not need to be stamped.

Whenever the imperial court holds a celebration, all internal and external officials must send congratulatory "Biao" or "Jian" as usual. "Biao" is used for the emperor and the empress dowager, and "Jian" is used for the empress.

As for ministers speaking to the princes and kings, they use "Qiben", and its formula is basically the same as that of memorials.

The appearance of the title book is a folded paper. Each page has six lines, each line has twenty crosses, eighteen characters written flatly, two characters for the header, and the word "Ti" written in the middle of the top of the first page, which is the basis of the book. noodle.

Starting from the second frame is the main text. The first letter contains the official title and name of the person reporting the title and the reason for the reporting. It then narrates the origin, plot and handling opinions of the reported incident. The text ends with "I would like to ask for your edict" or "I would like to report this". .

The title year, month and day is written in the center of the last page, and the official title and name of the titleholder are written below the month and day. The cover and the end of the text are both stamped with the official seal.

Compared with the memorials of the previous dynasties, the memorials of the Ming Dynasty appear to be relatively high-end.

Because most of them use expensive Shu brocade and Hangzhou satin as the base, and the things to be written are mounted on it. As for the color of the silk, it is determined according to the official's rank.

Usually, the first to fourth ranks use scarlet silk, the fifth to seventh ranks use cyan silk, the eighth to ninth ranks and those who are not in the flow all use green silk silk, which also matches the color of the official uniform.

Previously, Zhu Di had stipulated that officials should use inscriptions for official affairs and memorials for private affairs. Whenever they are appointed, promoted, transferred, recorded, exempted, reduced in punishment, or demoted and retained in office, or pay special tribute to express gratitude, or For matters such as expressing gratitude to the subordinate officials, the memorial version is generally used. For other matters such as money, food, punishment names, soldiers, etc. that are routine official matters, the inscription version is used.

However, because it is difficult to clearly distinguish between public and private matters, officials often use the wrong documents when submitting memorials.

Therefore, a few days after Zhu Gaoxu ascended the throne, he again clarified the scope of use of the inscriptions and memorials to the ministers and workers all over the world, stipulating that all money and food, criminal names, soldiers, horses, local civil affairs, and all official matters, large and small, should be inscribed on the inscriptions and stamps. As for personal matters, memorials are used for personal matters. Even if there is an official who seals the letter, he is not allowed to use the seal.

He originally wanted to stipulate that the inscriptions should only be used by civil and military officials of fifth rank and above, and allow a small number of Taoist officials with responsibilities to express their opinions.

However, after careful consideration, Zhu Gaoxu found that if such a provision was made, grassroots officials would lose the opportunity to make specific suggestions in the future.

Finally, he gave up the idea and decided to allow all officials to write inscriptions.

Since Zhu Gaoxu did not limit the number of words in the title book and the text was too long, he ordered the cabinet to make yellow stickers, and ordered the officials who entered the book to summarize the main contents of the book, no more than a hundred words, and attach the main text to the end for the emperor to read.

This is how a customized question book marking system was gradually formed.

After classifying the memorials, the next step is the process of reviewing the memorials.According to Zhu Di's practice of approving memorials, all memorials from local officials must first be sent to the general affairs envoy for inspection and acceptance. At the same time, the submitter must prepare an affixed note and send it to the relevant yamen. The affixed note is a copy of the memorial, and the content is basically the same as the memorial.

After inspection by the General Secretary, the memorial will be sent to the cabinet, where it will be drafted and then submitted to the Ming Emperor for ruling.

The so-called vote draft means that the cabinet advisers put forward their opinions on the matters mentioned in the memorial, written them on small paper tickets, and then sandwiched or pasted them into the memorial and submitted them to Zhu Di for approval.

Under normal circumstances, the memorial after Zhu Di's instructions will be sent back to the petitioner by the General Affairs Department.

As for the inscription book that has been approved by Zhubi, it will be called a red book. It will then be forwarded by the General Affairs Department to the Sixth Section, which will issue a copy to the relevant Yamen for execution, and record two copies into separate volumes.

One copy is sent to the cabinet for historians to note, which is called a history book, and the other is sent to the undergraduate department for compilation, which is called a record book.

At the end of the year, the Sixth Subject Association will submit the original version of the red book to the cabinet and store it in the red book library.

Among them, all the inscriptions, imperial edicts and other edicts approved by Zhu Di were copied one by one by the secretary of the cabinet on duty every day into a book called "silun book".

During the Yongle period, Zhu Gaoxu supervised the country many times. During this period, his process of reviewing memorials was the same as Zhu Di's, and he did not make many changes.

This system of reviewing memorials currently has no loopholes. On the contrary, it helped the Ming Emperor free up time to focus on major military and national affairs.

The voting draft system is more detailed and thoughtful than the system of assisting the monarch in handling government affairs in previous dynasties. Especially in the past, for example, in the Tang and Song Dynasties, the institutions that drafted downward edicts and reviewed upward memorials included Zhongshu, Menxia, ​​and Hanlin Academy, which were relatively scattered.

During the Hongwu period, with the abolition of the prime minister system, the emperor directly commanded the six ministries and hundreds of government affairs, and the cabinet advisers became the emperor's personal secretaries.

The cabinet had the power to draft votes, which was equivalent to bringing together the scattered power of reviewing memorials in the Tang and Song Dynasties into one place, which greatly improved the efficiency of the emperor in handling government affairs.

If there is an emperor who is lazy or lazy in his administration, he can directly issue instructions to the cabinet vote.

After all, this move is very consistent with the Confucian ideal governance model of "the emperor is at ease and his ministers are at work" and "the government is governed from the top."

But if the emperor wants to act according to his personal will, the cabinet advisers are powerless to stop it, because it is the emperor's decision whether to adopt the proposal or not.

During the Yongle period, Zhu Di would usually review memorials in person whenever he had time, and did not need cabinet votes. Only when he was undecided would he consult cabinet advisers.

During Zhu Gaoxu's supervision of the country, like Zhu Di, he spent most of his time reviewing memorials in person.

Unless there are too many memorials, or he has to go out for inspection, he will assign the memorials to the cabinet advisers for processing.

Another step is to establish a storage system for copies of question books to prevent files from being lost or tampered with.

In the 25th year of Yongle's reign, in September of the [-]th year of Yongle's reign, there was a fire in the Qing Li Department of the Anthology of the Department of Officials, and all the files were destroyed.

Therefore, Zhu Gaoxu ordered at that time that all title books kept by the cabinet and files that should be kept by each yamen should be kept separately in addition to the original copies.

Copies of the title should be copied and filed with ink according to the original seal. Copies of other files can be marked separately from the original.

All yamen offices in Beijing are dispatched to inspect the document collection and storage areas in shifts.

For the inscriptions of the three departments in each province, a copy was sent to the General Affairs Department, and then sent to the cabinet. After Zhu approved, the cabinet would mark the copy with ink in accordance with the approval in the red book, and file it separately.

This chapter should also be followed when replaying this chapter in various ministries and colleges in Beijing.

All the files of each ministry should be kept in a separate volume, and the entire file should be recorded, stamped, and numbered sequentially. The place where it is stored should also be inspected in a post-type manner.

This system is different from the copy system used in the preparation of ordinary documents. It aims at the safe custody of files.

(End of this chapter)