Rebirth of Zhu Di's son

Chapter 302 Pilot System of Governors
In the second year of Qianxi's reign, March [-]th.

After morning morning.

Hall of Martial Arts.

"I summoned all the ministers here today because there is something I want to hear your opinions on."

Zhu Gaoxu looked around at the cabinet advisers and more than ten senior officials from the six ministries sitting on the left and right, and said loudly: "I plan to set up a governor in each of Beiting, Anxi, Puchang, Liaodong, Guizhou, and Jiaozhi to patrol for me. In a province, the commander declares virtue and will, appeases the people, establishes policies and punishments, establishes the pros and cons of revolution, and inspects the officials."

Since Zhu Gaoxu had just released the news in the morning that he had decided to modify and improve the concubine hierarchy in the harem. In view of the important stakes in this matter, which included the hierarchy of concubines and concubines in the Eastern Palace, everyone at the scene thought that what Zhu Gaoxu wanted to say next was Matters concerning the rank of concubines in the harem.

But when Zhu Gaoxu spoke the second half of his words, everyone couldn't help but be stunned, and some even changed their expressions, such as Xie Jin, Xia Yuanji, Fang Xiaoru and others.

"Your Majesty, in August of the 24th year of Hongwu, Prince Yiwen was ordered by Emperor Taizu to inspect Shaanxi. He was known as the 'governor' in his old life."

Xia Yuanji was the first to speak: "During the Yongle period, whenever local urgent matters were encountered, the emperor would send officials from the six departments to patrol a place as imperial envoys and coordinate with the three departments to handle affairs. After the local urgent matters were taken care of, he would return to Beijing to report on their work. , the post of temporary governor will be revoked."

"Now His Majesty's intention is obviously to permanently establish the post of governor and strengthen the control over the six provinces. However, I believe that it can only be temporarily established according to the emperor's old system and then revoked afterwards. It must not be permanently placed."

Zhu Gaoxu was not angry either. He knew that even if Xia Yuanji did not object, others would.

"Tell me the specific reasons for your objection."

"Your Majesty, Qin knew the shortcomings of feudalism and turned it into prefectures and counties. After the Han Dynasty and Qin Dynasty, because it knew the disadvantages of prefectures and counties, it reverted to the feudal system, and there was chaos in the Seven Kingdoms."

Xia Yuanji considered his words and spoke slowly: "Since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, in view of the chaos in the vassal towns at the end of the Tang Dynasty, Zhao and Song Dynasties strictly guarded against local decentralization and separatism after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and returned all power to the imperial court. However, this approach would make local officials It’s hard to make a difference.”

"The failure of feudalism lies at the bottom, and the failure of counties and counties lies at the top. If the meaning of feudalism is incorporated into the counties and counties, the world may be able to achieve great governance."

He believed that the feudal system resulted in excessive local power, and its shortcomings and faults were that "it was exclusively subordinate" and most of the rights and interests were occupied by local feudal princes, while the disadvantage of the county system was that "its exclusive power was above" and that most of the rights and interests were monopolized by the imperial court.

This "embedding the meaning of feudalism in counties and counties" means the main and auxiliary combination of centralization and local decentralization.

Wang Fuzhi in history also said: "The feudal world is divided and simplified, and simplicity can be managed with density; the world of prefectures and counties is unified and complicated, and complexity must be controlled with simplicity."

This also emphasizes that the centralization of power in the county system should complement each other with the feudal system of decentralization in terms of governance methods, and "simplification and secrecy" should complement each other.

"In view of the shortcomings of the Zhao and Song Dynasty's greed for power, the former Yuan Dynasty considered the ancient system within counties and counties, referring to the Fang Bo of the Yin Shang Dynasty who said, 'One county should be used to run one county, one county should be used to run one county, rewards and punishments should be used for one's own use, and those who are seized can be used for their own purposes' government, and established a provincial system."

Xia Yuanji continued: "Although the former Yuan Dynasty handed over some powers to the provinces, all governing powers belonged to the court. Regardless of administrative, financial, military, and judicial powers, the court always directly controlled certain basic powers. , distributed a considerable part of the power to the provinces, and then used the provinces to centralize power in the imperial court."

"In the process of founding the country, Emperor Taizu followed the system of Xing Zhongshu Province in the former Yuan Dynasty in all the places he decided to set up, or set up Xing Zhongshu Province, or Zhongshu sub-provinces. Hepingzhang Zhengshi, the counselor and governor, presided over the affairs, and the province The official offices and officials set up inside are generally the same as those in Zhongshu Province."

"After Taizu established the Ming Dynasty, in order to strengthen the power of the court, he changed the provinces of the former Yuan Dynasty into the Provincial Envoys Division. The Chief Envoys Division was only in charge of civil affairs. He also set up the Provincial Envoys Division to be in charge of criminal and prison affairs and the Du Commandery Envoys to be in charge of military affairs. , collectively known as the three divisions of Du, Bu and Yin, the three divisions will discuss important matters."

Zhu Gaoxu certainly knew the advantages of the provincial system in the former Yuan Dynasty.The provincial system is a higher-level evolutionary form of the county system since the Qin and Han dynasties. The primary and auxiliary combination of centralization and local decentralization it embodies is obviously better than pure centralization or pure local decentralization.

Although the duties of the Ming Dynasty's Chief Envoy were different from those of the former Yuan Dynasty provinces, the Chief's Envoy as an administrative division was not essentially different from a province, so the officials and people of the Ming Dynasty still used to call the Chief's Envoy a province.

He is commonly known as the vassal, Wei Yuan on behalf of the vassal, and Fang Bo as the chief envoy.

In the Ming Dynasty, the administrative envoys and the capital commanders had roughly the same jurisdiction, but there were slight differences, which meant that they restricted each other.

For example, Yingzhou is under the Fengyang Prefecture of Nanjing, and Yingzhou Wei is under the Henan Dusi; Kuizhou Prefecture is under Sichuan, and Qutang Wei is under the Huguang Dusi; Cizhou is under the capital, and Cizhou Qianhu is under the Shanxi West Division, etc.

In addition, the Chief Envoy Division has jurisdiction over prefectures, prefectures, counties, and Tufu prefectures and counties, as well as some chieftains, such as the Xuanwei Division, the Xuanfu Division, the Appeasement Division, the Chief Official Division, etc.

The chief envoys' offices in the capital and Nanjing do not have the chief envoys' offices to participate in politics and council meetings, and all the provinces within the territory are managed by the chief envoys' offices in neighboring provinces.

In other words, the chief envoy was not a powerful local emperor in the true sense, and his power was divided among the subordinate officials.

"In order to prevent the chief envoys from taking over the power, Taizu set up one chief envoy on the left and one on the right in each chief envoy department."

Zhu Gaoxu followed Xia Yuanji's words and said: "There are also chief envoys, sizuoliguan, etc. who participate in political affairs and councils and guard their own affairs. They are assigned to take charge of grain storage, farming, Qing army, post, water conservancy, and caring for the people. They may control some or Several prefectures and prefectures are called divisions and guardians of the Tao."

At this point, he changed the topic and said: "Xia Qing wants to say that if I set up the post of governor, will I repeat the mistakes of the Jiedushi in the Tang Dynasty?"

"The governor appointed by your majesty is responsible for announcing virtues, pacifying the people, revising the government and punishments, conducting reforms and inspecting the pros and cons, and inspecting the officials. He is a legitimate local official, no less than a prince."

Xia Yuanji bowed respectfully and said: "If your Majesty always appoints a governor, I am afraid that it will become bigger. After all, the chaos in the feudal towns in the Tang Dynasty cannot be ignored."

"In the early Yongle period, the world was stable and there were not many emergencies in various places. It was also rare for the imperial court to send people to patrol local areas to coordinate with the three divisions. However, after 20 years of Yongle, chaos of one kind or another occurred in all provinces."

Zhu Gaoxu knew that to persuade Xia Yuanji and other courtiers, he had to come up with strong reasons, so he had done his homework long ago.

At this moment, he said unhurriedly: "For example, three years ago, there were floods in several southern provinces. The local government was unable to collect sufficient taxes, which directly affected the revenue of the national treasury."

"There were even refugees from the south who ran to the north, causing considerable civil unrest in several northern provinces. Even the remnants of the White Lotus Sect took the opportunity to cause chaos."

"The problems I mentioned cannot be solved by one of the three local bureaus alone! Due to the institutional limitations of the three bureaus, such yamen cannot coordinate to solve the problems, which ultimately leads to messes everywhere."

Zhu Gaoxu suddenly asked loudly: "And who cleaned up these messes?"

Without waiting for anyone's reaction, he asked and answered: "It's the governor sent by the imperial court!"

PS: There was no update yesterday because I had a quarrel with my family.

(End of this chapter)