Smuggling Daming

The word official is generally used together, but in fact it refers to two kinds of people, the first is officials, and the second is petty officials, although these two kinds of people may not be the same in the eyes of ordinary people. There is no big difference, but in fact there is a huge gap between each other.

Officials are appointed by the imperial court and have formal official status in the Ministry of Officials, while minor officials are hired by officials to help them with some official affairs. In the words of later generations, officials are official employees of the imperial court, and minor officials It is a temporary worker, and the wages of this temporary worker must be paid by the official who hired them. This is one of the reasons why the officials usually have such a large expenditure. After all, they not only have to support their own family, but also support their subordinates. If you add the usual entertainment and courtesy to the batch of petty officials, the expenses will be even greater.

There are mainly two types of officials in the Ming Dynasty. The first type is to enter the officialdom through the imperial examination. This type of official can be said to have a good root and has a lot of room for promotion in the future. The second type is the students provided by the Imperial College. You can also be an official after graduation, but the future is not as bright as the imperial examination officials.

In addition to the above two, there are other ways, such as the shadow of the ancestors, the special bestowal of the emperor, and even some small officials will also be promoted to officials because of their outstanding performance, but this situation is extremely rare.Temporary workers in later generations have been working for a long time. If you find a relationship and give some gifts, it is still possible to convert them into regular workers. However, these temporary workers in Ming Dynasty are more miserable. Generally speaking, small officials are rarely promoted to officials. , most people work for a lifetime.Even after they die, their children and grandchildren will take over their duties and continue to work. In some yamen, three generations of children and grandchildren are officials at the same time. Moreover, even if a small official becomes an official, he can only be a low-level official, and he is also very discriminated against in the official circle. It can't be compared with the officials who came from the right way at all.

Although petty officials are inferior to officials in terms of status, you cannot underestimate them. You must know that the number of officials in Ming Dynasty is out of proportion to the number of petty officials.For example, in a county town, there are only three real officials, namely the county magistrate, Zhu Bo, and county magistrate. Except for these three, everyone else in the yamen is a small official. It can be said that these small officials are the real masters in the yamen. people.In addition, some small officials have worked in the yamen for generations, and have accumulated huge contacts and rich experience. Sometimes even the newly transferred officials have to curry favor with these small officials, otherwise they will not be able to stay in the local area at all. But the energy of these petty officials.

But it is also these petty officials who have no hope of promotion and can only stay in their original positions for the rest of their lives.In this way, the petty officials will have no pursuit of the future.The only thing left is the pursuit of money, which also formed the phenomenon that Daming's yamen is not allowed to come in without money. No matter what you do, you need to spend money to manage the yamen. Things that are irrational can also become reasonable.

These small officials were not part of the official establishment of the Ming Dynasty, and their salaries were provided privately by the officials who hired them.In the past, the salaries of officials in Ming Dynasty were extremely low, so the salary they could get was naturally not much.It is not even enough to support the family. In this way, these petty officials can only use their positions to make money for themselves. It can be said that the corruption in the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty started with these petty officials. Later, those officials either actively or passively He was also dragged into the water, thus forming a spectacle that no one in the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty was not greedy, and even this phenomenon lasted for hundreds of years, and it still existed until later generations.

Because of this, if Zhou Zhong wants to rectify the administration of officials, he can't just focus on the officials. The most important thing is to reform the lower-level officials. They saw the hope of promotion, instead of being promoted to officials as before, only a small number of extremely outstanding officials could be promoted. Therefore, under such circumstances, Zhou Zhong proposed to break the barriers between officials and officials. As long as the assessment achieves a certain score and passes the assessment of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, all small officials can be promoted to officials according to the law.

In addition, Zhou Zhong also completely abolished the symbiotic relationship between petty officials and officials. After all, the salaries of petty officials are provided by officials privately. In this way, these petty officials are like servants of officials. They may even be dismissed at will by officials. In this way, the petty officials are too restrained by the officials. Therefore, in order to relieve the situation of petty officials attached to officials, Zhou Zhong once again stipulated that the salary of petty officials will also be provided by the court. Each position has a corresponding salary, and like officials, it is paid by the local bank on its behalf.

The petty officials have the hope of being promoted, and if they want to be promoted, they must perform well enough. This will improve the enthusiasm of the petty officials, and also allow them to restrain themselves, so that they will no longer be as unscrupulous as before. After all, the Metropolitan Procuratorate is not a decoration, and it is impossible to pass the assessment of the Metropolitan Procuratorate by cheating alone.

In addition, the salaries of petty officials are also uniformly distributed by the imperial court, which allows them to get rid of the control of officials and become a new force in the officialdom. In addition, in order to improve the overall quality of petty officials, Zhou Zhong also stipulated that no matter whether they are from the imperial examination or from the Imperial College Students must start from small officials at the local level. In this way, the overall quality of small officials can be improved, and their official experience can also be increased, so that they will not know how to govern at all as before.

Zhou Zhong's reforms on petty officials naturally won the support of all petty officials. After all, as long as they are human beings, they all have the desire to make progress, especially petty officials who are in the officialdom, and they understand how important an official status is. , It was out of reach in the past, but now Zhou Zhong's reforms have given them all hope, so these small officials naturally raised their hands to support them.

However, compared with the support of small officials, the resistance in the officialdom is also great. These resistances mainly come from two aspects. The first is the diehards in the officialdom. They think that officials are officials, and officials are officials. There is a huge disparity in the field, and it must not be confused. In the past, only a small number of small officials were promoted to officials, but that was only a reward for some extremely outstanding small officials. How to deal with yourself?

In addition to the stubborn officials above, there are also those scholars. These scholars are either candidates who are preparing to take the imperial examination, or are students in the Imperial College. Originally, they only need to pass the imperial examination or graduate from the Imperial College. However, now that Zhou Zhong's reform came out, they could only be petty officials. Although the time was not long, it still made them very dissatisfied, thinking that they were not decent as scholars.

Officials and scholars have the greatest say in this era, so no one can ignore their opinions.Although there are more petty officials, they have no right to speak, let alone the ability to express their demands, so they can only pin all their hopes on Zhou Zhong and the cabinet.

Zhou Zhong doesn't care about those stubborn officials who oppose the integration of officials and officials. After all, most of these officials are pedantic people, and they don't even have a clear mind, because any official with a little brain will not oppose this blatantly. One thing, after all, they usually rely on small officials to do things. If they oppose this matter, they will be enemies of the entire small official class. Let alone other things, even the small officials under them will regard them as enemies .

However, compared to those stubborn officials, another class of scholars is too troublesome. First of all, they are huge in number. Among other things, there are tens of thousands of students in the Imperial College alone. At around one million, such a huge group almost controlled the public opinion trend of the entire Ming Dynasty, so Zhou Zhong did not dare to offend easily.

To deal with these scholars, it is still up to the scholars. Zhou Zhong, a fake scholar, obviously can't do it, so he called Jiao Fang, Wang Qiong and others to discuss it, but Wang Qiong came up with a solution with a smile, and Immediately won the praise of Jiao Fang and others, which also made Zhou Zhong appreciate Wang Qiong's talent even more.

The method proposed by Wang Qiong is actually very simple, that is, in the future, scholars of Ming Dynasty can be arranged to serve as minor officials in the government as long as they pass the examination of scholar. If Guozijian has passed two or more subjects, then these students can also serve as small officials.As for the students who have passed the imperial examination and can officially graduate from the Imperial College, their starting point is higher, and they can be officials in some key departments in the capital, such as the Sixth Ministry, the Metropolitan Procuratorate, and even the cabinet. You must know that in these core institutions As a small official, the speed and chance of promotion in the future will be much greater.

Wang Qiong's method seems to have not changed much. It just lowers the requirements for scholars who are petty officials, and then gives preferential treatment to those high-end scholars. But it is this small change that makes most scholars They are all very satisfied, especially reducing the requirement of scholars as officials to the category of scholars, which has attracted most scholars.

In fact, it is not surprising to say that although there are many scholars in Ming Dynasty, only a small number of people can pass the imperial examination after all. There are not many, so for most scholars, they can only stop at the stage of scholar and juren, especially the class of scholar, which accounts for the vast majority of scholars.

It is also under such circumstances that Wang Qiong stipulates that anyone who is a scholar can enter the government as an official, and now as long as the small official does a good job, he will have the opportunity to become an official in the future. Welcome, after all, even if you fail the exam, there is still a way out in the future. (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets. Your support is my biggest motivation.)