Chastity Layman

  Chapter 294 The fire consumption of the Duke of Yiguo

   "The old man is half buried in the ground. I have never seen a landlord who is so polite to the tenants who pay the rent, and even cares about wine and meat!" Lao Wang sighed.

  New rice wine is still very lively.

  In fact, there is no need for any delicate dishes, not even tables and chairs, a large pot of stewed meat, seven or eight kinds of stewed vegetables, and then prepare many large pottery bowls, and then serve baskets of pancakes and steamed buns.

   Enough.

   If you can't eat enough, you can fight again until you are full.

Because the tenants were notified in advance, the tenants who came to pay the rent today were not polite. The whole family, old and young, went to battle together, and the carts pulled the shoulders to deliver the grain. While chatting, inhaling the smell of meat in the air, waiting for the banquet to begin.

  When rent collection was suspended at noon and dinner began, everyone was so active.

   Fortunately, the village was well prepared and arranged for people to maintain order and let everyone line up, but there was no stampede.

   After queuing up to get the meat and receiving the pancakes, the whole family just find a place to squat down and eat big pieces together. A whole family of men, women and children ate a meal without making a sound.

   After eating, hurry up and get back in line to continue.

Qin Lang inspected and saw the three or two-year-old child, with bare buttocks and bare feet, holding a large bone in his hand, with his big head lowered, his mouth open while sucking snot, while gnawing on the bone fiercely, It's really amazing.

   "They have great appetites!"

Chengqian has been in Qin's house for many days, and every day is either fish or meat. Now he is a little tired of smelling the smell of meat. The meat feels oily in the throat, and I really can't eat it.

  Qin Lang looked at this disproportionately big head, obviously a malnourished child, "Ordinary people, how can there be any chance to eat meat like this. Being able to touch some fish, shrimp, clam and snail is considered a tooth sacrifice."

   But Qin Lang knew very well that if those fish and shrimp were without oil, they were really average and not tasty. But the problem is that the vast majority of ordinary tenants cannot afford oil. Astonishing as it may sound, it's true.

   What's more, vegetable oil is very scarce and expensive these days. People can eat some oil, which is also animal oil, but it is impossible to eat it often.

  Most of the time, the common people eat two meals a day, and eat thin rice in their free time. A handful of rice and wild vegetables are boiled, and it is a pot of thin porridge. During the busy farming season, they eat dry food instead, and the porridge becomes dry rice, so they put some pickles and pickles on it, and it’s just a fool.

  Even if some vegetables are grown, they are all boiled. There is no possibility of stir-frying, let alone stir-frying.

  So, the tenants who are one level lower than the self-cultivating farmers are actually struggling to survive. If there is no disaster year, in a good year, after paying the rent, they may barely be able to fill their stomachs. In times of famine, these people are the most difficult to survive.

   A meal of new rice wine is actually entertaining these tenants in disguise. In fact, they are completely dependent on the landlord for their lives. If Qin Lang does not rent the land to them, they will really have no ability to live.

  In these years, ordinary people can't even go out of the county, they can only plan food in the soil, and losing the land means death.

   Cheng Qian listened silently, and then looked at those tenant farmers who were reincarnated like starving ghosts, and felt completely different.

  It is only now that he really understands why Qin Lang insisted on promoting the reform of the rent adjustment in spite of so many oppositions, and why he has to distinguish between principal households and customers.

It turns out that those tenants are so miserable. They don’t even have land to stand on. As tenants, they can only rely on the landlord. They are afraid of being naturalized by the government. Bai would have to add to the heavy burden of rent adjustment, and it would be even more difficult to live on that day.

But now under the leadership of Qin Lang, the imperial court has reformed the tax system, changing the rent to land tax, and changing it to household tax. Some unkind landlords can't say no.

  Even if you have entered the household registration, but as a landless household, you will not have to bear the land tax, and the household tax will be very low or even zero, and you don’t have to worry about the heavy labor every year.

  As customers whose household registration is on the government register, they have truly changed from lonely ghosts to human beings.

   This means a lot to them.

  “Some people hope that their tenants have a difficult life, so they can’t live without them, but I hope that my tenants have a good life and can be a decent person.”

  It is not easy to be a decent person these days, and how many people can be a decent person. Only those who don't have to worry about clothes can take care of their face and become a decent person, while those who are precarious and have nothing to eat can't be a decent person.

night.

   Chengqian suddenly tossed and turned, unable to sleep.

   These days, he was extremely relaxed, eating, drinking, walking, and having fun, but now he feels his mind is messed up, unable to sleep, and his heart is heavy.

   After tossing and turning for a long time, Cheng Qian still sat up.

  The maid immediately came in, lit a lamp for him, poured tea, and served some refreshments.

   Chengqian asked the maid to go down and sat down at the table. Instead of touching the tea, he picked up the ink, added some water to the inkstone, and began to grind the ink.

   Once the inkstone and ink were ground, Chengqian picked up the pen.

  He paused for a long time before picking up the pen, and finally began to write.

  He wrote down what he saw during the day on paper and made it a diary.

  When they were in the Chongxian Hall, Qin Lang asked them to keep a diary, but Cheng Qian didn’t really write a diary, it was just a random record of some experiences, just to complete the classwork.

  But at this moment, he is really writing a diary, expressing his feelings, with real feelings.

He wrote about a tenant farmer he met during the day, who handed in half of his harvest. Although half of his harvest was left, he starved to death of his wife and a daughter due to a famine last year. In winter, the hut collapsed due to heavy snowfall, and his wife and daughter were buried. The house repairs were all borrowed money and food from the landlord Qin's family.

  The food he had left was not enough to pay back the debts of the Qin family. Fortunately, the Qin family did not ask him to pay it back this year, and allowed him not to pay it back this year or only pay a small part of it, and there was no rolling interest.

This man insisted on using most of the remaining harvest to pay off the debt, leaving only a small amount of grain, which was not even enough for the family's ration, and could only eat bran and swallowed vegetables, but the man still insisted on Pay back, he said that the Qin family is a benefactor, so the debt has to be paid.

   This moved Chengqian very much.

He also wrote that, fortunately, the tax system has been reformed this year. The rent of this man who died of his wife and daughter has been reduced or exempted this year. He no longer has to bear the burden of slavery, and the adjustment has also been reduced. Otherwise, the rent adjustment will kill this man The man, his elderly parents, and the young child may not be able to survive.

  Finally, he also took note of the fact that Qin Lang didn't charge tenants a grain of rent, and held a new rice wine.

  ·······

  For several days in a row, the Qin family was busy collecting rent, so there was no need to send someone to remind them. The tenants who had finished their summer harvest all came over to pay the rent on their own initiative.

  The Qin family still stewed meat and steamed cakes every day, and entertained the tenants who paid the rent with new rice wine.

  In Qinjiazhuang, the relationship between landlord and tenant is extremely harmonious, which amazed Chengqian.

  He saw neither the cunning and greedy landlord nor the miserable tenant.

  The tenants voluntarily and truthfully handed over half of the harvest. No one made false or underreported reports, and the Qin family did not embarrass everyone.

  Qin Lang kills pigs every day to treat the tenants who pay the rent, and even asks the tenants to buy piglets on credit to go back to breeding.

  After the sky became cloudy, the Qin family's tenants were basically harvested, the granary was full, and the lively new rice wine finally stopped.

  Qin Lang took Chengqian, and led the Zhuang Dingmen to push the grain cart, and transported the grain to Sanyuan County to hand over the grain.

  The Qin family was the first one from Sanyuan County to pay for food.

   are all newly harvested wheat this year.

  Qin Lang has more than 100,000 mu of land, but in Sanyuan County, he has a total of more than 5,000 mu of land, so according to this year's new tax law, he will pay land tax wherever the land is.

   Mu Na two liters.

  More than 5,000 mu, the actual grain received is about 100 shi.

The quantity is actually not much. Compared with the more than 7,000 shi of grain that the Qin family put into the warehouse this year, this is really a drop in the bucket, but compared to previous years, this is also an extra expense. There is no need to pay for food.

  County magistrate Liu Shenli personally brought Hu Cao Shenjun to collect grain.

  Hucao's subordinates took out the amount of bucket by bucket, and they had to pretend to be the top of each bucket, and then the subordinate staff kicked it again.

  The grain produced by this earthquake is different from when the Qin family collected the rent. The grain belongs to the Yamen, and they call it fire consumption.

   Cheng Qian was very dissatisfied and wanted to speak out, but Qin Lang stopped him with his eyes.

   This kind of thing is actually very common and common, and it is the gray income of local officials. They call it fire consumption, which is really just extra income.

   These grains will eventually be added to the account book and become the small treasury of the county government. From the county magistrate to the government servants, there will be a share, or in other words, it is one of the financial sources of the local government.

After all, according to the current system of the imperial court, a county, that is, those officials and several officials who belong to the state establishment, have official salaries, while the other large number of subordinate servants and small officials are actually only servants, a kind of free labor. An officer, let alone a salary or something.

But localities also have local difficulties. A yamen must have a fixed team to handle errands, otherwise it will rotate every day, so how can we talk about governing the locality? income.

   It is precisely because of this that this kind of thing has even become an open unspoken rule, so even if Qin Lang, Duke Yi of the Yi Kingdom, came to pay the food, he would still use it to burn fire.

   This kind of thing is not a problem of a certain person, but a problem of the whole world, so Qin Lang didn't intend to be serious with them at all.

   After paying the land tax of 100 shi, I got a document that the payment of food was completed.

   "Let's hand over the rations from the Yicang too!"

  Qin Lang brought more than a hundred stone grains today.

  Land tax is the land tax of the country, and there was also grain in Yicang before. It was originally paid by household, and it was only five shi for each household.

   This year, the new tax system was implemented. There has been a long-standing controversy about this free warehouse grain. Originally, Qin Lang changed the free warehouse grain to land tax at the beginning, and then finally changed land rent to land tax.

  After several disputes over this free warehouse grain, new regulations were finally introduced. The final result is that the free warehouse grain collection standard is half of the land tax, which is also collected on an acre basis.

   Muna is one liter.

  So Qin Lang paid another fifty stone grains, and got another grain payment document.

In Qin Lang's view, land tax grains are actually national taxes, and these grains have to be paid into the country's main warehouse, while righteous warehouse grains are equivalent to land taxes. As for the transshipment warehouse, the righteous warehouse grain is actually stored locally to prepare for local famines and wars.

   "Thank you, Lord Yi, for your active efforts in paying the food!" Liu Shenli said very politely.

   "This is what it should be."

  The new two-tax system is to divide the tax into two payments, one after the summer harvest and one after the autumn harvest.

  So this time, even if Qin Lang has completed the tax payment for the first half of the year, the household tax and small mu money will be paid in the second half of the year.

   After rejecting the banquet invitation from County Magistrate Liu, Qin Lang took people back to Zhuangzi directly.

   On the way back, Chengqian was still brooding over the so-called fire loss.

Qin Lang smiled and said, "You can't just look at one side of things. You see the unreasonable fire consumption, but you don't see the plight and inadequacy of local finance under the current tax system, and you don't see the situation under the imperial bureaucracy system. , The neglect of the local officials, especially the subordinate officials at the county and township level, if you have time, you can study it carefully, then write a report, I will show you, and then submit it to His Majesty, it can be regarded as one of your summer assignments! "

   Chengqian couldn't help feeling dizzy when he heard that he wanted to write a report again.

   "Don't write the line?"

   "Of course not. We are not here to enjoy the holidays, but to observe the people's sentiments and investigate the village."

   "Okay!" Cheng Qian was helpless.

  (end of this chapter)