Chastity Layman

  Chapter 643 Instigator

   "The family said, let Wei Guogong express his opinion first."

Wang Kai, the young supervisor in the palace, reminded in a low voice that all the prime ministers were looking at Qin Lang after hearing the words, and their eyes seemed to be so, as expected, but it was confirmed that the emperor sent a few notes suddenly, which said This land reform statement was written by Qin Lang.

  Qin Lang felt a little wronged.

  Although, he did discuss the pros and cons of the land system with others, but he never mentioned it to the emperor. However, as soon as the key words in the emperor's notes came out, Qin Lang still understood that this thing really came from him in the first place.

   There is no doubt that the person who discussed the land issue with him leaked this matter. In connection with this matter, he had only mentioned it to Cheng Qian in his letters before, so the greatest possibility is that Cheng Qian told the emperor his private words.

  Or, he thought Qin Lang's words were right, and based on this, he wrote a report to Emperor Chen.

  Anyway, no matter what it is, the prince told the emperor what he said, and now the emperor brought it up for the prime ministers to discuss, and specifically asked Qin Lang to express his opinion first.

   "Mr. Wei, come and discuss your views." Fang Xuanling presided over the discussion, with a bit of surprise in his eyes.

  Qin Lang stood up, originally wanting to fish for soy sauce, but unexpectedly, on the first day back in the Zhengshitang, Li Shimin set the fire on fire.

"Actually, I think this land reform is really necessary. Previously, the law of land equalization was the basic core of land rent regulation. Because land equalization law had no land to equalize, it was difficult to implement land land reform in the end. Your Majesty made up his mind and made a bold move. In the reform, the two tax laws were implemented, and the land system should have been reformed first, and then the tax law, but it turned out to be the other way around.

"A few years have passed, and now the benefits of the two-tax law have been fully manifested. The imperial court's annual financial increase is more than ten times that of the past, but the burden of the people is actually lighter. The success of the two-tax law has made the entire court For a while, I forgot to continue to deepen the reform and break the old land system of land equalization law, but until now, the problem of not reforming has emerged. The imperial court has indeed no land to divide, and there is another serious problem. The annexation problem has also begun to emerge, and the conflict between the owner and the tenant has become more and more intense, and this has reached the point where it cannot be changed.”

  When the prime ministers heard Qin Lang's words, they became more and more convinced that Qin Lang was the instigator.

   "Then Saburo thinks it should be changed, where should we start?"

"Legislation! First formulate a special law on tenants, write down the naturalization law of tenants in plain text, and promulgate it to the world. It is necessary to declare to everyone in the world that the trilogy system is completely abolished, and tenants are also good citizens of the Tang Dynasty. In the past Qu, tenants offend the master, the law increases the rank of ordinary people, this will be abolished. In the past, the master offends tenants, regardless of whether the staff is below the stick, and the unreasonable provisions such as reducing the rank of ordinary people to the above will also be abolished. Wives and daughters are not guilty, this is unreasonable and should be abolished, and they will be treated as naturalized citizens.”

  In the past, the relationship between the landlord and the tenant was completely a master-servant relationship. Therefore, the landlord committed a tenant crime, and the punishment for various crimes was reduced, or even not committed. And when tenants commit crimes against their masters, they often have to commit more crimes.

  The key to all these unequal laws is the imperial court’s positioning of the relationship between the master and the tenant in the past.

  Now, Qin Lang proposes to establish a master-tenant law, tentatively designate a name-owner-client law, and directly register and naturalize those trilogy and tenants who are not slaves, and grant them the status of clients.

  The so-called customers are those without land.

   "The main customer is divided according to whether there is land or not, but there is no status, let alone a master and servant. The customer and the main household are just a simple employment relationship, and there is no longer a personal attachment and control relationship."

"After the main household loses its land, it becomes a customer. After the customer buys the land, it becomes the main household. The biggest difference between the main customer is whether the land is available or not. The main household has to pay the land tax according to the number of acres, while the customer has no land and only needs to pay the household tax. If you are doing business as a merchant, you should pay the industrial and commercial tax according to the regulations."

  Legal aspects, etc., are treated equally.

  Whether it is aristocrats or officials, or landlords or wealthy businessmen, under this new subject-object law, they all lose control over those parts and tenants.

Wei Zheng couldn't help asking, "I don't understand why Duke Wei came up with such a new law? Didn't Duke Wei know that China has been a farming civilization since ancient times, scholars ruled the world, and farmers cultivated the land and performed their duties. Is it the most stable? If you place too much emphasis on industry and commerce, it will inevitably become unbalanced. And if you indulge in mergers, there will be even more troubles, which will lead to chaos in the world!"

  Qin Lang smiled.

  Wei Zheng’s concept is the idea of ​​many scholars in ancient times, and it is also a classical small-scale peasant economic thought. He believes that emphasizing agriculture and suppressing business is the most conducive to strengthening control and stability.

  It doesn't matter if you are poor, as long as everyone is poor, you will be stable.

  Restraining industry and commerce is mostly to defend against the amalgamation of aristocratic powers and commerce and industry. Once politics and capital are separated again, the dynasty governing the world with Confucianism will be even more difficult to control.

   Controlling the vast majority of the people on the land, or even imprisoning them in the village, this is the ideal world for the emperor and the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. They even always fantasize about restoring the well field system in the pre-Qin period.

The so-called well field system is to divide a piece of land into nine plots, each with a hundred mu, and then each of the eight divisions cultivates the one hundred mu of land on the side, and the one hundred mu in the middle is the land of the imperial court. The 100 mu of land cultivated for the imperial court, after the harvest, the income from the middle piece of land is owned by the imperial court, which is equivalent to the people paying taxes for the imperial court.

  The imperial court used the income from these public lands as finance to supply the royal family and court officials, and then used the government military system as the military system, serving as civilians and soldiers in leisure time, and the imperial court did not need to spend additional military expenses.

  But the times are advancing, but many Confucianists still fantasize about going back to the system thousands of years ago, which is undoubtedly pedantic.

Whether the Han Dynasty is the military merit system of the Qin Dynasty, or the Han Dynasty's system of suppressing mergers and attacking tyrants, it actually proves one point, that is, the land policy. In fact, all dynasties failed. The problem.

  Since the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the nobles and powerful clans have risen together, and the manor trilogy system has prevailed. They have gone to another road, forming countless powerful clans, and the control of the central court has been greatly reduced. The result is continuous wars and chaos for three hundred years.

The Sui Dynasty re-unified the world, improved the law of land equalization, the military system of the government, and the law of pushing rent and mediocrity to adjust taxes. At the beginning of the unification, this condition was indeed met, but after a short period of prosperity, it could not be implemented in just 20 or 30 years. . Although there were many conditions for the demise of the Sui Dynasty, the huge problems at the beginning of the design of the national system were the key to ruining the Sui Dynasty.

Not to mention Yang Guang Hunjun, no matter how strong Yang Guang is, it will be difficult to survive such a huge systemic crisis. Besides, Yang Guang is still a very ambitious emperor. His ambition exacerbated this crisis, so many problems piled up. After being together, Yang Guang finally perished and became the Dahun Lord.

  The trilogy and the slave system are actually the foundation for the growth of the noble family and the achievement of a powerful century.

  However, Wei Zheng and others only saw the trend of mergers among powerful families, but failed to see that mergers were not the biggest problem.

  A large number of people who lost their land were reduced to the vassal servants of the nobles and powerfuls because they could not get the protection of the law, and their personal freedom was controlled by the landlords and powerfuls. This is the most terrible thing.

However, under the past system, only naturalized people can become registered households, coupled with the privileges of noble officials and other non-registered households, the result is that the world has a large population, but the imperial court can really collect taxes, and there are very few people who can be drafted. In the end, the burden of the country fell on a small number of people, and they shouldered too much burden that they should not bear. Therefore, in history, after the early Tang Dynasty, countless class households began to become fleeing households, and the number of national class members further reduction.

The people who occupy more than half of the country's household registration have all become hermits and fugitives, and have become slaves and slaves attached to the landlords and tycoons. no more.

  The nobles, bureaucrats, landlords, and powerful classes embezzled the most critical resources of the court. Therefore, in the middle of the Tang Dynasty, under the brilliance of the Tang Dynasty, it was already decayed. Only then did the Anshi Rebellion and the collapse of the building.

"My lords, it's not terrible to be unstoppable, because no matter how much land the landlord buys, according to the two-tax law, he still has to pay the land tax per mu. The more land, the more tax, and one point cannot be reduced or exempted. Although he is a prince and prime minister, a powerful family It is also necessary to pay the grain as a whole. Moreover, as long as the deed tax is levied, then the land will be transferred, and the court can get an extra income."

"Of course, the most important point is that no matter how many lands annexed by the landlord, people will always have to cultivate them. As long as the host-guest law is implemented, the landlord's land will also need to be leased out, and the tenants who are tenants are no longer their part. No longer subject to personal control, then no matter how powerful the landlords annexed more fields, in addition to paying taxes on the fields, and being able to collect more grain and sell more money, can they still threaten the court like before?"

"cannot!"

  Qin Lang analyzed them carefully, "We promulgate the subject-guest law, and we can also formulate tenant rents in a legal way, prohibiting excessive exploitation and plundering of tenants by landlords, and ensuring the interests of tenants."

  In the past, under the land equalization law, the common people were actually tenants of the imperial court’s public land, and they had to pay rent. However, the land is small and the population is large, and there are still a large number of escaping households and hidden households. As a result, the households pay too much rent.

  A subject-guest law that allows tenants to become naturalized clients, improve their personal status, get rid of personal control, and then issue rents in legal terms to guarantee the rights and interests of tenants, and everything will be solved easily.

Therefore, mergers are not suppressed, as long as they cooperate with the landlord-tenant exclusive law, then in fact it is not indulging landlords to merge with powerful ones, not oppressing the weak and the people, but actually improving the interests of more people and protecting their vital rights and interests. Strengthen the powerful embodiment of controlling the world.

  (end of this chapter)