My father is Jiajing

Chapter 497 Human Nature

It is chilly in spring and new buds are beginning to sprout. Although the capital city is still as cold as ice and snow in early spring, the vitality of all things reviving cannot conceal hope and tenacity.

No matter how harsh the natural environment outside is, they still dare to burst out their shouts for spring in such harsh weather!
In Prince Yu's mansion, Zhu Zaigui was leaning leisurely on a backrest, with the unchanging copy of the Yongle Encyclopedia in his hand. This seemed to have become Zhu Zaigui's habit over the past ten years. When he had free time, he always felt that something was missing if he didn't have a copy of the Yongle Encyclopedia in his hand.

Therefore, apart from Emperor Jiacheng, the person who read the most volumes of "Yongle Encyclopedia" in the entire Ming Dynasty must be Zhu Zaigui.

This day is still the day when the imperial court takes a holiday for the New Year, but this kind of holiday is only friendly to some government offices with more leisure time. Most of the busy government offices still have to work overtime.

Therefore, many government offices and officials with heavy responsibilities did not really enjoy the few days of vacation. They still had to do what they were supposed to do, otherwise when the Spring Festival and New Year's Day holidays were over, there would be more things to keep them busy.

"Your Majesty, Mr. Gao is here."

Meng Chong tiptoed into the warm room where Zhu Zaigui was and whispered a reminder to Zhu Zaigui.

When Zhu Zaigui heard Meng Chong's voice, he also looked up at Meng Chong, then placed the Yongle Encyclopedia in his hand on the small table in front of him and said, "Please come here."

Meng Chong replied yes, and then went to ask Gao Gong to come over.

Gao Gong entered Zhu Zaigui's warm room, bowed to Zhu Zaigui first, then took off the cloak he was wearing and handed it to the young eunuch serving in the warm room.

Zhu Zaigui also personally poured a cup of hot tea for Gao Gong at this time, "Mr. Gao, please sit closer and drink some hot tea to get rid of the cold."

Gao Gong bowed to Zhu Zaigui to express his gratitude, then sat on the small chair next to Zhu Zaigui, also sat cross-legged in front of the small table, and carefully took a sip of the tea that Zhu Zaigui had just poured for him.

After Gao Gong took a sip of tea, Zhu Zaigui asked, "Mr. Gao, why did you have time to come to my place today? Shouldn't your Ministry of Personnel and the Metropolitan Procuratorate be busy with the Beijing inspection these days?"

What Zhu Zaigui referred to as the Jingcha is the six-yearly assessment system for officials in the capital. This system originated very early, but the custom of conducting the assessment every six years began in the Hongzhi period, which means it has been sixty or seventy years now.

Gao Gong said, "To be honest with you, Your Highness, although the imperial examination is very important, it is almost always just a formality. After all, officials in the capital are different from local officials. They can't make many mistakes. Whether they can pass the imperial examination smoothly depends on the thoughts of their respective officials. What the Ministry of Personnel and the Censorate can do is to review the official evaluations reported by their respective officials."

When Zhu Zaigui heard Gao Gong's words, he also agreed with them deeply.

After all, there is a big difference between the central dynasty in the feudal era and the central government in later generations.

Although they are all centralized government organizations, the powers and resources they control are vastly different.

The greatest power of the central court in the feudal era was the power to appoint and dismiss personnel and some financial power. As for other more detailed powers, such as the management and approval of important projects in various places, etc., the control power in the feudal era could not be achieved.

Therefore, in many cases, apart from the six key ministries, most of the government offices in Beijing could only do copying and writing clerical work, and most of these were useless work with no results.

Therefore, most of the officials in Beijing work in low-paying government offices, which is also one of the important reasons why their lives are hard.

Zhu Zaigui sighed, "It's really not easy for these ordinary officials in Beijing. Their well-being will all depend on you, sir."

When Gao Gong heard Zhu Zaigui's words, he couldn't help but want to smile bitterly, "Your Highness, you are joking. How can I have such ability?"

Zhu Zaigui smiled and said, "Everything depends on human efforts. Many things should be viewed from a developmental perspective. We cannot always deal with problems in a fixed way. If everything in this world were to follow past ideas and rules, where would the Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties be? The changes of these eras show that the problems in the world will gradually change with the development of time."

"It has been more than two hundred years since the founding of the Ming Dynasty. Many rules and issues have changed dramatically since the founding of the country by Emperor Taizu. So if we want to achieve results, we must have the vision and courage to surpass our predecessors. Otherwise, why would the court set up rules and thresholds to select officials and let them manage local affairs?"

"After all, the original intention of the court is to require these officials to be able to implement the will of the court and also make some achievements. Otherwise, if things go on like this, both the upper and lower levels will be like a pool of stagnant water. How can this be tolerated?"

Gao Gong never expected that Zhu Zaigui would actually talk about such profound topics. These things are easy to say, but when it comes to actually doing them, the difficulty is as difficult as climbing to the sky.

So Gao Gong also sighed after Zhu Zaigui finished speaking and said: "Your Highness is right, but no one knows how to deal with these things? Rash changes sometimes not only fail to achieve the expected results, but may even make things worse. Such examples are not uncommon in all dynasties. Therefore, sometimes I feel that the responsibility is heavy, but I don't know what to do."

Zhu Zaigui smiled again and said, "Aren't you doing it now? His Majesty has entrusted you with the issues of salary adjustment for officials and housing provident fund for Beijing officials. Aren't these things a kind of change?"

Gao Gong did have some experience in this matter. After all, these things had precedents for exploration in the Beijing Special District, and some of them were handled by him when he was the head of the Beijing Special District.

Now he was put in the position of Vice Minister of the Ministry of Personnel to handle these matters with a broader vision. Although Gao Gong was not familiar with this, he had some experience.

Therefore, Gao Gong came to Zhu Zaigui this time actually for this matter.

Gao Gong said, "Your Majesty, I have made a preliminary plan. Would you like to take a look at it for me?"

After saying this, Gao Gong took out a written proposal from his sleeve pocket and presented it to Zhu Zaigui.

Zhu Zaigui took it, glanced at it, and then placed it on the small table in front of him.

Zhu Zaigui said, "Sir, you can't be too enthusiastic about this matter. You have to make people beg you to do it. Otherwise, if you rely on this enthusiasm to push this matter forward, not only will you get unanimous praise from the officials, but they will even think that you are breaking the rules of the court. Do you know why this is the case?"

After Zhu Zaigui finished speaking, he gently picked up the teacup in front of him and took a sip, then looked at Gao Gong again. Gao Gong thought for a moment, and finally said, "Human nature?"

Zhu Zaigui smiled and said, "Yes, that's human nature!"

Zhu Zaigui then continued his speech: "No matter what position these officials hold, they all claim to be upright people who read the books of sages. How can such upright people be bought by your few taels of silver? If you actively promote this matter, you may not only fail to receive their unanimous praise, but they may even benefit from it while scolding you for destroying the ancestral system."

"So, regarding the adjustment of officials' salaries and the housing provident fund for Beijing officials, this matter can only be delayed. You can only keep making a lot of noise but not doing anything. Just let these Beijing officials see that you are worrying about this matter. As for when this matter can be accomplished, it depends on whether these self-proclaimed noble Beijing officials can take the initiative to ask you for help."

"If they don't even ask for help, but just wait for you to get it done for them, the backlash of the evil in human nature won't be easily dismissed with just a few words."

"So if you want to make this happen, you have to be extremely enthusiastic and have no motivation. When they get impatient and can't help but jump out to ask about this matter and urge them to do it, then it's time for this matter to be accomplished."

After listening to Zhu Zaigui's words, Gao Gong couldn't help but smile bitterly and shook his head, "Your Highness is indeed very insightful. Human nature is sometimes really like this. I have oversimplified this matter."

Zhu Zaigui smiled and said, "It's not that you think it's simple, sir, but they are too arrogant. So if you want to accomplish this, you have to pull down their arrogance and let them recognize the reality and ideals."

Gao Gong bowed to Zhu Zaigui with admiration and said, "I understand."

Zhu Zaigui smiled and said, "It's good that you understand. We have to use some tricks to deal with those people who value face more than substance. We can't let them think that everything good is their due, and we can't spoil them and let them develop the habit of 'picking up the bowl to eat and putting down the chopsticks to curse'."

"We need to let them understand the truth that 'every grain of rice is hard-earned' and have a grateful heart. This will enable them to be more motivated to contribute more when they receive benefits."

Gao Gong hummed again, "Your Majesty is absolutely right!"

In fact, Zhu Zaigui did not want to play tricks in providing benefits and advantages such as salary increase and housing provident fund for officials, but he did not know whether these people were stupid because of reading too much or were just good at pretending.

If you give them benefits directly, not only will they not cherish them, they will even righteously say generous words like "poverty and humbleness cannot change me" and "food given out of pity".

Obviously, this is the look of a bitch who has never experienced the beatings of society.

Therefore, Zhu Zaigui's idea to Gao Gong was to delay the process until these people changed their mentality of what they thought was right into a mentality of desire.

In this way, when the next changes and policies are to be implemented, these bureaucrats with vested interests will truly understand what is good for them.

Otherwise, when Zhu Zaigui really took power and implemented policies that benefited the country and the people, these bastards would still be arguing about nonsense and talking about ancestral rules and so on.

Now we are dragging them onto the chariot of "destroying the ancestral system" and letting them gain the benefits of destroying the ancestral system. Let's see how they can still confidently say those nonsense that the ancestral system cannot be changed.

Therefore, Zhu Zaigui wanted to adjust their salaries and increase their benefits, not because he really felt sorry for them for working so hard as officials, but because he wanted to use this matter to shut them up and make it easier to promote more "deviant" reforms in the future.

It can be said that in this matter Zhu Zaigui exerted human nature to the extreme, using a simple conspiracy to break the current impasse in the Ming Dynasty court.

After talking about this matter, Zhu Zaigui also curiously asked Gao Gong, "How is Wang Bengu's situation going recently?"

Speaking of Wang Bengu, Gao Gong suddenly became excited. He did not expect Zhao Wenhua's actions to be so sharp. No wonder Prince Yu wanted to recruit Zhao Wenhua under his command. Such a person can indeed do things cleanly and efficiently without any drag.

Gao Gong said: "Zhao Wenhua has sufficient evidence to hold Wang Bengu hostage. Now the Censorate is also worried about Wang Bengu's affairs. Although there is no direct evidence to prove that Wang Bengu participated in the land annexation in his hometown, it is undeniable that his family used his influence to bully the people in his hometown, and he never stopped his family's evil deeds, which shows that he is greedy."

"So, the list of candidates sent by the Censorate this time gave Wang Bengu a grade of 'C'. You should know that this grade of 'C' has only been given out a few times in decades. Now that Zhou Yan has given him a grade of 'C', he has achieved the best of his career as an official."

When Zhu Zaigui heard Gao Gong say this about Wang Bengu, he couldn't help but laugh. "I hope you can make this a typical case, and use this case to warn officials all over the world that when they are doing their job, they should not neglect the discipline of their families."

"Otherwise, wouldn't the official's work be superficial? So next, you, the Ministry of Personnel and the Censorate, should also use this case as an opportunity to conduct a thorough discussion on the moral education of officials' families. You should formulate new rules and regulations from the ideological, moral and institutional levels for officials at all levels and their families to abide by."

Listening to Zhu Zaigui's words, Gao Gong nodded in agreement, "I will discuss this matter with the Censorate and strive to come up with a set of rules as soon as possible and present it to Your Majesty for your review."

Zhu Zaiqi hummed, "Very good. Only when these matters are handed over to you, sir, can I feel at ease. If I give them to others, I really don't know how things will turn out in the end."

"There is still a long way to go in the future. I hope you can always keep your original intention and help me to complete these important tasks for His Majesty that benefit the country and the people."

Gao Gong bowed and said, "I will definitely live up to your expectations, and will definitely assist you, be loyal to your majesty, and handle all important matters that benefit the country and the people!"

Hearing Gao Gong's assurance, Zhu Zaigui also hummed and poured Gao Gong another cup of tea, "Come on, sir, continue to drink tea."

Gao Gong thanked Zhu Zaigui again for the tea, and then the two chatted about other things. When it was time for dinner, Zhu Zaigui originally wanted to invite Gao Gong to have dinner together.

As a result, at this critical moment, an uninvited guest came to Prince Yu's mansion in a panic, demanding to see Prince Yu urgently!
------

Asking for a monthly ticket~~
(End of this chapter)