Ming Jiajing: Starting from Immortality

Chapter 124: Exempt from taxes for three years and establish political and legal system!
Zhao Quan's letter of surrender.

Zhu Houcong didn't believe it.

Even if a die-hard traitor really wanted to surrender, the Ming court would never let him go.

Unless one has experienced all the tortures of the Ming Dynasty, such as being cut into pieces or being executed by slow slicing, one's sins will never be erased.

Therefore, the surrender of traitors such as Zhao Quan and Qiu Fu was meaningless. The Ming Dynasty did not expect these people to bring anything to the court, but only wanted them to die a miserable death.

In a word, without you, it is very important to me!

Zhang Juzheng had the same idea. He put away Zhao Quan's letter of surrender and waited to pass it to Wang Jiaping, the ambassador to Tatar, after leaving the palace.

Shanxi merchants, Tatars, and peace talks, several issues all have answers. The development of things to this point is far beyond what Zhang Juzheng's cabinet had expected.

But the four cabinet elders, Zhang Juzheng, Gao Gong, Li Chunfang and Chen Yiqin, did not want to leave just like that.

The wealth of all Shanxi merchants was confiscated. Although the Jinyiwei had not yet calculated the exact amount of silver, a rough estimate was that it was more than 10 million taels of silver.

Even from the time when Emperor Taizu Gao founded the country until today, the imperial court had never been so prosperous.

The wealthy life made the ministers feel suffocated.

Life is short, and they are no longer young after reaching the highest position in the government. If they do not spend any money during their term of office, it would be a waste to leave it to the next cabinet.

The current partner will never be grateful to the ex, and this applies to everything.

But if you spend the money on the poor and ordinary people, the common people will remember this good thing.

Not only will ordinary people today remember it, it will also be recorded in the history of the country, left in the history books, and sung by future generations.

After a brief eye contact, it was Chen Yiqin who stood up, knelt on the ground and said: "Your Majesty, for the past forty years, the people of the Ming Dynasty have been diligent and hardworking, but the traitors and villains have brought disaster to the world, making the people of our Ming Dynasty suffer unspeakably. Now all the traitors and Shanxi merchants have been killed and millions of wealth has been collected. I hope that my lord will show his grace and exempt the people from taxes for three years, and show his grace to the world!"

The Shanxi merchants gained their wealth by betraying the Ming court and the people of the Ming Dynasty.

Now, the Shanxi merchants might as well distribute some of the wealth obtained from the imperial court to the people.

The people of the Ming Dynasty were exempted from taxes for three years, neither more nor less.

"Aim!"

Zhu Houcong sat on the futon, uttered these two words, and closed his eyes.

The wealth of a country and a court is not as good as the wealth of its people.

The people are prosperous and the country is rich, which is nothing more than this.

Exempting taxes was originally one of Zhu Houcong's plans to enrich the country and strengthen the people, and there was no reason to disagree.

In order to prevent the emperor from regretting his decision, Zhang Juzheng drafted a memorial in front of the emperor and handed it to Huang Jin. Huang Jin took it, walked to the imperial desk, carefully picked up the jade seal and stamped it.

The people benefited, and Chen Yiqin stood up. Li Chunfang then said, "Your Majesty, many provinces have owed salaries to officials, especially Shaanxi, Northern Zhili, Henan, Yunnan, and Guizhou, which have been in arrears for more than a year. The Ministry of Personnel requests that 2.7 million taels of silver be allocated to pay the owed salaries to these provinces first."

Before this, the emperor had launched several large-scale purges, executed many officials including Yan Song and Yan Shifan, and confiscated a lot of silver, so the national treasury had already been full.

But because the emperor had killed so many people in the two capitals and Zhejiang, local officials and officials from the Ministry of Personnel did not dare to mention the issue of unpaid salaries.

She was afraid of displeasing the emperor, so she killed him in a murderous manner, thus costing Qingqing her life.

After killing the big fat pig of Shanxi merchants, Li Chunfang felt that it was time to mention it. More than two million taels of silver was a considerable sum of money in the former Ming Dynasty, but it is just a small amount nowadays.

"Approved." Zhu Houcong's voice came. Li Chunfang immediately took Zhang Juzheng's pen and drafted a memorial in front of the emperor. Huang Jin took it and added the seal.

"The Emperor is as merciful as the sky."

Gao Gong took over Li Chunfang's memorial and, based on it, said: "Your Majesty, nowadays, when officials of the imperial court are promoted or transferred, they must first return the land donated by the people in their families before they can take office. However, the salaries of officials in our dynasty are meager, even shabby, not to mention compared with those of the Song court, even compared with those of Han officials in the Yuan court.

Therefore, I respectfully report this to the Emperor, asking His Majesty to increase the salaries of court officials!"

The six thousand new officials returned the donated land successfully.

Not only did this fail to stop Zhang Juzheng, but it made him "even more aggressive" and started a wave of returning the donated land in the court.

Some officials who had passed the normal assessment of the Performance Evaluation System and the Ministry of Personnel and were to be promoted or transferred were actually required by Zhang Juzheng to return the donated land before they could take up their posts.

Not returning the donated land?
Row!
Then don’t be an official.

In short, the promotion and lateral transfer of officials have entered the official position change procedure of the Ministry of Personnel. The officials' previous official titles and positions no longer exist. If they do not go to the new place or yamen appointed by the Ministry of Personnel to take up their posts, then all their previous and future official positions will be lost, which is equivalent to voluntarily resigning.

Promotion and transfer are originally happy things, but Zhang Juzheng turned them into a tragedy.

The current officials of the Ming Dynasty want to be promoted, but are afraid of being promoted, and are even more unwilling to lose their official positions.

Officials can't make a living.

Zhang Juzheng was extremely immoral.

The local government offices had no more fire-consumption silver, and the officials had no more land to donate. With the officials' salaries, it was difficult to support themselves and their families, let alone support their staff.

Since the birth of the Qin system, local areas have generally been divided into four units: provinces, prefectures, counties, and counties. The high concentration of power means that the heads of government offices at all levels have almost absolute power.

But human energy is limited, and it is impossible to take care of all aspects, so staff came into being.

From governors-general to county officials, staff members exist in government offices at all levels, exercising and supervising power on behalf of officials.

This is the origin of the saying “Without a curtain, there is no yamen.”

Generally speaking, an official has at least four staff members: criminal staff, financial staff, registration staff, and secretarial staff.

The officials were assigned to oversee four tasks: criminal law, finance, various matters, and drafting official documents.

The better the staff, the more expensive they are. The cost of hiring a good staff often exceeds the salary of the corresponding official, let alone hiring four of them.

The salaries of officials in the Ming Dynasty were really not enough!
Zhu Houcong was silent.

Everyone in the hall was silent.

Everyone present had some ability to guess the emperor's mind, and the emperor did not agree to increase the salaries of officials.

The emperors of the Ming Dynasty have always treated officials like household slaves and the national treasury like their private property. Today's emperor is even worse than this.

Just when Gao Gong was thinking that the emperor would refuse by saying that the ancestral system could not be violated, he heard a cold and holy voice saying, "From today on, no official in the court can hire aides or advisors. Since officials cannot handle too much power, they should reduce their power. In my opinion, we should separate criminal law from county-level and higher-level offices and set up a special position for politics and law."

Abolish the staff.

The reform of the official system has extended to the political and legal system. The top leader is still the top leader, but the reduction of power has led to the local government having a second-in-command who can check and balance the top leader.

The emperor's checks and balances made Zhang, Gao, Li and Chen feel a chill down their spines!

(End of this chapter)