Jiajing Chengming

"The emperor finally did not obey our wishes and depose Zhang Fujing and Gui E! Instead, he let them take over the cabinet and government power, survey the land and strike at the weak spot of our wealthy families!"

"Yes, we didn't scare him! Instead, he made up his mind to continue to clean up the world's wealthy families. Having such a strong-willed emperor is a blessing for the common people and a great misfortune for the officials and gentry!"

"Alas! The situation that I least want to see has finally happened. The emperor has finally decided to survey all the land in the country and punish all the wealthy families to death!"

The wealthy and luxurious people in Nanzhi also talked about this matter incessantly.

Many of them even gnashed their teeth, slammed the table and threw their cups.

Many people couldn't even sleep well, and the food didn't taste good anymore, so they naturally had no interest in traveling.

When Zhang Cong launched the Jiajing New Deal to survey the land throughout the country, Gui E also asked Chen Guang, the Imperial Censor, to propose taking the opportunity to rectify the tax policy.

The Ministry of Revenue therefore took the opportunity to propose promoting the National Taxation Bureau that had been piloted in Shandong.

Gui E also suggested that the Ministry of Personnel select outstanding officials from among the Qing army trial censors and observation scholars who had performed well in the past to form Qingtian censors and trial censors, who would accompany him to Nanzhi to carry out the tax collection.

Zhu Houcong agreed to all of them.

This way.

Not long after, the wealthy and powerful families in Nanzhi heard that the Second Assistant Minister Gui E, along with the tax censors Weng Wanda and Tang Shunzhi, were heading south to clean up the tax policy while clearing the fields.

This made the wealthy and luxurious people in Nanzhi even more panicked.

"What should I do? What should I do?"

"These two evildoers, one is stirring up trouble in the court and wants to survey all the land in the world; the other wants to personally clean up the taxation policy, as if he wants to investigate all the land, money and grain in the world, so that the emperor can control the rich families in the world at will in the future."

"Hurry up and think of a countermeasure!"

"Let's not talk about the land survey. Zhang Fujing reformed the Imperial Academy to encourage bureaucrats all over the country, so that local officials could enter the Imperial Academy because of their outstanding performance in the examinations. Now, the tax collectors selected by Gui'e have all gained their skills in the Qing army. They are all courageous and knowledgeable guys who are stubborn and stubborn. They are a group of sea patrolling Yakshas! If they come to Nanzhi, our life will be very difficult!"

"What can we do now? We can't use the Japanese pirates. The imperial court has soldiers stationed in Japan. We can't use them at all. Even if we recruit desperate people to pretend to be Japanese pirates, we can't fool the imperial court into believing that the Japanese pirates are the real threat."

"I have long said that you should not post anonymous messages to provoke the emperor, destroy dikes and flood the common people's fields, or bribe officials and craftsmen to do those horrific things in the capital, but some people just wouldn't listen. Now, the emperor has completely sided with Zhang Fujing and his gang."

"It's useless to say all this. There are so many wealthy families in the world, and Your Majesty is working so hard to govern the country. Naturally, there will always be wealthy families who can't stand this cowardice and want to take risks."

"The only thing we can do now is to find a way to prevent the situation where once the land survey is completed and the tax collection begins, it will be discovered that most of us wealthy families have not paid much tax, and have even withheld a large amount of taxes from the court, and even transferred most of our tax burden to the people."

"Yes, the foundation of the country is still the land tax. Land survey is not only to find out who has how much hidden land, but also to find out who has passed on the tax burden to the common people and who has embezzled the tax revenue from the court. These things cannot be seen by others."

“I can only pay the tax.”

"How can we fill such a huge hole with tax? Every household has a lot of expenses, and because many new policies have hurt the profits of big households like us, our income is not as good as before! If we really have to pay the taxes owed by several generations, even if the family is not raided, it will be ruined."

"Alas, let the people suffer!"

"Since most of the prefectures and cities in the world now have their yellow books archived or lost, the collection of land tax and silver can only be based on the white books of taxes and labor service."

"The tax and service register is in the hands of the big families, so we can fill it out at will. It would be better to pass on the taxes we owe and swallowed to the common people. When the tax collectors come to check, they will find that the people who owed taxes and embezzled the tax silver are all common people, so we can only ask the common people for the money." "No, such a huge debt, even if it is evenly distributed among the common people, is enough to bankrupt a common people's family!"

"Besides, many government officials will certainly urge their subordinates to collect all the arrears of taxes before the tax collection censors come to collect taxes in order to let the court see that the tax policy under their rule is good. This will definitely provoke a civil uprising in advance!"

"It would be better to stir up a civil uprising!"

"If we stir up a civil uprising, we will let the emperor know that the decree to survey the land in the country is not feasible and will disturb the people too much. Even if the survey is successful, it will only be a large number of ordinary people who will bear the cost in the end!"

"He loves the people, so he will not sit idly by and watch as so many people in the world lose their families and homes because of this."

"Even if he doesn't really care about the people, there are always officials and gentry among our literati who really care about the people and oppose him. We can also add fuel to the flames. By then, the whole court will be full of voices criticizing the land survey. Your Majesty can't insist on it."

"I'm afraid that although Your Majesty is willing to persist, Zhang Fujing, Gui E and others are not willing to persist."

"Yes, they are not truly loyal to Your Majesty, otherwise they would not have encouraged Your Majesty to do such a thing that offends the people of the world. He now supports Your Majesty, and in essence, he actually regards the country and the people as more important than Your Majesty!"

The wealthy and luxurious people in Nanzhi were like ants on a hot pan, running around in a panic, and they began to discuss more heatedly how to deal with these things.

And just as the law summarized by Huang Zongxi, they ultimately chose to transfer the debt they owed to the court downwards, allowing the vast majority of people at the bottom to repay the debt.

This is because they despise selfishness, and also because they know that the emperor's Achilles' heel is whether the survival crisis of the vast majority of the people will occur.

While Gui E decided to lead a team of capable people to clean up the taxation policy throughout the country, Xia Yan, who was responsible for building factories for the manufacture of four-wheeled carriages, horse-drawn trains, and wooden track, expanded the scale of procurement of iron, wood, and horses in the name of the court, and even expanded the scale of recruitment of workers.

This makes the wealthy and powerful even more panicked.

Especially the wealthy and luxurious people in Nanzhi.

They have discovered that their own private workshops are having difficulty recruiting workers and even more difficulty keeping servants.

Of course, this has something to do with the fact that they have never been willing to improve the treatment of workers and servants.

However, they are instinctively conservative when it comes to improving the treatment of workers and servants, and even deliberately ignore this solution.

Therefore, they just lamented that Jiajing's efforts to govern the country resulted in too few poor people in the world, especially too few poor people who were willing to sell their children and work themselves to death just for a bite of food, which led to such difficulties for them, and they just wanted to artificially create more poor people.

……

……

"Your Majesty! The Southern Zhili Provincial Inspector General reported that the Wusong River and Baimao River burst their banks again due to the Dragon Boat Festival flood, submerging countless acres of farmland and leaving nearly 100,000 people homeless!"

"Your Majesty, the Jinyiwei in Nanjing reported that many warehouses in local counties and prefectures have been flooded. Many people trapped in the spring famine have been forced to sell their children because they cannot receive relief!"

"The governor of Nanzhi, Xiong Jia, sent an urgent report that Wen An, a deputy minister of the Ministry of Revenue, was stabbed to death in Suzhou by a mulberry farmer, Qian Wu, because he was too strict in supervising the land survey. Qian Wu has surrendered himself and pleaded guilty."

Soon after this, Zhu Houcong received reports of major water bodies in Nanzhi, such as the Wusong River and the Baimao River, bursting their banks and flooding farmland. At the same time, he also received reports of flooding in many local government warehouses used to regulate local grain prices, and reports of officials being killed by the people during land surveys. (End of this chapter)