My father is Yongzheng, and I am Qianlong?

Chapter 420 The Imperial Family is Growing Up: The Changes Qianlong Brought to the Royal Family!

The Jiangnan region is currently in the plum rain season, with misty rain, clear blue skies and waters, and the damp smell of earth permeating the surroundings.

Hongzhou stood with his hands behind his back, ignoring the young scholars, and patted Fu Hui on the shoulder, indicating that he was going outside to take a look.

Hongzhou then walked to the edge of the field ridge that had been measured when the fields were divided.

Three guards followed.

Fu Hui stayed where he was and continued to listen to the clamor of these scholars who opposed the land distribution.

"The poor who were allocated land were mostly lazy by nature, otherwise they wouldn't be so poor in the wealthy city of Suzhou that they couldn't even get enough to eat."

“Even if the court allocates land to them, they will only sell it cheaply to wealthy households, which will allow the wealthy households to take over the land.”

"But now that the imperial court is so arbitrarily seizing the farmland of wealthy households, which wealthy household would dare to continue buying land?"

"If this continues, these lazy and unruly people will only keep abandoning their land! As a result, the imperial court will not be able to collect enough taxes, and the whole country will be short of produce!"

"The original tenants who were allocated land were mostly cunning and pleasure-seeking troublemakers."

"Otherwise, they wouldn't have rented land for so many years without accumulating any savings to buy property. They would just be living off their savings and the theft and escaping of their land would have become commonplace."

"With powerful overseers, they can behave themselves. But now that there are no powerful overseers, it won't be easy for the court to collect taxes from them!"

These scholars recounted to Fu Hui in detail all the harms of arbitrarily seizing and dividing up farmland from the people.

Fu Hui couldn't help but rub her hands and frown upon hearing this, and she also looked at Hong Zhou with some fear and unease.

At the age of fifteen, this was his first time leaving the capital to travel with Hongzhou and others on official business. He was not familiar with the situation at the grassroots level and could not even identify many niche vegetables.

In particular, he was not entirely clear about the specific details of the perpetual tenancy system, the tenant servant system, and the long-term and short-term labor system in the Jiangnan region.

Now, these scholars report that the poor in Suzhou are mostly poor because they are lazy and averse to work, and that the tenant farmers in Suzhou are mostly cunning and pleasure-seeking troublemakers who will oppose the government and the imperial court once they are no longer under the control of wealthy families.

At first glance, he felt there was some truth to it, and he couldn't really refute it.

Some scholars, seeing that Fu Hui, this young nobleman who had just left the inner palace, was hesitant and uneasy, couldn't help but secretly raise the corners of their mouths.

Therefore, some scholars further commented: "If the court allows land to be concentrated in the hands of wealthy households and does not arbitrarily seize the property of ordinary people, then wealthy households will strictly manage the rent paid by their tenants in order to pay their own rent, and thus be able to pay taxes to the court smoothly; this will prevent clerks from colluding with cunning and unruly people to evade taxes."

"Please, Your Excellency, have a clear understanding! If you were the magistrate of a county, would it be easier to collect the land tax from the large households that own most of the land in the county, or to send clerks and runners to collect it from each village and household one by one?"

“If land were truly distributed equally among the people, leaving a large amount of land in the hands of ordinary villagers, then the clerks and runners could, having received bribes from those villagers, falsely report that the villagers’ land had been abandoned, not cultivated, and that the villagers had disappeared, thus making it impossible to collect land taxes.”

"Therefore, distributing land to the people will only cause inconvenience and make it easier for unscrupulous people to evade taxes!"

"Please, Eighth Master, see the truth!"

"Please, Eighth Master, see the truth!"

……

These scholars then gave their orders and echoed them.

Fu Hui was clearly no match for these eloquent scholars, so he covered his head with his hands and strode toward Hong Zhou.

Hongzhou was standing by an old stone bridge, looking at the endless Jiangnan polder fields, talking to a farmer wearing a bamboo hat.

When Fu Hui arrived, the farmer stretched out his hands, revealing his thin but strong arms, and accepted a plate of palace pastries that Hong Zhou had given him, and was eating them in large mouthfuls.

"Fifth Brother, do they have any valid points? Shouldn't the imperial court not arbitrarily seize and divide the people's land?"

After arriving at the stone bridge, Fu Hui told Hong Zhou what the scholars had said and asked him questions with a serious expression.

After hearing this, Hongzhou did not immediately respond to Fu Hui, just as he had not been in a hurry to respond to the young scholars who were pleading their cases in front of him.

Hongzhou merely glanced at the young scholars on the opposite bank who were also looking this way but were being stopped by the guards, pointed at them, and asked the farmer in the Wu dialect he had learned: "Those gentlemen say that you are greedy for pleasure, cunning and wicked. Is there any truth to what they say?"

"That's a joke. What can we enjoy? We've handed over most of the harvest, and the rest is barely enough to fill our stomachs."

"My lord, if being half-full is considered indulging in pleasure, then there would be no thrifty people in the world, wouldn't you say?"

The farmer, looking dejected, hurriedly spread his hands to explain, as if he had been greatly slandered.

Fu Hui, recalling the old farmer's earlier manner of eating the pastries, nodded, believing the farmer usually only ate until he was half-full, and chimed in, "Indeed, if this is considered indulging in pleasure, then there would be no thrifty people in the world." "So, what do you think about the land redistribution? Is it a good thing or a bad thing?"

Hongzhou continued to question the farmer.

The farmer replied, "That's great! The land tax we pay is nothing compared to the rent."

"Would they bribe people in the county government to avoid paying taxes?"

Hongzhou asked.

The farmer chuckled and said, "How could I dare? We farmers are all timid. We're not afraid of hard work, but we're afraid of doing something wrong. We're afraid that our elderly parents will investigate and take away our land. How will we survive then?"

“We can’t compare to those gentlemen and officials. If they are caught, they can just make up the difference. They don’t have to worry about being arrested or extorted by the officials.”

“But if we ordinary people are found to have problems, I’m afraid our parents will label us as troublemakers and let the people below eat us alive.”

After hearing this, Fu Hui asked with some disbelief, "But they said you are very cunning and would bribe the clerks to evade taxes."

"My lord, even if I, a mere peasant, wanted to be cunning, I'd need to have the means to be cunning!"

"How could I possibly bribe the people in the county government?"

"The harvest from a small plot of land, about twenty or thirty acres, is barely enough to bribe the people in the county government and risk their lives to do something so dangerous. It wouldn't even be enough to fill their teeth."

"Therefore, the constables in the county government also know that we don't have that much capital, so they won't collude with us. They just go to the countryside to extort money when collecting summer taxes and autumn grain. If they encounter someone kind, they'll just treat them to a good meal at most."

“Those officials only know how to deal with people in the county government, they have no idea how we poor people deal with people in the county government. They assume we are as bad as them, but where do we have the capital to be bad?”

After the farmer finished speaking, Hongzhou nodded and instructed the eunuch beside him to give the farmer a piece of silver. After the farmer expressed his gratitude, he asked again:

"How did you become a tenant farmer?"

“When the flood hit, there was no food. The family needed to eat, so they borrowed money. They couldn’t pay it back the following year, so they had to give up their land or even their lives.”

"Once the land is returned, we can only rent the land we used to cultivate."

The farmer replied.

"How much profit?"

Hongzhou then asked.

The farmer replied, "It depends. Sometimes it's nine out and thirteen back, sometimes it's one out and two back."

Fu Hui's eyes widened in surprise. "They're all very high! Why didn't you borrow money from Huimin Bank?"

"I've never heard of any Huimin Bank!"

The farmer replied.

Hongzhou nodded and then asked, "Do you think this land redistribution is good for the government? If you were the local official, would you be the one in charge?"

"Very good!"

The farmer replied without hesitation.

“We farmers are most afraid of the government sending people to the countryside to collect taxes, so as long as we have surplus grain, we will rush to pay it ourselves.”

“But the wealthy are not afraid, so they can delay as long as they want, and even call on the villagers to delay payment as well. Many times, the elderly have to beg them.”

"So, if the children are really elderly parents, they will definitely want to divide the land, so that they can collect all the taxes without doing anything."

"It's just that the police officers will be unhappy, because this way they won't have many opportunities to extort money from the countryside."

The farmer then explained his reasons.

After hearing this, Hongzhou sent the farmer back and sighed, "Fourth Brother is right. We need to investigate thoroughly. Besides, just because some people say something is bad doesn't mean that certain decisions are really bad. Everyone has their own perspective."

Hongzhou then looked at Fuhui and asked with a smile, "Eighth brother, do you still think that what those scholars said makes sense?"

(End of this chapter)