The profession of tax collector is one of the oldest professions, both ancient and modern, both at home and abroad.

In early Europe, it was a purely feudal social inheritance, and the division of rights between kings and lords was very clear, and everyone was the sole owner of their own one-third of an acre, so many royal families and local lords would easily contract or auction the tax collection rights of their jurisdictions to merchants in exchange for stable financial revenue.

This situation reached its peak in the late Middle Ages.

It's not the same in Asia.

Since the founding of the Great Unified Dynasty by Qin Shi Huang, the feudal system has changed its flavor, and the state's taxes are usually collected by local officials appointed by the central government. In this respect, the Chinese landlord class did not have as much power as the European lords, and although they could use various methods to evade and share the embezzlement of finances, this was not justified after all, and had little to do with the tax collectors.

The real entry of the tax collector into the Chinese was in the Mengyuan period. The illiterate Mongols at that time could not handle the finances and were not worried about the Han officials, so after the occupation of China, they subcontracted the state tax revenue to the Semu, a variety of European merchants who came to China with the Mongols.

This kind of uncontrolled tax package system will definitely not be able to play. The tax collector spent 1 yuan to buy the right to collect taxes, and he was bound to loot 10 yuan in the jurisdiction, so that the people's grievances boiled and resistance was frequent, and the Mongols finally only held out in China for a few decades and could not stay, and the tax system was recognized as one of the culprits of its demise.

When the time came to the Ming Dynasty, with the changes in the social environment, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the tax package system gradually appeared, and it became an optional tax item for some local officials.

Generally speaking, the local county government that chooses the tax package system will contract the right to collect taxes in the summer and autumn to some "powerful" local people who have the ability to receive money and grain from the people, so as to save administrative costs and complete the financial handover.

This method of tax collection gradually gained a market in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and it was a spontaneously formed subcontracting model.

At the beginning, the tax package was not considered the mainstream, but at the end of the Ming Dynasty, with the weakening of the central royal power, the administrative ability of the county government at the end of the tentacles also weakened, and in the face of the increasingly corrupt local chaos, it became more and more powerless, so the tax package system became more and more intense.

So when Ding Liqiu proposed the word tax package during today's negotiations, Gu County Ling was not too surprised, because in the past few years, some surrounding prefectures and counties have done this, but the degree of openness is different. Even Gu Tai himself once considered contracting Qiu Fu to several big families in the county, but he had been hesitant and didn't succeed.

In the end, Master Gu didn't think about it for long, so he nodded and agreed to hand over this year's summer and autumn gifts to Master Ding...... The people sent Qian Gu to the treasury of the county government in advance, and there has never been such a good thing in the world. To a certain extent, at the moment when Qian Gu was put into storage, this year's tax should have been Master Ding's, and the county government really couldn't find a reason to oppose it.

This was the end of a very important mini-meeting. This meeting marked the beginning of the process of social transformation for the grassroots regime of the Ming Dynasty, which was of far-reaching significance.

In the following days, the Ming people of Zengcheng County began to experience a wave of tragicomic scenes that had never been seen before.

The first to start was conscription.

Shortly after the flower hall meeting, before the lunar New Year, the village community under Zengcheng County officially began to mobilize, and cooperated with the officials who went to the countryside to run errands, and sent the people who were selected to serve in the county seat.

What is different from previous years is that if you want to pay money to be exempted from military service, you need to pay twice as much silver.

In addition, this year's expedited conscription was not to clear the river, but to work at a Laoshzi military port in Huangpu.

For the latter, the people who are closed off from the news are not cold, because they go to work everywhere, and it makes little difference to them whether they dig rivers or build military ports.

But the former is fatal: many people can't afford to pay the doubling of the service money.

In this situation, it is impossible to say that the people do not complain. The Chinese New Year is about to begin, but because he can't afford to pay the money, he is forced to go out to serve, leaving no one to take care of the children in the village, not to mention, and bringing his own dry food, no matter how you look at it, it is a chore.

However, it is useless to complain, after all, this kind of thing has been operated in this way for thousands of years, and those who are going to serve this year can only sigh their bad luck at best, and no one dares to resist the fierce officials and Lijia.

So, not long after, led by the first team of each village and the conscripted people under Zengcheng County, came to the county one after another to assemble.

When he arrived at the Chengnan Elementary School, Li Jia held the clerk roster, and after handing over the paperwork sitting in the shed, the dozens of numb laborers behind him were officially taken over from the greedy bureaucracy.

The next moment, the tragicomedy officially staged: after the workers had finished queuing up to register, each of them received 3 shiny silver cakes on the spot!

Stupid, holding the silver cakes and not knowing what the situation was, then heard a strange horn on the side, talking like a thunderous voice: everyone is going to carry the work for General Cao in Guangzhou City this time, Cao Zongbing loves the people like a son and has a mountain of gold at home, so he doesn't care about these little money, this time everyone who comes to serve will be given three silver cakes per month, no need to wait until the end of the month, the beginning of the month will be settled!

After listening to the shouts of the loudspeaker, the laborers who were originally mourning the examination instantly exploded, and they couldn't believe what they heard, but the silver cake tightly held in the palm of their hands reminded them that this was true!

In this era, it is impossible for unskilled workers, laborers who only know how to sell coolies, to earn 3 taels of silver a month. Now that they have received this windfall, many people are stupid with joy: didn't they say that they would come to work for nothing? How did I get paid?

Naturally, these forcibly conscripted laborers have never heard the phrase "the power of example is infinite".

In fact, the fundamental purpose of this conscription is to forcibly spread Cao Zongbing's private reputation through the administrative system of the Ming Dynasty as quickly as possible, so that the surrounding people know that it is a good way to carry Cao Zongbing's work.

Now that the first batch of role models has come, they will definitely be treated favorably. In the next step, when the laborers gathered in the county seat, they were sent to the Whampoa Military Port. This group of people was divided into two in the military port, some of them took a boat to Tainan, in the name of carrying work, but in fact, they went to visit and learn the advanced system with pay, and the other part of them were placed on the spot to do some chores, and they had food and drink every day, and all kinds of labor protection denim work clothes were distributed, and the life was not too moisturized.

Half a month later, the laborers, who carried the silver and the rice and chickens and labor protection supplies issued by the military port, were rewarded by Lord Cao and happily returned to their hometowns for "New Year leave".

As the news spread after these people returned to their hometowns, the locals of Zengcheng, who had figured out what was going on this year's conscription, dragged their relatives and friends, dragged their families and families to a steady stream after the Chinese New Year, and they came to ask for "conscription" one after another.

The first step of Ding Liqiu's series of actions for conscription was a success.