But he didn't expect Zhang Weixian to persuade again: "Master Wei, please stay, the old man will personally accompany you to drink two glasses of wine." ”

In this way, Wei Bao couldn't say anything, and hurriedly said respectfully: "In this case, it is better to obey the order than to be respectful, and the grandfather of the country is so polite to the lower official, it is really terrifying." ”

Zhang Weixian smiled: "Lord Wei doesn't have to be polite, when you yelled at the old man like that just now, you didn't see any panic in Lord Wei."

Wei Bao smiled embarrassedly.

The conversation between the two people, especially Zhang Weixian's joke with Wei Bao, caused Zhang Zhiji and Zhang Meiyuan to be amazed.

Wu Sanfu had never been in contact with Zhang Weixian, and thought that the old man was such a character.

And Zhang Zhiji and Zhang Meiyuan know their father, Zhang Weixian always pays attention to his personal image, whether it is to his family or outsiders, he always looks at the board and rarely jokes.

didn't expect Zhang Weixian to talk to Wei Bao so casually when he saw Wei Bao for the first time, and he actually joked.

This greatly subverted Zhang Meiyuan and Zhang Zhiji's impression of their father.

Zhang Weixian immediately asked Zhang Zhiji to call someone to serve the wine, and he wanted to personally accompany Wei Bao to drink.

A wealthy family like the British Mansion can serve fine food and wine 24 hours a day, without any problems.

Speaking of which, although the British Duke is completely connected with the imperial power, the imperial power itself can be regarded as a representative of the big landlord class.

The British public Zhang Weixian was not only worried that Wei Bao was in a hurry, and that the use of thunderous means to suppress Hejian Mansion, Cangzhou Mansion, Shandong and Denglai would cause a big incident, but also worried that Wei Bao was actually harming the interests of the imperial power and a super big landlord like him by doing so.

His British mansion is in Beizhili, in Hejian Mansion, in Cangzhou Mansion and Shandong, and there is a lot of land.

Isn't his British Mansion himself a super-large landowner?

Therefore, Wei Bao asked the British public Zhang Weixian for help, which was really a plot with the tiger.

Zhang Weixian was not worried about whether Wei Bao could get the emperor's holy decree, if the emperor ordered him to help Wei Bao, Zhang Weixian had to consider whether to ask Wei Bao for whatever Wei Bao did.

Wei Bao's people wore the cloak of Jingying to kill people everywhere, what is the difference between this and killing people in Jingying, and killing people with the emperor himself?

This is a great source of panic.

So Zhang Weixian still wants to talk to Wei Bao again to understand exactly what Wei Bao thinks.

"Daddy, I'm going down." Zhang Meiyuan saw that he was going to eat, no matter how noble the status of the Ming Dynasty was, it was the queen and the princess, and they couldn't eat at the same table with the men outside, this was the rule.

Zhang Weixian said: "Meiyuan, you stay for a while, don't you always say that Da Ming has no smart people, I think Master Wei is a smart person, what do you say?" Since Master Wei and your eldest brother are sworn brothers, they can be regarded as family, and it is okay for family members to be men and women at the same table. ”

Zhang Meiyuan's face blushed with shame, her intelligence is no less than Wu Xuexia, and she is also an extremely smart girl, obedient and obedient, her father only provoked a conversation, Zhang Meiyuan even heard that her father loved Wei Bao, and wanted her to have contact with Wei Bao.

"Dad, isn't this okay? Then I'll pour you a drink right next to you. Zhang Meiyuan said softly.

"It's okay, how can my Zhang Weixian's daughter do the thing of pouring wine, just sit down." Zhang Weixian asked Wei Bao with a smile: "Master Wei, what do you think?" ”

Wei Bao hurriedly said: "Being able to share the table with Miss is a blessing from the cultivation of the lower officials, and the lower officials can't ask for it!" ”

"Hehe, don't be talking about the upper and lower officials, since Lord Wei is a very righteous brother with him, he is my junior Zhang Weixian, let's change the title, naturally, by the name of the family." Zhang Weixian smiled.

Wei Bao saw that the old man was smiling very kindly, but he was secretly vigilant in his heart.

Wei Bao was not a political novice in the first place, although he had no contact with any high-level figures in modern times, he was just a small supervisor who worked part-time, but the people who worked also had political struggles.

In fact, in every aspect of life, struggle is everywhere!

For example, a high-ranking and powerful person like Zhang Weixian, if you say that you can turn your face, you can't fight others, what others do is likely to be an illusion, even if it is not an illusion, what can you do with others?

"Yes, Uncle Zhang." Wei Bao agreed.

Zhang Weixian laughed: "Okay, this uncle is good, relax, eat and drink casually, talk casually, and take out the momentum that you were anxious about the Ming Dynasty just now, the old man likes your energy, if the officials of the Ming Dynasty are like Lord Wei for the sake of the Ming Dynasty, the political situation of the Ming Dynasty will change." ”

"Uncle Zhang asked me to change my name, and Uncle Zhang also called me Xiaobao, right? My family calls me that, Master Wei, and the villain really can't afford it. Wei Bao smiled slightly.

"Okay, Xiaobao, let's fill a glass of wine first, you are very welcome to come to our house as a guest, I hope you will come to play often in the future, if we know Xiaobao and you are a friend, then I can rest assured." Zhang Weixian said with a smile.

"Dad, Xiaobao is only fifteen years old, two years younger than Meiyuan, I have known him for a long time, and he doesn't know if he is wearing open crotch pants." Zhang Zhiji quipped.

The crowd at the table burst into laughter.

Wu Sanfu joked: "Wei Bao's family didn't have open crotch pants for him to wear when he was a child, and the township was poor, and he didn't have pants to wear until he was twelve or thirteen years old." Until the age of twelve or thirteen, they always wore a larger linen cloth, and they could find a rice pole to tie it to be the clothes. ”

Wu Sanfu did not look down on Wei Bao, and deliberately ridiculed Wei Bao's ingredients, but in his opinion, this is the project that helps Wei Bao add points the most, and Wei Bao can be looked down upon by many courtiers, mainly because Wei Bao is a young man who has risen from a poor family.

If Wei Bao is the son of a courtier's family, or the son of a court official's family, with a family history and a rich and worry-free life, everyone will not think that Wei Bao is so powerful.

Zhang Meiyuan was a little embarrassed when she heard this, and covered her mouth with joy.

Zhang Weixian sighed with emotion: "Life in the township is hard, I went to the countryside near Gyeonggi last year, and the scene was miserable!" You know, this is still near Gyeonggi, near Gyeonggi in Daming, and other places in Daming can be thought of. ”

Wu Sanfu nodded and said: "That's true, in the places I've been, except for a few important towns, the rich families in the towns and towns are still passable, and the townships are all about the same." ”

"But Wu Gongzi and Xiaobao are very wealthy, the Wu family is rich in Liaoxi, and the Wei family is now one of the richest families in the Ming Dynasty, almost comparable to the Jin merchants, and you yourself are considered big landlords." Zhang Weixian is very old and spicy, and one sentence points out the core of the question he wants to ask.

Zhang Weixian is suspicious of Wei Bao's scheme, you yourself are rich and rival the country, and you are so harsh on the local big families in Hejian Mansion, Cangzhou Mansion, Shandong and Denglai, what are your intentions? Don't you just want to get more land on your own?

Wu Sanfu was stunned and did not answer.

Zhang Zhiji and Zhang Meiyuan also immediately heard their father's voiceover, secretly thinking that their father's trick was clever, and quietly pointed to Wei Bao's vital point, no wonder his father wanted to leave Wei Bao to eat and drink, this is not finished yet.

Wei Bao has been using some high-sounding words for the country and the people as a shield just now, but he rarely talks about his own intentions, and this is the problem.

"Uncle Zhang's words are good," Wei Bao was not alarmed, "My assets are growing rapidly, but I am not just growing personally, I am mainly helping Your Majesty increase your internal revenue!" Daming's money is a lot, although the people are very poor, but the landlords have too much silver in their hands! But my money is not from the land, but from commerce, and that is the heart of the matter! Daming, we must change the old habit of valuing agriculture and suppressing business! ”

Wei Bao then systematically told the British public Zhang Weixian how bad the Ming Dynasty was!

The rot of the Ming Dynasty, in general, is mainly rotten in the intensification of land annexation.

This can be said to be the iron law of the feudal dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty, as a feudal society dominated by a small peasant economy and ruled by the landlord class, naturally could not escape this law.

In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, with the development of private ownership of land, land was increasingly capitalized, land annexation intensified, and local landlords colluded with the government to usury to encroach on peasant land, and used various means and relationships to evade taxes.

With the intensification of land annexation, a large number of peasants went bankrupt and became displaced people, and the number of yeoman farmers became smaller and smaller.

The tax system of the Ming Dynasty was based on the capitation of taxes, and there were fewer and fewer peasants on the land, which led to fewer and fewer tax sources in the Ming Dynasty, which directly led to the depletion of government finances.

Asked why the landlords did not accept the strong, the government did collect but did it receive it?

If there are landlords who have made meritorious contributions, they can be exempted from taxation and forced labor according to the tradition of the gentry not paying taxes, and those who have not been admitted to the meritorious service can also conceal their land by bribing local officials.

In this way, the taxes of the poor are getting less and less, and the taxes of the rich are not collected, can the government not become poorer and poorer?

There is less and less land, and the government is spending more and more.

The increase in government spending in the Ming Dynasty mainly came from two aspects: first, due to the continuous conflict with the Mongols and Jiannu, the military expenditure soared; Second, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the number of the royal family surnamed Zhu has been extremely large, according to the ancestral system of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor's relatives and relatives have to be supported by the imperial court, in the early Ming Dynasty, the number of these people is not much, the government can still afford it, but now the number of this group of people has skyrocketed dozens of times, and the government's finances have long been overwhelmed.

With the rising military spending and a bunch of parasites who eat dry rice for nothing, can the government have money if they drag it down.

Serious corruption is also a major issue.

Although due to Zhu Yuanzhang's deterrence, the officials in the early Ming Dynasty were very honest and thrifty.

But by the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the situation had already gotten out of control.

For example, when the great eunuch Liu Jin was raided, he copied out 2.5 million taels of gold and 50 million taels of silver.

When the corrupt official Yan Song was copied, he copied out 300,000 taels of gold, 2 million taels of silver, and countless other jewelry, while the national treasury at that time was only 100,000 taels of silver.

With big officials taking the lead, small officials naturally have no fear, and they are greedy and possessive. By the Wanli period, the situation had reached a point where it was out of control.

That's why Zhang Juzheng is going to make a whip law.

Zhang Juzheng saw that at this point, if the Ming Dynasty did not implement reforms, it would really collapse.

And Zhang Juzheng's prescription is to implement a whip law across the country.

One of the whip laws is to abolish forced labor, and the peasants can pay two taels of silver, and then the government will pay for the hired labor.

The second is to abolish miscellaneous taxes, and the original miscellaneous taxes are converted into silver taels, which are apportioned to the acres of land and merged with the land endowment.

The third is to merge the previous field levy, miscellaneous tax, and apportioned service silver into a new field tax, which will be collected in the form of silver taels.

Wei Bao now handed over the tax and silver from Hejian Mansion, Cangzhou Prefecture, Shandong Province and Denglai Prefecture to the Haiphong Money Bank, which was led by the Governor of Haiphong Yamen for collection, which was the meaning of Zhang Juzheng's whip law.

The first act of the whip law was the abolition of taxes in kind, and the use of silver as a tax.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, due to Zhu Yuanzhang's suppression, the commodity economy was very underdeveloped, and the peasants used physical goods as taxes, but these physical goods often did not match the needs of the imperial court, so a lot of waste was caused.

By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the commodity economy had become quite developed, and many peasants were involved in the buying and selling of commodities, and the cash in their hands was far from comparable to that in the early Ming Dynasty, which made it possible to pay taxes in cash, and the quality of the government's tax collection was greatly improved.

Another effect of a whip law is that it greatly simplifies the tax system, reduces the cost of taxation, and greatly reduces the number of intermediate links.

According to the principles of economics, the simpler the link, the more difficult it is to produce greasy and corrupt behavior, and Zhang Juzheng unified the accounting of the various tax systems into land taxes and collected them together, so that local officials have no loopholes to take advantage of, and greatly curbed corrupt behavior.

In addition, a whip law also emphasizes the "land as the ancestor", that is, the amount of land owned is the amount of tax paid, and the more land you have, the more you pay, which promotes tax fairness.

In the late Ming Dynasty, many large households often bribed local officials to conceal their assets, and Zhang Juzheng's move directly cut off the possibility of making a fortune in silence.

In the first time alone, an additional 280 million mu of arable land was created, and most of this arable land came from the wealthy, which means that they will pay more taxes to the state.

Under the impetus of Zhang Juzheng, a whip law quickly achieved proud results, and in just a few years, the treasury deposited 4 million taels of silver, reversing the dilemma of the tight treasury after orthodoxy in one fell swoop.

The abundant financial resources brought by a whip law directly led to the victory of the three major expeditions of Wanli, and without so much snowflakes and silver, it is difficult to imagine that the Ming Dynasty could survive in those three large-scale wars.

Although Zhang Juzheng's reforms brought so many benefits to the Ming Dynasty, after Zhang Juzheng's violent death, a whip law was immediately abandoned.

Wei Bao was full of joy, and the more he talked, the happier he became.

Zhang Weixian didn't care, and said coldly: "Xiaobao, what you said, in fact, the world knows it, but what do you say about the reform that is not supported?" Do you think you can surpass Zhang Juzheng's power in Daming at that time? Zhang Juzheng didn't do anything as the first assistant and the emperor, do you think you can do it by participating in politics? ”

"Uncle Zhang, Zhang Juzheng didn't do it, he offended the interests of too many landlords, and his descendants overthrew him, I am confident that I can do this in Hejian Mansion, Cangzhou Mansion, Shandong and Denglai, no matter how humble my status is, as long as I believe that this thing is good for the court and Your Majesty, I will definitely be able to do it! What's more, there are top officials like Your Majesty and you who are loyal and think about the Ming Dynasty behind me. Wei Bao put a high hat on Zhang Weixian.

Zhang Weixian smiled, secretly thinking that I didn't promise you anything. I'm just saying think about it.

Wei Bao knew that Zhang Weixian did not listen, so he was not discouraged, and carefully talked about the shortcomings of Zhang Juzheng's reform.

The reason why a whip law was abolished is not only a policy issue, but also a political issue between the DPRK and China.

Policy issues. It is true that a whip law brought various benefits to the Ming Dynasty, but soon, his disadvantages became apparent.

First of all, a whip method encountered a situation of soil and water adaptation in the north.

A whip law completely replaced the physical goods with silver taels as a tax.

This is naturally like a fish in water in the south, where the commodity economy is developed, but it is a different matter in the north, where the economy is still dominated by small farmers and commerce is underdeveloped.

Due to the backwardness of the commodity economy in the north, the peasants still had very little silver taels in their hands, which was simply not enough to pay taxes.

Officials often take the opportunity of promoting a whip law to exploit the people's fat and ointment, and become a whip in name, but in fact they kill the people with a knife.

This made the peasants of the north even poorer, and the antagonism with the government soared for a time.

In addition, although a whip law eliminated a certain amount of corruption by simplifying the tax system, officials soon came up with new tricks for corruption.

For example, a whip law required that the broken silver paid by the people be melted down and recast into ingots before they could be deposited into the treasury as a tax.

Due to the underdeveloped smelting technology, the transformation of broken silver into silver ingots will inevitably produce losses, which are called fire consumption.

Because of the existence of fire consumption, it is necessary to collect fire consumption money from the people, and this gives officials an opportunity to take advantage of it.

Under the small actions of local officials, the fire consumption collected is often greater than the actual fire consumption, and the difference between this goes into the pockets of the local officials.

This has led to new corruption and waste.

Although a whip law has created problems in its implementation, how can any reform be perfect from the start.

If the follow-up first assistants can continue Zhang Juzheng's career, then these drawbacks may not be impossible to sweep away.

But neither the ministers nor the emperor showed little interest in it.

Needless to say, ministers, who will have nothing to do to cut off their own financial means and find trouble for themselves.

And the emperor doesn't want to let his dynasty last a little longer, common sense says, Wanli should resolutely implement the reform, but since this reform is promoted by Zhang Juzheng, then the problem is big.

In the 10 years that Zhang Juzheng was in power, it can be said that the power leaned towards the government and the opposition, and people only knew Zhang Taiyue, but did not know Emperor Wanli.

So as soon as Zhang Juzheng died, Wanli raided his home, and a whip method implemented by Zhang Juzheng was naturally angered by the emperor and sent to the cold palace.

Generally speaking, Wanli himself does not hate a whip law, what he hates is a whip law as Zhang Juzheng's legacy, as long as he is in one day, he must not let Zhang Juzheng's reform succeed, and he must not let his name go down in history.

Deliberately ignored by the ministers and the emperor, a whip law lasted only a dozen years before it became useless, and the already abundant treasury dried up because there was no new source of tax revenue.

Ironically, a large part of the reason for the eventual demise of the Ming Dynasty was precisely because of financial constraints, and if the Ming Dynasty could have the money to help the victims and pay the military salaries, it would not say that it would have prospered, at least for a few more decades.

"Uncle Zhang, my Haiphong Money Village is jointly organized by the Governor of Haiphong, Yamen, and the Tiandihui business, which already has its own currency and has gained a firm foothold in the north, so once everyone uses the currency of the Tiandihui as the currency in circulation, there will no longer be the problem of fire consumption returning to the public! The common people don't have to go out of the fire to spend the public money, and the officials have no way to touch the silver again, and there is no way to profit from it! Wei Bao said.

Wei Bao said, and took out a few Tiandihui coins to show them.

Wu Sanfu has seen this kind of currency, but Zhang Weixian, Zhang Zhiji and Zhang Meiyuan have not seen it.

The three of them were amazed, picked it up together and looked at it repeatedly, which was very novel.

The monetary system of the Ming Dynasty, all dynasties have taken copper coins as the basic currency, but the past dynasties have not changed the national conditions of China's poor copper, coupled with the mining and exploration technology restrictions of ancient copper mines, the value of copper at that time has exceeded the value of monetary symbols, and the cost of each copper coin is much greater than its own penny, and the rulers of the early Ming Dynasty hoped to use paper money instead of copper coins for circulation to reduce the amount of copper.

During the Hongwu period, Zhu Yuanzhang forcibly banned the circulation of gold and silver.

Later, in order to promote paper money, the decisive copper coin also stopped production, but the "Ming Dynasty treasure banknote" issued only a few decades has lost its circulation value, to the Ming Yingzong Zhu Qizhen era of the record of the treasure banknote is "the accumulation of the market, the past does not care" It can be said that the monetary system established in the early Ming Dynasty quickly collapsed and collapsed in the future, and the "landlord's family" had no surplus grain in the famine years.

"These banknotes are very different from Daming treasure banknotes, how dare you issue banknotes without authorization, aren't you afraid that others will harm you? Also, the silver ticket you exchange with the money bank is also very different, right? Zhang Weixian said.

"It's completely different." Wei Bao said with a smile: "Although the silver ticket of the money village can provide convenience to a certain extent, it is more than my heaven and earth currency, which is simply not the same as the same day, like a grasshopper shaking a tree, and a mantis arm as a car!" ”

Zhang Meiyuan saw that Wei Bao said so confidently, and couldn't help but light up her beautiful eyes, just because Wei Bao could make such a beautiful banknote, she felt very strange.

"With this kind of money alone, can you reform the disadvantages of the tax system that Brother Wei said? Can you perfect Zhang Juzheng's whip method? Zhang Zhiji wondered, "This is amazing." Brother Wei, how sure are you? I felt panicked when I heard it. ”

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