At the end of Chongzhen's twenty-second year, the imperial court's treasury revenue had reached more than 80 million taels.

Compared to the past, the main tax growth has come from the following two aspects:

First, the errand of verifying the preferential exemptions of the gentry and collecting taxes represented by Zhang Pu has been extended to the whole country, and the taxes converted from the fields and arrears and from labor have increased more than tenfold compared with before the start began. It can be seen that these officials and gentry lie on the court and suck a lot of blood.

As the saying goes, cutting off someone's money is like killing your parents. As long as an adult knows, this is basically known.

When Zhang Pu and others were ordered to do this errand, they did not hesitate to harm themselves and wanted to push off this errand. This shows the difficulty of verifying the preferential exemption of the gentry and the demand for the payment of taxes.

Even if Zhang Pu was originally the leader of the Restoration Society and the representative of those official gentry, once he did this errand, he was immediately suppressed by those official gentry, and even later, he did not hesitate to physically eliminate Zhang Pu to provoke a popular uprising, even if he was not killed at that time, he would definitely be dismissed from office.

A good example of something similar is Liu Mao, who proposed to Emperor Chongzhen to dismantle the post station to relieve the financial pressure on the imperial court.

At that time, he said: "When about seven or eight out of ten of the prefectures and counties are trapped in the post stations, only two-tenths of the post stations are used for official business, and eight out of ten are used for private affairs. ”

Moreover, Liu Mao's strategy at that time was not to dismantle all the post stations, but to strictly use the post stations, cutting off the hands stretched out to the post stations, which caused a great backlash.

As soon as Liu Mao did this, the original gentry and even their families went out to eat, live and travel for free at the post station, but there was no more; Originally, in those places, the righteous and the like used post station errands to enslave the people everywhere, and there was no benefit; There are also local governments that often use the name of post stations to drift away and reap the benefits; In this way, I don't know how many parasites have been harmed, but only the court and ordinary people can benefit.

As a result, the officials rose up to attack him, and Emperor Chongzhen at that time was not from later generations, and there was no golden finger such as the eavesdropping system, which led to Liu Mao's bleak end. Even after his death, he had to bear a reputation, which meant that he died, and died in his demolition station.

Zhang Pu, who verifies the preferential exemption and collection of taxes by the gentry, can be said to damage the interests of the entire officialdom even more than what Liu Mao did, and no matter how capable he is, under the three of the many bureaucrats, he is likely to end up even more desolate than Liu Mao.

However, Emperor Chongzhen is no longer the original Emperor Chongzhen, not only from later generations, but also the eavesdropping system, using tough means to deal with the counterattack of the gentry, not only sentenced Qian Qianyi, who is known as the leader of the Jiangnan literary circle, to behead all over the house for rebellion, but also demoted more than 100 local officials, so as to support and promote Zhang Pu to continue to carry out his errand.

It is also thanks to Emperor Chongzhen's victory in a hundred battles, opening up the territory and expanding the territory, and his prestige is higher day by day, giving Zhang Pu and them the greatest support, so as to complete the policy of verifying the preferential exemption of the gentry and urging the payment of taxes in the country.

After spending so much effort to carry it out, the rewards are naturally very high. Not only did the imperial court be accurate about the country's land and other fields, but also the silver that should have been collected from the field labor was no longer in arrears, which gave the imperial court great financial support at once.

The second largest part of the revenue of the imperial treasury was the war.

Most of the wars in the past few years have been successful in expanding the territory at a very small cost. Not to mention the seizure and the like, after the successful expansion of the territory, there was a huge demand for commerce and trade, and I don't know how much commercial tax the imperial court collected. The routes that contribute the most to commercial taxes are Gangnam to Nanyang and Annam and Dongwu.

It is foreseeable that in the future, with the enrichment of the population of Liaodong and the Hetao Plain, it will also drive commerce and trade in the north.

Of course, the Ming Dynasty is now a peaceful country, and there is no rebellion of thieves, which has also greatly promoted commerce and trade between various provinces in the country.

At this time, after Emperor Chongzhen verified the revenue of the national treasury, he convened the cabinet and the six ministries to discuss increasing the investment in transportation in various places, no longer limited to the use of labor to gather enough construction manpower in the local slack time. It's about giving a reward, a daily payroll to attract people. In addition, incentives will be given to migrant workers and local officials who are the first to complete the planned road construction. The reward for migrant workers is, of course, money; The local officials are reflected in the assessment.

In this regard, Xue Guoguan and others could understand the emperor's eagerness to repair the transportation that controlled the world as soon as possible, but they didn't understand why they had to pay so much money to the people.

"My goal is to spend all my money, not to leave it in the treasury to rust!" Emperor Chongzhen patiently explained to them, "Money is only money when it is circulated." I spent the money, the people were active, and the roads were built quickly; And when the people have money, they have the confidence to buy what they want, so that they can stimulate the production of more things in various places, and the court can receive more taxes. Only in this way can there be a virtuous circle, the court will continue to have money, and the people will continue to have money. ”

Hearing this, many civil officials seemed to understand but did not understand, and finally Xue Guoguan asked: "Your Majesty, there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world, why can money continue to come in?" If the court is rich, the people will have less money! ”

The implication is that the money of the court is collected from taxes, and if the court has more money, isn't it true that the people have less money?

This point of view was used by Sima Guang to ridicule Wang Anshi for following Sang Hongyang and saying that Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Even during the Ming Dynasty, this view was popular among scholars.

Isn't the wealth of the Ming treasury now picked up by Zhang Pu and his ilk from the common people (in fact, it refers to the official gentry) and collected from the merchants?

When Emperor Chongzhen heard this, he smiled and said, "It seems that I have to publish another book on economics for Zhu Qing to open up his knowledge!" ”

......Hearing this, the courtiers couldn't help but look at each other. Judging from the emperor's performance all along, could it be that there is a problem with his own ideas again?

Seeing their expressions, Emperor Chongzhen smiled and said, "Let me ask Qing and others, the annual increase in silver mine income comes from the imperial court or from the common people?" ”

Silver is money, dug out of the ground. Nowadays, the most abundant place is the Iwami Silver Mountain, which was taken from the Wa Kingdom. Xue Guoguan listened to it, and he couldn't answer the emperor's question, but it didn't mean that he was convinced of the emperor's point of view, so he immediately replied: "What Your Majesty said, such as the stone to see the silver mountain, its silver was originally the Tokugawa shogunate, and now it belongs to the Ming Dynasty, but its total number remains the same. ”

Emperor Chongzhen heard that he secretly changed the topic, no longer talking about the relationship between the court and the people, but including the original Wa Kingdom, he was not annoyed, so he asked again: "It's just iron, but if it is made into a steam engine, the value has increased many times, how can this money be solved?" ”

"Since it comes from the people who buy, the people have less money." Xue Guoguan listened, thought about it and replied.

"......" Emperor Chongzhen was speechless when he heard this, so he had to ask again: "The people bought a steam engine, although they paid money, but he also had a steam engine, this steam engine is also valuable, does he have a loss?" ”

"......" This time, it was Xue Guoguan and the others who were speechless, how to tell this?

He turned his head to look at his other colleagues, and finally had to say, "Your Majesty, the steam engine is not money. ”

When Emperor Chongzhen heard this, he immediately asked, "What does that Qing think is money?" ”

"......" Xue Guoguan listened, a little dumbfounded, isn't money just money?

"Do you think that money refers to gold and silver, and refers to the silver bills issued by the Ming Royal Bank? And copper coins or something, these are the money? Emperor Chongzhen glanced down and asked again.

Isn't it? This idea is the idea of almost all the courtiers below.

For this era, they are all officials, thinking about how to be an official, and the so-called being an official is actually to manage people. This point, in the land of China, I don't know how many thousands of years have passed.

As for whether there are ideas in economics, there must be, but they are not mainstream, and they will not be very deep.

Emperor Chongzhen's communication made him feel more and more that it was necessary to popularize the knowledge of economics, even if he himself was half-witted, but compared to people in this era, it was definitely much stronger.

This also gave him an idea that the system architecture of all walks of life should be erected by him, a traverser. He can not be proficient, but he proposed a framework, and let interested people fill in this framework, study this framework, and form a complete system, which is a very important thing for Daming.

In other words, today's Ming Dynasty, the economy must develop, and the mind must be emancipated!

Therefore, Emperor Chongzhen gave these courtiers a lesson in economics from the concept of what money is, and finally told them that wealth is not fixed, but more and more with the development of productive forces.

In this way, a court meeting that was originally used to discuss the general plan of the imperial court became a popular science school. Fortunately, after Emperor Chongzhen broke through the inherent understanding of these "students", as long as he explained it a little, these elites of the Ming Dynasty could basically understand the new content that Emperor Chongzhen said, as if it had opened their eyes, it turned out that this was the case!

After understanding this, Emperor Chongzhen told them again that the imperial court would increase the issuance of silver bills (in fact, almost paper money) to adapt to the current economic development and avoid economic contraction affecting the economy, and they did not have much difficulty in understanding these words.

Knowing that the circulation of this money to the society through the Daming Construction Bank will increase employment and promote the further improvement of social productivity, I can barely understand it.

After the dispersal of the dynasty, all the white-bearded grandfathers sighed: Live to learn from the old, the ancients will not deceive me! Of course, they also have to sigh, why is the emperor younger than them, and often goes out to lead troops to fight, but he has so much knowledge in his head?

And Emperor Chongzhen himself, after this incident, also began to write the Ming Dynasty's "Wealth of Nations".

()