The fact that the matter of the elected officials came from several areas around Nanjing, not because the people around Nanjing were ideologically advanced, but because the water and soil there were good, and all kinds of experiments were ahead of the rest of the country. The initial return of mulberry to rice and the accompanying return of large households to farmland, the later settlement of immigrants and the formation of retired servicemen to work in farms, as well as the auxiliary government system and the division of labor between prefectures and counties in the first two years, all started from the vicinity of Nanjing.

There are mountains, rivers and lakes around Nanjing, unlike other places where natural disasters are constantly intruding, which is suitable for experimenting with something ingenious. There are successes and failures in this experiment, and there will be risks, which can easily arouse the resentment of the people, but Wei Zhongxian is not afraid of anyone making trouble when he stays in Nanjing, which is also the reason why Tianqi likes to do experiments around Nanjing.

Two years ago, when the auxiliary government system was introduced, some people suggested that the people sent from above did not know much about local affairs, and demanded that the auxiliary government organs at the county level should be added to the local people. According to the unwritten rules that have been inherited, county officials generally do not go to the countryside, unless there is a case that requires him to go to the field to find clues, saying that he is worried that the officials will nuisance the people, but in fact this is just an excuse for the officials. Officials generally read people, and after reading the books of sages, they feel that they have the ideal of governing the country and the world with a Qi family, so they don't want to deal with those who don't have ideals.

It is not surprising that people with ideals look down on people who do not have ideals, because the two sides are not people of the same world, and the so-called Tao is different and does not conspire with each other, which has been a tradition for a long, long time. The saints have said that "if you can't pay the courtesy, you can't punish the doctor", which shows that the saint also thinks that it is a shame for a scholar to meet with ordinary people. Liu Yuxi of the Tang Dynasty was not very good at mixing with the officials, but he still had the idea of being superior, and wrote the sentence "There is a great deal of Confucianism in talking and laughing, and there is no white ding" in the "Burrow Ming", which shows that even the degraded officials look down on the illiterate ordinary people.

But this is not surprising, scholars are ideals, morals and life security people, when they have nothing to think about piano, chess, calligraphy, painting, poetry and hops, it is indeed better than people who worry about firewood, rice, oil, salt, vinegar, sauce and tea all day long. After studying and becoming an official, you still have to mingle with the working people and mingle with the working people, then you are purely destroying your future, and your bosses and colleagues will be ashamed to be with you again.

The county officials do not go to the countryside and the auxiliary officials do not want to go to the countryside, so it has become a workaround to find two people from below to enter the auxiliary government agency to speak on behalf of others, and who knows that it is this workaround that will cause problems over time. At the beginning, it was some old talents and old people who were pulled in, they didn't have any self-motivation, they could come in and mix two small money, they thought it was good, and others didn't look down on this position and no one fought with them, who knows that it didn't take long for everyone to find out that something was wrong.

The officials sent by the higher authorities were unwilling to communicate directly with the people, and there was no channel for the ordinary people to spread what they had to say. The policies of the higher authorities are explained by them, and the following situations are explained by them at will, and the power in them appears to be very great, and everything depends on what they say. There are basically a few large families in every place, and there are also a few children in the family who have studied books, and at first they didn't look down on this position, but now they see the benefits, so they began to blush again, and they also put forward the request for the election of officials.

Yang Lian investigated many places around Nanjing, and the results of the investigation were similar, all because the local elected auxiliary political officials were too powerful to attract people's attention, and they wanted to push their own people up through the election to seek benefits for their own family. It is said that there was a local auxiliary magistrate who was not willing to go at first, thinking that after reading for so many years and still nodding to a group of local officials, he felt that he had lost his share, so he asked a person from a family whose power and property were not very good to deal with it, who knew that within two years, this person used the little power in his hand to develop and prosper his family.

The power of example is infinite, nothing can stand careful consideration, everyone after careful and careful thinking found that instead of going to the middle of the Jinshi to become a big official, it is better to grasp this power now for the benefit of the family, anyway, while being an official, you can continue to study and wait for the scientific examination. The problem is that although the rank of the auxiliary political officials in each county is not high, it is also a position with a limited number of places, and now there are people, and if you want to squeeze it again, the difficulty is not ordinary.

These ins and outs were reported by Yang Lian after careful investigation, and when the apocalypse read Yang Lian's recital, a heart finally let go.

Apocalypse has always had the mentality of both using and guarding against Gao Panlong, Yang Lian and other Donglin parties, because he knows that the Donglin Party is a group of people with ideals and ambitions, and such a group of people will be a huge boost if they are used well, and if they are not used well, they will be a dangerous volcano. After a long and careful investigation, Tianqi found that there was no problem with the loyalty of these people, but their core ideas would conflict with themselves a little, because the core idea of the Donglin Party was to limit the imperial power and sympathize with the people. The solution of the Apocalypse to such a group of idealistic people is to find their weaknesses and slowly disintegrate them, if not to disintegrate them, but to wear out their will.

Generally speaking, a person's weakness is nothing more than fame and fortune, and the Donglin Party members all regard becoming a gentleman as their goal, which can be regarded as seeking fame. As for saying that Li Na is everyone's favorite, didn't the ancients have a saying that the world is bustling for profit? Many officials do not shy away from the idea of being an official for thousands of miles just for money. Out of the motive of using fame and fortune to disintegrate Donglindang's interior, Tianqi encouraged and supported Gao Panlong to run a newspaper to share profits, although Gao Panlong, Liu Zongzhou, Huang Zunsu and others saw through, but they also partially achieved their own goal, that is, to install a hidden danger of instability within it.

At first, as soon as he heard that there were people around Nanjing asking for elected officials, even Wei Zhongxian secretly said that the scope was very wide, and he was worried that someone would take advantage of the opportunity to cause trouble, so Tianqi set Zhao Shujiao to stay in Nanjing, and did not even dare to send it to build border wall houses in southern Liaoning. One of the things that worries Tianqi the most is that those young people in the Donglin Party are too boring, and after listening to two sentences, their enthusiasm will surge and they will start looking for people to find opportunities to make trouble, which will become difficult to control. Now when they hear that the group of people who are asking for elected officials have a very small appetite, not to mention the Donglin Party said before that they should elect the first assistant, even the Qipin County Order did not dare to think about it, and only asked to choose two of their own people to go to the county to do things, and it is very easy to do it if they are not far-sighted.

From this incident, the apocalypse also shows that the mass foundation of the Donglin Party is not so solid, and their ideals only existed in the past, and the current people have not yet appeared as a leading figure who responds to every call. However, if you think about it carefully, it should be like this, no matter how much the Donglin Party takes the world as its own responsibility, it can't get rid of its identity as a scholar, and it is impossible for a scholar with a certain social status to get along with the mud legs of farming. The Donglin Party's idea of loving the people can only be the love of sympathy from above, and it cannot be the love of friends who can make friends, and they can increase their popularity with the slogan of loving the people, but it is absolutely impossible to sit down with the blacksmith and the farmer who cuts wheat.

After grasping these circumstances, Tianqi asked Gao Panlong to send people to find a few places near Beijing to conduct experiments, and at the same time sent people to inform Yang Lian in Nanjing to let him do experiments in Nanjing, the purpose of the experiment was to let the people in a county choose the head of the township below the county. Tianqi wants to see if the direct election of the township chief will elect satisfactory people, if it can really elect people who are satisfied with the upper and lower levels, then the state and county officials can be gradually elected. Of course, there may be risks in doing experiments, and in order to avoid unnecessary troubles caused by possible risks, Tianqi specifically pointed out that the affairs related to grain and silver money should be handled by the Great Iron Company, and as long as the money and food are not a problem, everything else is not to worry about.

Gao Panlong, Yang Lian and others immediately began to act after receiving the will of the apocalypse, and began the experiment of elected officials in the north and south of Beijing. In the past, the imperial power was not lower than the county, and the officials below the county level were not strictly speaking, but were the people who were elected and uploaded, and everyone was called the village elders. The villagers are generally respected old men, and they can't do a lot of errands, so there are some young people who are favored by the villagers who are appointed as the chief of the li, like Liu Bang, the ancestor of the Han Dynasty, was a pavilion chief equivalent to the chief of the village when he did not have a career.

Tianqi did not care so much, and directly set the system of dividing a county into nine townships, the four directions of the county seat and the eight directions of the four corners are divided into eight townships, plus the county seat itself is nine, and the township heads of each township are nine rank officials, all of whom are elected from the local area. The current population has increased a lot compared with the Han and Tang eras, and the practice of not having the imperial power in the county is no longer suitable, otherwise the power of the imperial court will not be deep enough, and the people will not feel the existence of state power.

In the six months from mid-June to October, several counties in the north and south participated in the experiment, and everyone felt a little novel at first, but then they gradually understood the practice of the imperial court, especially when they saw the matter of marking votes on the spot and appointing people on the spot, the people gradually felt that they were the masters of their own affairs.

On this day, Tian Qi was reading an article written by Qian Qianyi in the Donglin Monthly News, Tan Jing said that Gao Panlong and Liu Zongzhou asked to see each other and wanted to report the results of the election in the past six months. When Gao Panlong and Liu Zongzhou sat down, Tianqi asked with great interest, "Are you here today to conclude the matter of the elected officials?" Good news or bad news? ”

Gao Panlong said: "Back to the emperor, after nearly half a year of elections, there have been many things that we usually can't think of, and it can be said that there are both good news and bad news. ”

Tianqi said: "Then you can tell me how you did it, it took nearly half a year to complete the selection, which should be very interesting." ”