In the face of such a severe disaster-fighting situation, Zhu Youzhen once again convened 34 officials from the cabinet, the prime minister's yamen, and relevant departments to hold a closed-door meeting in the Wenhua Hall to deal with the current situation.

The meeting was attended by fewer people than the State Council held in March, making it relatively easier to agree on opinions. At this time, the disaster situation in various places has been completely revealed, and everyone's luck psychology has completely disappeared, and they have all focused on how to provide disaster relief.

Because this year's disaster was so serious, some relief measures that had been opposed by many people that harmed the interests of the local gentry finally won the support of the majority of the people at this meeting. This includes, but is not limited to, the promotion of the gentry's integrated grain payment and land reform methods implemented in various parts of the north to the south, so as to obtain more material resources from the southern gentry to stabilize the localities and appease the landless or landless people.

And the implementation of the coinage bill in these two months has indeed increased a lot of resources in the hands of the imperial court. In particular, the change in the attitude of the gentry after the suppression of the Datong Mutiny in Shanxi Province and the flow of a large amount of money and grain from the private treasury to the banks and the public treasury of the imperial court increased a large amount of capital to the local government in Shanxi, so that they could use the money and grain to build water conservancy and transportation and move the population to other parts of the country, so that the social situation in this disaster-stricken area of Shanxi has gradually stabilized.

The stability of Shanxi not only put a burden on the imperial court, but more importantly, it smashed the proposition put forward by some gentry, that is, in such a severe famine year, the big gentry are the cornerstone of social stability, and the court should protect the property of these big gentry from damage, instead of being in the company of those low-level people and helping those people to plot the property of the gentry.

What's more, there are few gentry in the world, and there are many poor people, even if the imperial court confiscates all the property of the gentry in the world, it is still a drop in the bucket for the affected people who need help. Therefore, the idea of beating the gentry is simply a foolish strategy of killing chickens and taking eggs, and consolidating the land and fishing.

However, the amount of materials obtained by the imperial court from the Shanxi gentry finally freed the Shanxi region from the grim situation faced by the disaster area in the first place, thus shattering the claims put forward by the gentry. Everyone may not guess the future of Shanxi, but everyone is seeing the current situation of Shanxi's difficulties.

The 34 officials in the palace are all elites who have fought out of thousands of high-ranking bureaucrats over the years, and some of them may have more conservative ideas, but none of them are fools. Once it was determined that the Shanxi model was effective, they naturally recognized that the coinage bill was helpful for the current Ming Dynasty to tide over the difficulties.

In such a small discussion, these officials no longer have to worry about maintaining their own image, but only need to think about how to solve the problem in order to protect their best interests. Just as the stars of later generations need a person, the officials of the Ming Dynasty actually have a basic position.

Defending the position of the gentry class will naturally be regarded as a gentleman by the gentry, and it is natural that the interests of the gentry will be villains. And the gentry's reputation often affects the official's future promotion and other issues. Therefore, except for a very small number of officials, most officials naturally create their own gentlemanly image from the moment they step into the officialdom.

Once such an image is fixed, the opinions of these officials on certain issues are not based on practical solutions to problems, but on how to maintain the opinion of their fellow gentry. An official with inconsistent words will only be regarded as a grass on the wall, and naturally he will not be able to move to a higher position.

And in this moment, an official who is unable to propose a solution to the problem also means that the power in his hands is reduced. If you pretend to be a gentleman in front of the emperor, you may even be kicked out of this circle of power, and naturally no official will continue to pretend.

After all, the officials who can stand on this occasion are no longer only representing themselves, but representing the departmental interests and large and small political groups behind them, and an elite who does not know how to safeguard the interests of the department and fight for power for their own groups cannot stand in this position.

Although it is the consensus of officials to protect the interests of the gentry, it is the same as the ideal of the Datong world described by the sage, although this political concept is very beautiful, but once there is a conflict with their own interests, the reaction of most people is to abandon the consensus without hesitation and choose to defend their own interests.

For these officials in the palace, although the coinage law, the gentry's integrated payment, and the land reform law have obviously harmed the interests of the gentry, for them at present, such interests are obviously less important than the power in their hands.

What's more, after promoting policies such as the coinage bill, the integrated payment of grain by the gentry, and the land reform law, it is tantamount to creating a huge interest to be divided. Compared with the small amount of income from the land in the past, the huge wealth created by monetizing the gold, silver, and land and then investing it in the process of rebuilding is undoubtedly much more attractive.

In such a capitalization process, the accumulation of a gentry family in the past for a hundred years may now fall into their own pockets in only ten years, or even shorter, and who cares about the loss of interests of the old gentry in such a situation? To some extent, the interests of the Ming bureaucracy and the gentry and landlords were no longer the same relationship of prosperity and loss.

This year's catastrophe is indeed a great crisis for Daming, but behind the crisis there is undoubtedly a great opportunity. The implementation of a coinage law alone created a huge source of money for the imperial court, and in determining the use of this currency, it meant that the various bureaucrats had a divided interest in this great wealth.

Whether the money is used for disaster relief, construction projects, factories, or goods, it means that much of the profit will go into the pockets of these officials or their backers. In the face of such huge interests, the old gentry who tried to tie the hands and feet of the imperial court faced the first thing they faced was the suppression of these elite bureaucrats.

In order to ensure that this massive wealth can flow according to the will of the imperial court, it is necessary to ensure local social stability. Therefore, solving the famine faced by the Ming Dynasty has become the consensus of these officials. Under such urgent demands, these policies, which were detrimental to the interests of the gentry, finally won the approval of the majority of officials.

But then the distribution of these benefits became the most fierce confrontation in the day's meeting. For this, even Chongzhen was a little helpless. This kind of competition for interests is not only the competition for disaster relief resources among various departments, but more importantly, the competition for disaster relief resources by officials representing various localities.

After all, not all of the gentry in these disaster-stricken areas were as wealthy as the gentry in Shanxi, and with the border trade with the Mongol tribes and the development of the Hetao area over the years, there was no problem for Shanxi's money and grain relief to the province. But in places such as Shaanxi, Henan and other places, even in ordinary years, people still need to eat wild vegetables to survive, let alone such a year of great famine.

Therefore, it is obviously an unlikely task to rely on the collection of money and food from the gentry to provide relief to the victims of the disaster throughout the country. Although the officials present agreed that if they wanted to survive the current famine, they must let the gentry from all over the country spit out some of their interests, but they did not think of bankrupting the gentry in the world.

As a result, most officials, including Qian Qianyi, the first assistant, insisted on two points: First, taking into account the minimum disaster relief target set by the State Council in March, first ensuring social stability in the two capitals, Henan, and Sanwu, and Shaanxi and Shandong might as well let it go first. The second is that the money and grain handed over by the gentry in various places should be used for disaster relief in the province as much as possible, rather than being misappropriated to other places.

Guo Yunhou, Bi Ziyan, Xia Yunyi, and other officials expressed opposition, holding that disaster relief should not be beggar-thy-neighbor, and that the victims of disasters in Shaanxi, Shandong, and other places were also Ming people, and they should not favor one over the other. In addition, the disaster relief operation is a nationwide coordinated action, if the money and grain of the provinces are fixed in the province now, then how can the imperial court dispatch and coordinate to deal with the worst-case situation?

Just when the quarrel between the two sides was becoming more and more intense, Ji Jiliang, who was in charge of the Household Grain Bureau, suddenly came out and asked Chongzhen: "Your Majesty, the minister has some different views that he wants to report. ”

Zhu Youzhen, who was originally dizzy from being argued by everyone, finally restrained his anger that was about to be uncontrollable, nodded at him and said, "Accurate." ”

Everyone in the hall suddenly fell silent, looked at Ji Jiliang, and wondered what this person was going to say. “… I think that the direction of the controversy has deviated. Today's meeting is about how to provide disaster relief to the disaster-stricken areas, not how to allocate the money and food for disaster relief to the localities.

Shaanxi, Henan, Shandong, Liangjing and Sanwu have different levels of wealth and disaster conditions, and the means by which the victims can save themselves are also different. Merely discussing the use of work for relief, or the allocation of grain by the imperial court for disaster relief, in fact, cannot allocate money and grain to the places where it is most needed, nor can it make the most efficient use of the resources in the hands of the imperial court, and the minister thinks that it is inappropriate. ”

Hearing this, Zhu Youzhen finally became a little interested, he sat up straight, and asked Ji Jiliang: "Then according to you, how should the imperial court distribute money and grain for disaster relief?" How can the disaster areas in various places save themselves? ”

After taking a deep breath, Ji Jiliang said: "Taking the disaster situation in the land of Sanwu as an example, there is a drought in all the places around Taihu Lake this year, and the land of Sanwu is even more drought and then rain, and it suffered a torrential rain last month, which caused the price of rice in the local area to rise sharply. But the minister did not think that this was caused by the poor harvest in the fields of the region..."

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