"Brother Boyu, this time the emperor gave you a thousand acres of land, why don't you take it?"

After all, Ma Jiyuan is one of Zhu Hongsan's veterans, and although he is now dismissed, Zhu Hongsan is still good to Ma Jiyuan, and when he left Nanjing, he gave him 1,000 acres of land for retirement.

"Shutian, how can I have the face to go back to Wuchang now to ask for the 1,000 acres of land? Now the Wuchang Ma family has forcibly occupied 100,000 mu of land, although most of it is in Zhongyu's hands, but the old man is also ashamed of his hometown father! ”

"Then where is Brother Boyu going back this time?"

Ma Jiyuan's hometown is in Wuchang, but this time Ma Jiyuan did not take the Yangtze River waterway, but took his family and servants to the south gate.

"Shutian, the old man has been away from home since he was a child, to be honest, I don't remember what my hometown looks like, this time the old man is going to go to Ningguo Mansion, after all, the old man has lived there for more than ten years!"

Ma Jiyuan's uncle has no children and only two daughters, so when Ma Jiyuan was young, his father Ma Guoxiang passed him on to his uncle Ma Guoan. At that time, Ma Guoan was serving as a county magistrate in Nanling County, Ningguofu, and then promoted to the governor and prefect, so Ma Jiyuan spent the best childhood in Ningguofu, so he was not ready to return to Wuchang this time, but went to Ningguofu to retire.

Fang Fengnian nodded when he heard Ma Jiyuan say this, and no longer spoke but said goodbye to Ma Jiyuan.

Fang Fengnian returned to the city after separating from Ma Jiyuan, and as soon as he arrived at his office in Qianbu Corridor, he saw the secretary of the tax department coming to him.

"Lord Shangshu, Wang Ge Lao has sent people to you many times, saying that Yuanfu will hold an economic work meeting, and let Shangshu Shilang from the three ministries of finance, taxation, and civil affairs go to the meeting. Xue Shilang and Ren Shilang in the ministry have already gone! ”

As Ma Jiyuan's same year, Fang Fengnian was originally the waiter of the logistics department, and Ma Mingyuan deliberately transferred Fang Fengnian to the tax department as a secretary in order to buy the second year of the Apocalypse.

As the name suggests, the Ministry of Taxation collects taxes, and has jurisdiction over 15 provincial clearance divisions, as well as five customs clearance divisions in Nanjing, Hangzhou, Quanzhou, Guangzhou, and Luzon. Because the Ministry of Taxation came from the former Ministry of Households, Shangshu has always been the Ministry of Finance Shangshu Chen Zilong, and now in order to buy people's hearts, Ma Mingyuan handed over this important position to Fang Fengnian.

Fang Fengnian went to see off Ma Jiyuan today, he had taken leave with Wang Yunchang, the elder in charge of the cabinet, and now he heard that the first assistant Ma Mingyuan had something to do with him, so he hurriedly changed into his official robe and hurried to the cabinet office in the Qianbu Corridor.

The cabinet is in the first courtyard of the thousand-step corridor near the Hongwu Gate, opposite the military organs such as the Governor's Office of the Five Armies. The Cabinet occupies a small area, with only three small buildings, the first building is the office of the Cabinet Secretary's Office, the second is the office of the six Deputy Prime Ministers of the Cabinet, and the last building is the office of Prime Minister Ma Mingyuan and a small conference room.

When Fang Fengnian arrived, the meeting had already begun, but before it was the turn of the Ministry of Taxation to report on its work, Chen Zilong, the secretary of the Ministry of Finance, was talking.

Fang Fengnian coughed at the door, then walked into the conference room, bowed down and said, "Yuan Fu, Wang Ge Lao, the next official is late, please forgive me!" ”

Ma Mingyuan nodded and said, "Brother Shutian, please take a seat, Elder Wang Ge has already told me about the situation!" Ma Mingyuan didn't say the reason why Fang Fengnian asked for leave, after all, it was really inappropriate for him to be his younger brother and not send his brother.

Fang Fengnian didn't say anything, bowed down, and then walked to Chen Zilong's side, bowed slightly to the colleagues around him, and sat down in his own position.

Chen Zilong was interrupted by Fang Fengnian just now, he looked at Ma Mingyuan, Ma Mingyuan said: "Please continue to talk!" ”

"Yes, Motosuke! Just now, Xia Guan said that the current national treasury is 5.68 million taels of silver, but it is all the silver from Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces, which is equivalent to 5.17 million taels of silver in Kuping, this is all the money at present, how to use it, please decide the two adults! ”

Ma Mingyuan has known this figure for a long time, although he doesn't care about finance, but the Ministry of Finance is his old nest, and the news is still very well-informed.

"Elder Wang Ge, Chen Shangshu, now that Your Majesty's Northern Expedition is imminent, we must ensure the production progress of arsenals in various places. Tong Ge Lao has already told this official many times that the logistics department has been in arrears to the arsenal for three months, and tomorrow the Ministry of Finance will allocate all these three months to the logistics department! ”

"Yuanfu, three months' worth is two million taels, so that the treasury has three million taels left, and at the end of the year, we will issue this half-year's worth of taels to officials, and we need three million and seven hundred thousand taels, what should I do with the shortfall of silver?"

"Don't worry about this, before the end of the year, the property of those who have been raided will be in place, and it is estimated that there will be more than one million taels! In addition, the mint bureau has been reopened, and the treasury silver in the treasury has been immediately pressed into silver dollars, and all future expenditures will be settled in silver dollars! ”

The Daming treasury stipulates that the silver content of the state treasury is 90 percent 5, but the silver content of the silver dollar engaged in by Zhu Hongsan is only 80 percent 7, so that a silver coin can earn eight points of profit, and the 5.17 million treasury silver in the treasury immediately becomes 5.58 million silver dollars, and there is no faster way to make money. This is only the profit of the coinage, not the difference in the exchange price of the silver dollar.

A silver dollar is priced at one tael, and the official exchange is one tael of Kuping silver, but you must know that Kuping silver has impurities, so one or two and five points of Kuping silver can be exchanged for a silver dollar, and the extra five cents is fire consumption. This is still the treasury silver of the state treasury, and if it is sent from all over the country, the cost of fire is even higher. Because Guangzhou is a big trading port, there are a lot of impurities in Guangzhou's silver, and the fire consumption has to receive a maximum of one penny and seven cents of silver, so Zhu Hongsan really made a lot of money by implementing the silver dollar.

According to the theory of market economy, the silver coin of the Ming Dynasty, which does not contain much silver, will inevitably depreciate after it is issued, but Ma Mingyuan had the foresight to bind the value of silver dollars with sugar and refined salt four years ago, and used state power to forcibly stipulate that the white sugar produced in Leizhou is five silver dollars a catty, and the refined salt is one silver dollar and one catty.

Because the output of white sugar and refined salt in Leizhou is so large, and it also has a technical monopoly, other salt farms and sugar factories cannot produce such white sugar and salt, so the value of silver dollars linked to white sugar and salt is very stable, and even a silver dollar is exchanged for one silver dollar for one or seven coins of silver in Nanzhili. In the far inland, such as Sichuan and Shaanxi, where transportation is inconvenient, because of the high prices of sugar and salt, the exchange of silver dollars for silver has reached one to two or two.

In fact, the current financial situation of the Shenwu Imperial Court is not as unbearable as Chen Zilong said at the court meeting, as if it is about to go out of business. Now, because of the end of the Thirty Years' War in Europe, more silver has been imported into the Ming Dynasty than in previous years, and the value of silver will depreciate as soon as it is too much, so the commerce in Guangdong is not as close to bankruptcy as Chen Zilong said.

During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, capitalism sprouted in the south of the Yangtze River, and private commerce was greatly developed, and the demand for currency increased greatly. Copper coins are not as good as silver in terms of value and quantity, so a large amount of overseas silver flowed into the Ming Dynasty, and this flow reached a scale of more than 2 million taels per year at its peak.

However, with the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in Europe in 1618, Spain transported all the silver produced in the Americas back to its suzerainty in order to participate in the war. The amount of silver flowing into China decreased, and eventually it was gone.

The inflow of silver into China has decreased, but the Ming Dynasty has encountered troubled times, and the already stretched finances have made matters worse. If the Ming Dynasty implemented the silver dollar currency system at this time, it could still be adhered to, but the silver two system implemented by the Ming Dynasty used the weight of precious metals as currency. In this way, the country has no control over the currency at all, and at the same time, the Chinese still have the habit of saving, and a large amount of silver is buried in their own yards and flower beds.

At this time, after Zhang Juzheng's reform, the Ming Dynasty did not collect taxes in kind, and they all became silver taels, at the beginning, because there were a lot of private silver taels, and five or six million yuan could be collected every year during the Wanli years. But in the Chongzhen period, because of the fall of Wei Zhongxian, no one got money for the emperor from additional channels, and could only ask for money from the people.

At this time, because of the decrease in the flow of silver among the people, the scholars did not have to pay taxes, the civil land annexation was serious, and the feudal kings in various places forcibly occupied a large amount of land, etc., Chongzhen originally planned to collect 7.87 million taels of silver in the third year, but in the end only 920,000 taels of silver was collected.

With an income of only 920,000 taels of silver in such a big country, something will naturally happen, and those homeless people and rogues will just go with the flow in the future.

The Ming Dynasty's national fortune was over, but the luck of the Manchu Qing was too good, the European Thirty Years' War ended in 16*48, and in the second year, the silver of the Americas began to flow back to the Ming Dynasty, at this time the Manchu Qing Dynasty had occupied the richest Nanzhili, and there was money and food, which could support the Manchus to suppress the rebel armies in the Southern Ming and various places.

However, the good fortune of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in this time and space was taken up by Zhu Hongsan, because Zhu Hongsan himself owned a large number of trading houses and factories, and the profits generated by these factories were not included in the state tax, so the current situation was not as serious as Chen Zilong said.

Ma Mingyuan is older than finance, so he naturally knows what the real situation is, but at that time, in order for himself to return to the position of the first assistant, there was no way, so he had to say that the financial situation was extremely serious, as if he was going to break up tomorrow, which squeezed Ma Jiyuan out of the position of the first assistant.

Fang Fengnian was a prefect before, and he still knows some money methods, but his self-taught vocational high school education can be compared with an undergraduate like Ma Mingyuan? Fang Fengnian sat on the side and listened to Ma Mingyuan talk eloquently about the method of silver dollars, and while listening, he was admiring in his heart.

Fang Fengnian looked down on Ma Mingyuan very much before, thinking that he was just a scholar, and he had occupied a good position in the court early by following the emperor, and if he was given a prefecture and a county, he might not be as good as himself. But listening to Ma Mingyuan talk about currency reform today, I found that Ma Mingyuan is really unique in this aspect of finance, which is not comparable to himself.