In the entire Ming Empire, the nominal household registration was about 40 million, but this was only the tax base population and not the actual population. With the poor administrative ability of the Ming Dynasty and the work level www.biquge.info of the officials, it was simply an impossible task for them to accurately count the household registration.

According to some scholars' estimates, the total population of the current Ming Dynasty should not be less than 100 million, and in terms of proportion, the proportion of blind and double-blind in Chinese should account for 8 to 90%. Although the Da Ming Law is not too complicated, even if the Da Ming Law is added, its total amount cannot be compared with the vast legal provisions of later generations. However, for most of the people today, they still do not know what the so-called royal law consists of.

Ordinary people only maintain the simple legal view of killing people and paying off debts, and more often the township rules and clan laws replace the Ming Dynasty judiciary and play a role in the countryside. Barbaric lynchings such as widows and people who want to immerse themselves in pig cages are not supported by the Daming Law, but they still have strong vitality in the countryside, and even exist for hundreds of years, in the final analysis, they are determined by the people's customs.

The reason why the Ming Dynasty formed the situation of squire politics is that of course there are factors that Zhu Yuanzhang officials are not allowed to go to the countryside for no reason, which leads to the squire sitting on the throne, but on the other hand, it must also be seen that due to the hard limitations of science and technology and material conditions, even if the Ming Dynasty wants to manage to the village level, it is not enough.

In this era, most rural people may not enter the city in their lifetime, just like Xiaofanzhuang, a village whose main business is agriculture, ordinary people may not enter the provincial capital once in their lifetime. For the understanding of the imperial court's policy system, it either depends on the merchant or the squire's patriarch to popularize science. It is meaningless what the right policy is formulated into, and what it is finally publicized and implemented can really be applied to the people.

The people who don't know anything about the law of the country, because they are illiterate, even if the imperial list is posted all over the city, they don't know what is written on it, not to mention that this kind of thing can't be posted in the countryside. Everyone can only learn from the mouths of squires and scholars what orders the imperial court has issued or what systems have been implemented.

One of the reasons why the imperial court treats scholars favorably is that scholars are one of the bridges connecting the imperial court and the people. They only need to slightly distort and tamper with the content of the list, or add a little change to the sentence reading, which is enough to make the good scriptures crooked, and even cause chaos in the place. And scholars also rely on mastering this channel to seek the greatest benefits for themselves, whether it is popularizing the law or popularizing education, which is something that scholars are unwilling to do. The bottom line is that doing so will harm one's own interests and authority.

What Fan Jin is doing now is what the scholars of the Ming Dynasty are basically unwilling to do, popularizing the laws of the Ming Dynasty to the vast number of villagers. Of course, in order not to shake the ruling foundation of the patriarch and the head of the first class, this popularization must be selective, and it is limited to the part of taxation and levy on the land of the people, and the levy of forced labor, which is basically not covered by the criminal and civil laws.

The grain tax in the Ming Dynasty was actually not high, even if it added envy, apportionment, etc., it still did not make the people unable to afford it, and the real thing was actually service. In the thinking of the Ming Dynasty, it was believed that it was natural for the people to accept the orders of the imperial court and mobilize to engage in various large-scale projects.

This led to the emergence of various miscellaneous servants in the Ming Dynasty, and each of them assigned to the people had to put down their work and immediately complete the court orders. This is also one of the important reasons why the early days of the country were strictly guided and the people were not allowed to leave their homes for ten miles.

The reason why Xiucai's privilege of exempting people from servitude can arouse the interest of so many people is because these servitudes are really too damaging to the family, and if a family has a bad fate, it will almost ruin the family if it is subjected to several court servitudes. Even the Ming version of Wan Xiliang's story of being dragged to serve just after getting married, I don't know how many people have been published, and in order to avoid service, I don't know how many people have joined the slaves, which shows the damage of this system to ordinary people.

This impersonal system of forced labor had already aroused the opposition of some people of insight before Jiajing, and many ministers of the court and the central government analyzed the interests and disadvantages to the emperor, and after several generations of hard work, the situation had greatly improved. At present, although there is still a complicated system of assigning service, some of the service can be offset by giving money, which is the so-called silver service. For example, Guangdong has engaged in the equalization of silver system, that is, paying money instead of service.

Pay a certain amount of money to offset the service you are supposed to serve, and the court gets the silver, and you can rely on this money to hire the homeless and unemployed to complete the work. It is really a multi-tasking thing that does not delay the main matter, but also puts those unemployed people under supervision and reduces the pressure on social security. Taking the Rafu order faced by Daxiao Fanzhuang this time as an example, the people who have land in their household registration can pay money and serve in lieu of service, so that the governor of Liangguang can use the money to recruit urban displaced people to serve as the people's strongest, so that there is no need to delay the agricultural time and affect the harvest of the next year, let alone cause chaos in the countryside.

Once someone in a family goes to serve in a certain service, then in principle, other services should not be sent to this family, so as not to affect the lives of the people and destroy agricultural production.

The number of 100 masters is far beyond the range of Fan Zhuang, and according to Fan Jin's calculations, this should be the service number sent by the county to the entire Jinsha Township. However, Hong Chengen used his power to push the conscription that a township should bear to the two villages of Fanzhuang to bear, that is, the usual rotation service method before, the service was apportioned to a community, and the burden of the entire township was borne by the two villages of Fan.

Fan Changwang and Fan Changyou are also ignorant village elders and do not know that the imperial court has such a system. The reason why scholars can be respected is that they know words, can read the court documents, understand the world's major events, and if the people want to ask something, they can only ask the readers.

When they heard that Fan Jin had done popular science, the people of Fanjiazhuang were first overjoyed. Knowing that the conscription on his head was actually not as heavy as he imagined, he immediately became angry again.

"Hongjiazhuang deceives people too much! The eighteen village servants actually want our two villages to bear it, this is not riding on our heads! This matter can't be left like this, if their Hong family dares to come to our village, they will be killed! ”

"That's right, kill them! Kill a few of his people, so that he knows that our Fan Zhuang is not easy to bully! It's a big deal that the village pays money to buy someone to fight his life, but he can't make his Hong family too comfortable. ”

Fan Jin coughed twice and stopped everyone: "Folks, don't be rash!" Now is our legitimate lawsuit, don't turn yourself into unreasonable because of your own recklessness. Hong Chengen arbitrarily apportioned and oppressed us Fan Zhuang, but we didn't fight him, and if we had anything to say, we just went to the yamen to say it. When the collection of money and grain is completed, we will not send it to the Hong family, but will send it to the yamen ourselves. When I arrived at the yamen and met the county magistrate, I could naturally be reasonable. ”

A disciple of the Fan family said: "Uncle Nine, I'm afraid we can't send it to the yamen by ourselves." The fathers in the yamen are the most vicious, and some people also thought that they would send food to the grain chief, and they wanted to levy a hundred percent of the envy and deduct too much, and wanted to send it directly to the yamen. I didn't know that the father in the yamen said that this was not in accordance with the rules, refused to accept it, and refused to let people go, saying that he wanted to wait for the grain chief to come and make the theory clear in person. As a result, back and forth, just eating and lodging in the provincial capital almost ruined his family. When the grain chief came, he weighed it in front of him, and said that there was a shortage of 20% of the food, and he asked the man to pay for it himself, and finally forced the head of the village to commit suicide. With such a thing, who would dare to deliver food by himself? ”

Hu Butcher spat at the man, "Stupid! Your braincase, only for a lifetime of digging in the soil, what you said is the past, now we have a boy, do you still need to be afraid of the father in the yamen? There is a case to send food, I see who in the yamen still dares to trouble us, just do what Jinzai said, and ensure that nothing happens! This time, let's go to the yamen, and we have to tell the surname Hong! Look who's unlucky! ”