As we all know, the peoples of the ancient world chose a variety of different things as currency at the beginning: shells, livestock, grain, salt, cloth, metal, but in the end, almost unanimously chose gold, silver and copper, these three precious metals, this is not without reason, gold, silver and copper have a large unit value, uniform quality, easy to divide, not perishable, not bad and other characteristics, so the revolutionary teacher Marx once said that "gold and silver are not naturally money, but currency is naturally gold and silver." ”

However, compared with several other ancient civilizations, ancient China was a country with a very scarce precious metal, and the few copper, gold and silver mines that were relatively rich and conducive to mining were often located in the remote southwest region, but ancient China was a very precocious country with rapid economic development. As a result, for the ancient Chinese government, it encountered a problem that no other civilization had encountered very early on - deflation, that is, the lack of total currency in the market, and the result was that the price of money continued to rise, and the result was that the price of commercial travel was full, the price of physical commodities fell, and the burden on the peasants continued to increase, and finally led to the loss of national strength.

So why is this happening? There is only one reason, the ancient people will not accept paper money, the government has to come up with real money to make money, in the Han Dynasty as an example, hundreds of thousands of prisoners who served in the mine a very important duty is to mine copper ore and make copper money, with the development of the economy, the increase in population, the goods that need to be returned on the market and the taxes paid by the people need more and more copper money, the government has to use more and more copper to make copper coins, increasing the price of copper and copperware, When the price of copper exceeds that of copper of the same quality, a very profitable trade arises - the copper coins are melted down to make copper objects and then sold for a profit.

It is not difficult to imagine that no matter how efficient the convicts of the Han government are, the copper coins they mint cannot make up for the speed at which they are melted down to make copper objects, because the copper that can be dug up every year is certain, and the more copper coins the government mints, the less copper they will use to make copper tools, and the more valuable they will be. And no one can tell which copper kettle is made of legal copper and which copper kettle is minted with copper coins, and those criminals make almost no risk of profit, although the Han government has repeatedly issued decrees to crack down on such behavior, but it still does not help.

And the government can not let the copper money on the market become less and less, because this is tantamount to increasing the burden on the peasants, so the government's coinage department can only reduce the fineness of the currency, such as making the copper coins small or mixed with lead and other base metals, but the common people are not stupid, they have hidden the good quality of the coins, and the bad color of the bad coins are used, over time, the market is flowing all the bad money, the purchasing power is getting lower and lower, in the end even the government does not recognize the use of this money to pay taxes, By this time, a dynasty is often not far from its end.

The same thing was repeated again in the Tang and Song dynasties, the difference is that there is another role in grabbing copper coins - foreign merchants, the general technology and culture of ancient China's neighboring countries are far behind China, even if these countries have quite rich copper mines (such as Japan and Mongolia), they do not have the ability to mine, smelt and mint coins, so they simply export a large amount of copper coins from China - directly take them back and use them as their own currency, anyway, ancient China is rich and developed, and there is no need to worry about the depreciation of these copper coins, Today, we often find a large number of ancient Chinese copper coins in neighboring countries, which were given by these ancient merchants.

It is not difficult to see that the ancient Chinese government did not think of using currency to collect taxes uniformly, and it was not that the ancient officials were too poor in mathematics to prevent them from doing so, but that China was a country that was extremely short of precious metals such as copper, gold, and silver, and a small amount of precious metals that could be used as currency could not maintain the unified monetary system of an empire with such a large economic aggregate.

It wasn't until the middle of the Ming Dynasty that all this changed, when the huge amounts of silver discovered by the Spaniards in the Americas began to flow into China through the long route of Mexico, Manila, Philippines, and southern China. It is precisely because of the existence of this river of silver that the reform of the banknote law finally completed by Zhang Juzheng began with Pang Shangpeng, the governor of Zhejiang during the Jiajing period, that is, the government converted all the labor and various taxes in kind borne by the landowners into silver to be collected. But when silver became currency, the Ming government also put a rope around its neck.

Many modern people think that the paper money we use every day is a kind of currency, in fact, this is a misunderstanding, the daily circulation of paper money has no value, just a currency symbol, if you leave the coercive power of the state as a guarantee, any paper money will become worthless waste paper; True money refers to a sufficient amount of gold and silver coins, the value of which is determined by the value of the material itself, without the guarantee of state coercion.

Obviously, in the era when real money was in circulation, the only way for a government to issue new money was to mint it with a certain amount of gold and silver, and the money market was in the hands of those who had the most gold and silver. Obviously, in this case, the degree of control of a country's government over its own economy actually depends on the amount of gold and silver in its hands, and after the Ming Empire adopted a policy of using silver as currency, it did not control the source of silver in its own hands. On the contrary, more than ninety percent of the silver that flowed into the market in China at that time came from overseas imports, and only a very small part came from local mines, which means that those merchants who mastered the vast majority of silver inflow channels through overseas trade were not only merchants who sold goods, but also mastered the source of legal tender in the Ming Empire, and it was they, not the Ming government, who decided how much silver flowed into the currency market each year, in other words, these merchants controlled the central bank of the Ming Dynasty.

It is hard to imagine how a head of state in today's world could stay in that position if he did not have the power to appoint a central bank governor and thereby control the power to issue currency. And several Ming emperors since Wanli are such heads of state, although he theoretically has unlimited power, but he is a dwarf on the battlefield of money. In order to carry out the war with the Later Jin, from the 46th to the 48th year of Wanli, a total of 5,200,062 taels of Liao were levied, which made the sea depressed and indirectly destroyed his empire, and the rich maritime merchants who were engaged in the sea trade of tea, silk, and porcelain in the southeast at that time often piled up more than 1 million taels of silver in their cellars. In a sense, the easiest way for the Ming emperors to save the empire was to find one or two of these maritime merchants every year, and then cut off their heads.

Due to the limitations of history, although Bi Ziyan could not know everything mentioned above, he still instinctively felt that the root of the problem was that all the economic lifelines of the imperial court were handed over to silver, no matter what kind of economic policy the government formulated, but as long as silver was used as currency, then the merchants who almost monopolized the silver import channels could always get the most benefit from it, and pass on the losses to other members of society. Taking the salt introduction system as an example, under the Kaizhong Law, salt merchants had to transport enough grain to the frontier in order to obtain salt introduction, and the soldiers at the border could eat their stomachs; After the repeal of the Kaizhong Law, it was true that the government had obtained a lot of silver through the sale of salt, but this silver tael was not enough to transport enough grain to the border - the price of freight and grain had risen, and the soldiers had to starve, while the people had to eat lightly, because the salt merchants had raised the price of salt.

"Mr. Bi, but Yang He is asking me for money right now!" Speaking of this, Chongzhen's words stopped, his pale cheeks showed an embarrassed flush, he knew very well that the treasury of the household department was empty and could almost run mice, in order to support the military salary of Liaozhen and the new army of Denglai, the taxes and food in various places were almost spent at any time, he knew this very well, and Bi Ziyan was also very clear.

"Your Majesty, let the old minister think of a way!" Bi Ziyan didn't cry out as Chongzhen imagined, the thin old man didn't seem to feel much pressure on his shoulders at all, and his back was still straight.

"Your Majesty, if possible, please ask the vassal kings of the world to donate a little bit in this matter-" Bi Ziyan didn't say anything about this. A smile appeared on Chongzhen's face: "There is no problem with this, Da Ming is not me alone, in the final analysis, the vassal king and I are both descendants of Taizu and Chengzu, and it is natural for the vassal kings to contribute some money. “

"That's good!" Bi Ziyan nodded, and just when Chongzhen thought that this meeting was about to end, Bi Ziyan took out a fold from his arms, presented it with both hands, and said: "Your Majesty, the minister has one more thing to do today, please take a look!" “

"Oh, what an excerpt!" Chongzhen smiled and took Bi Ziyan's fold, put it aside, and solved a big problem, he was in a very good mood at this time, so much so that he rarely joked: "Mr. Bi, if this is your old man's fold, I am not allowed, and Zhongxing Daming I can't do without you!" “

Hearing Chongzhen say this, Bi Ziyan's eyes showed a little tears, and he knelt on the ground and kowtowed: "Your Majesty, rest assured, the old minister has received the kindness of Emperor Xian, Emperor Zhen, Emperor Xian and His Majesty's four generations of emperors, even if it is liver and brain, it is not enough to repay in case, as long as Your Majesty still needs the old minister, he will die of exhaustion in this household secretary, and the old minister is also willing!" “

"Mr. Bi, please get up!" Chongzhen was also moved by Bi Ziyan's behavior, the majesty of the Son of Heaven did not allow him to get up and support the other party, he could only glance at Cao Huachun on the side, Cao Huachun took a step forward smartly, carefully helped Bi Ziyan up, and gently patted the other party's knee twice with his sleeve to remove the dust that did not exist on it.

"Mr. Bi, look at what you said, the emperor's reliance on you is clear to us in the palace, you are old, but don't be so gifted, it's not good if it flashes!" Cao Huachun smiled and helped Bi Ziyan back to his original seat, and then retreated behind Chongzhen. Chongzhen nodded with satisfaction, to show that what his slave had just said was what he was inconvenient to say. Bi Ziyan groped in his sleeve for a while, then took out a fold and presented it, Cao Huachun hurriedly came over and handed it to Chongzhen, Chongzhen took it casually and put it aside but didn't look at it immediately, and said to Bi Ziyan with a smile: "Mr. Bi, I will save this fold for the time being, and I will see it later!" ”

According to the etiquette of the monarch and the ministers at that time, when Chongzhen said this sentence, Bi Ziyan, as a courtier, had to bow and pay homage and retire. But Bi Ziyan did not get up and retreat according to etiquette, but said in a deep voice: "Your Majesty, the minister has the courage to take this fold, and I hope that Your Majesty will take a closer look, that is, there is a leak in it, and please understand the loyalty of the minister." ”

Listening to Bi Ziyan's somewhat abrupt admonition, Chongzhen glanced at the other party a little strangely, he knew very well that a traditional scholar like Bi Ziyan would never read a book because he was afraid of angering the Son of Heaven, so the only purpose of saying this was that the words in this excerpt were extremely important in his opinion, so that he was afraid that Chongzhen's fold would be lost before reading it in a rage, and he would sacrifice himself in vain and not fulfill the responsibility of a courtier. So Chongzhen picked up the fold again, and frowned after reading a few lines, but for the sake of what Bi Ziyan had just said, he continued to read it. Finally, when Chongzhen finished reading the excerpt, he said with a displeased expression: "Mr. Bi, after all, you are not a soldier (the abbreviation of the Ming Dynasty Military Department Shangshu), I'm afraid this is not what you should say." ”

"Your Majesty's words are wrong!" In the face of Chongzhen's accusation, Bi Ziyan was not afraid, and retorted proudly: "Although the old man is not his own soldier, there are more than 100,000 soldiers in Liaodong and Liaoxi, and all the food, clothing, military salaries, medicines and equipment are all paid from the imperial court. Although the old man doesn't know how to fight, he also knows that if he continues like this, I'm afraid that the East Captives will not be destroyed, and I'm afraid that I won't be able to hold on first. ”

"Joke!" Chongzhen finally couldn't bear it anymore, and sneered: "My Ming Dynasty is rich all over the world, the people are trillions, the Dongyu household registration is only one million, and the armor is only 100,000, how can the Dongyu not be destroyed, and I Daming can't hold on first?" “

"Your Majesty, in the second year of the Apocalypse, the old minister was entrusted by the first emperor to supervise the military salaries of Liaodi. From the north straight to Liaozhen in the middle of the road, to Denglai sea road is the most convenient, then from Denglai to Liaodi Niangniang Palace, and then transferred to Ningyuan, transport a stone of grain will cost one or two silver, the first emperor levy Liao, the world complains, four years is only five million, more than 100,000 soldiers in Liaoxi, only Shanhaiguan consumes 4 million taels of silver every year. That is, if the east is long in the cave, and do not send an arrow to the west, the world has been disadvantaged. ”