In the general hall of the Senate, thousands of people poured in at once.

The Cabinet and the House of Representatives are on their own, and there is a clear division.

The first budget report submitted by the cabinet to the Senate was rejected, especially since the budget report had actually been passed by the Prime Minister's meeting, and even the budget report approved by the emperor was just taken to the Senate to go through the motions, and as a result, the Senate really put a pig's nose in a green onion and pretended to be an elephant.

The cabinet is very unconvinced, even Yuan Jixian is not convinced, they are all doing this, how will they do this work in the future. Is it true that no matter what the cabinet reports to the House of Representatives, they will come here to oppose it, and if they don't oppose it, they won't be able to show their existence?

Their cabinet is in charge, and these Senators of the House of Representatives are much more arrogant than they were in the previous six departments and the middle school. This time, their arrogance must be suppressed, otherwise, this matter will be endless.

Ni Yuanlu and a group of senators also stared at the cabinet officials with wide eyes, these senators used to be mostly from the six departments to the middle or middle school, and their original positions were specialized in administrative auditing, but after all, they had a low status in the past, and they were petty officials of seven or eight grades, even if the emperor gave them the power to review the six departments, how could they be so beautiful today.

Not to mention that the senators have been promoted directly from the seventh or eighth rank to the fifth rank, and the Senate is completely at the same level as the cabinet, and they are no longer scattered six sections, but all cabinet executive orders can be reviewed. Especially for such a major event as the most important financial budget, they also have the power to refute it.

Since you have the right, you naturally have to use it. They are no longer vassals of the Cabinet, and where they are not suitable, they must stop opposing them.

On both sides, you glared at me, I glared at you, stared at you for a long time, and no one spoke first.

In the end, it was the House of Representatives doctor Yao Minggong, who was a member of the Cabinet before he spoke first to break the silence. However, he is old, and he has no ability to govern, so he can enter the cabinet, it is only because he is from the Dragon faction, and the emperor let him enter the cabinet, but he just occupies a position.

Now there is no need for him as a mascot, so he took the initiative to resign, and the emperor agreed, but the emperor asked him to exert his spare heat again and come to the newly established House of Representatives as Speaker. The House of Representatives is also a retirement home for high-ranking officials anyway. Therefore, Yao Minggong did not refuse.

In today's conflict, the cabinet is his former unit, and the House of Representatives is his current unit, although the Senate and the House of Representatives do not have a boundary, but it is still good for him to be an intermediary.

"Everyone, it's all for business, let's talk about something, and Mo has become a personal grudge because of business."

The second assistant, Li Banghua, also came out to speak, "What the speaker of the House of Representatives said makes sense. Let's talk about something, Speaker Ni, we also brought the report, please give us another point. ”

"That's nature." Ni Yuanlu nodded.

He also had in his hand the report that the cabinet had originally submitted. At this time, someone brought it over.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let's talk about things, and we will talk about things, and the two reports you have submitted. We will not talk about last year's fiscal expenditure summary report for the time being, but put it aside for the first time, and talk about this year's fiscal expenditure budget report. It's very problematic. ”

"If there is a problem, you can say it directly, one by one, and we will explain it to you one by one." Yuan Jixian didn't have a good temper. The cabinet finally got the full executive power and got rid of the celebrant supervisor, but it turned out to be a parliament again. Originally, the House would not have deliberately opposed them, but in fact they were deliberately finding fault.

Ni Yuanlu snorted and opened the thick report on Longhan's three-year fiscal expenditure budget in his hand.

"Okay, let's talk about it one by one. First, under the administrative expenditure budget, among which the officials are expected to spend 200 million silver dollars, oh my God, 200 million silver dollars, you really dare to write, do you know how much 200 million silver dollars are? There are more than 80 million taels of silver ingots melted into silver ingots, and in the late Ming Dynasty, the country's annual silver income in Taicang was only more than 2 million taels, and now you actually open 200 million yuan a year for officials, do you think this is normal? ”

Finance Secretary Lu Weizhang stood up.

"I'll answer this question, Senator Ni, this budget table of ours is a very strict statistical calculation, and it is not a random fabricated number. Compared with the Ming Dynasty, which only has more than 2 million taels of Taicang silver income a year, it is indeed a lot for us to spend 200 million yuan a year on officials, but this is not the same concept, these are two different things, and they cannot be mixed together. ”

"The territory of the Han Dynasty is indeed larger than that of the Ming Dynasty, but it will not cost so much, right?" Ni Yuanlu asked.

Lu Weizhang replied, "Senator Ni also said just now that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Taicang's annual silver income was only more than 2 million taels, which was less than 5 million silver dollars. But how much does my big man earn a year now? I am the Secretary of Finance, and I know this best, so I will tell Senator Ni that last year, the annual revenue of our Han Empire exceeded 2 billion silver dollars. Five million and two billion, the territory of the Han Dynasty is now more than twice as large as that of the Ming Dynasty, and the population has increased by far less than double, but how many times is our income compared to the end of the Ming Dynasty? ”

Everyone knows that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Taicang's annual income of more than 2 million taels of silver was actually only a small part of the national income of the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty still had 20 million or 30 million stone of grain income, which was worth at least 80 or 90 million yuan in the Han Dynasty, and the three salaries levied by the Ming Dynasty were nearly 20 million taels of silver a year, which were converted into more than 40 million silver dollars. If you add salt tax, commercial tax tariff, etc., there are still a lot, not to mention that there are still a large number of arrears that cannot be collected. But it is undeniable that the wealth of the Han Dynasty is at least twenty or thirty times that of Chongzhen.

He continued to talk.

"How do you think the two billion years of income came from? Even if the war income is put aside, it is still a huge amount of revenue, and these revenues are inseparable from the imperial favored officials. Without so many officials, the empire would not have the thriving industry and commerce it has today, and the imperial court would not have collected so many taxes. ”

Ni Yuanlu ignored these.

"With 200 million yuan of expenses, please tell me how many officials there are in the imperial court now, and how much money will be needed?"

Lu Weizhang replied, "Up to now, the empire has about 200,000 civilian officials, 150,000 military attachés, and 850,000 civil servants. ”

As soon as the number came out, there was a burst of exclamations in the hall. Most of these voices were the members of the House of Representatives who had come to join in the fun, many of them were originally just merchants, landlords, and even peasants, and they did not know how many officials there were in the empire, but they were still stunned when they heard this huge number of more than a million.

Ni Yuanlu said in a loud voice, "200,000 civil officials, 150,000 military attachés, and 850,000 civil servants, adding up to 1.2 million." God, one million and two million, no dynasty has ever heard of such a large number of officials. In the Song Dynasty, it was known as redundant officials, but when it was founded, there were only more than 7,000 officials, and at most there were less than 50,000 officials. And now, only two years after the founding of the empire, there are 200,000 civil officials and 150,000 military attachés, don't you think this number is too shocking? ”

"The empire now has a population of just over 300 million, but there are 1.2 million officials, so isn't it necessary to support one official for every 250 people?"

Lu Weizhang didn't think so, as a financial secretary who specializes in dealing with finance, he knew very well that accounts could not be calculated like this.

In the hall, everyone was attracted by the Q&A between the two, and no one noticed that at some point, Emperor Liu Jun changed into the robe of an ordinary petty official and put on makeup and entered the hall.

Liu Jun chose a corner, sat down in a low-key manner, and then joined in the excitement.

There was such a big dispute between the cabinet and the house, and Liu Jun rushed to it immediately after hearing it. But he didn't come publicly, but put on makeup. The dispute between the House of Representatives and the Cabinet would be very normal in a parliamentary state to come. But in the Han Dynasty, under this new system, this kind of cabinet dispute seems a little unusual.

Liu Jun plans to see for himself what kind of battle it is.

In fact, from his heart, it is a good thing that there is a dispute between the cabinet and the court. If the House of Representatives gives the green light to the affairs of the cabinet, it will lose the fundamental purpose of Liu Jun's establishment. However, he also did not want to see them just blindly confrontation and not cooperation. It is only healthy that the Cabinet and the House of Representatives should check and balance each other and cooperate with each other.

Dahan now has more than one million officials, in fact, Liu Jun has long known it. Even this number has just undergone a major disarmament, and it turns out that there are more than 1 million troops in the imperial court, and there are more than 200,000 military attachés of the rank alone, not non-commissioned officers. Now, after the two disarmaments, the number of military attaches is still about 150,000, and most of them have been reduced.

Lu Weizhang asked Ni Yuanlu rhetorically at this time.

"Just now, Speaker Ni compared the previous dynasty with this dynasty, so this official will also make a comparison. May I ask Speaker Ni, how many officials and officials were there in a county in the previous dynasty? Take a medium-sized county with more than 20,000 households and a population of about 100,000. ”

How many officials and officials did an ordinary county have in the Ming Dynasty?

This question is naturally difficult for Ni Yuanlu, he almost blurted out that the official officials of a county in the Ming Dynasty only had the county, the county cheng, and the main book, and generally there would be a scholar and an official to teach, and in some places there would be some miscellaneous officials, such as inspection. As for the officials, it is generally said that the officials of the economic system, that is, the officials with the establishment, and only this kind of officials can have a fortune to be distributed, and they eat the emperor's grain, and the number of such economic officials in a county is also very small, and there are only a few officials and deputy inspectors.

In a medium-sized county with a scale of 100,000 people, the total number of officials and officials may be about a dozen.

In a province, there are five or six hundred officials in the large provinces, three or four hundred in the small provinces, and more than 200 academic officials, so that the total number of officials is eight or nine hundred, and the number of officials is only five or six hundred. The total number of civil officials in the Ming Dynasty is only about 20,000.

Lu Weizhang smiled.

"That's just the surface, it shows that a county with a population of 100,000 in the Ming Dynasty did only have about ten officials and officials, but in fact? In fact, Presumably Speaker Ni will not deny that in addition to the economic officials, there are also supernumerary officials, and there are helpers in addition to supernumerary officials. As for the number of these people, everyone knows very well that there are thousands in large counties, six or seven hundred in middle counties, and three or four hundred in small counties. ”

What Lu Weizhang said is the truth, everyone came from the previous dynasty, and it has only been more than two years since the founding of the Han Dynasty, and everyone will not forget the affairs of the previous dynasty so quickly. (To be continued.) )