"It is right not to raise taxes on the people. 【Full text reading】The people's livelihood is suffering, and there are many hungry people in Beijing. The widow still knows about such things. ”

Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youzhen is definitely not a tyrannical monarch who does not love the people. Speaking of which, among the emperors of the Ming Dynasty, I am afraid that this person is the most frugal and self-controlled. And as the emperor, Zhu Youzhen's attitude towards the people is still relatively kind. can say, "Kou is also my child, and it is advisable to caress him instead of killing." "That's it. At least it can be shown that Zhu Youzhen is a relatively moderate ruler for the common people.

However, the biggest problem of Emperor Chongzhen was that he was able to correctly understand the relationship between the emperor and the people, but he could not correctly understand the conflict between the interests of the state and the interests of vested interest groups, and he could not correctly understand the conflict between the emperor who represented the interests of the state and the civil bureaucracy that represented the vested interest groups.

He himself was confused by reading the books of the sages, and he thought that all the scholars in the world had that great and noble sentiment. But the reality is that, as vested interests, the conflict between the civilian bureaucracy and the interests of the state is absolute. The conflict between the civilian bureaucracy and the emperor was also absolute.

In fact, from the perspective of later generations, the relationship between the emperor and the civilian bureaucracy, also as the ruling class, is really very interesting.

The ideology used by the civilian bureaucracy is Confucianism. While they used Confucianism to restrain the imperial power, they were actually constantly pushing the emperor against themselves.

Specifically, the civil servants believed that the emperor had a lofty position to represent the interests of the state, and at the same time, they used various Confucian classics as weapons to push the emperor into a position that they had to bear through the methods of contemporary and historical public opinion. However, as a group with vested interests, they rely on plundering and infringing on national interests to ensure their own interests. In this way, the emperor, who tied the interests of the state together through Confucian classics and the law of the ancestors, would inevitably become their enemy.

The political struggle for power is, in the final analysis, an economic struggle. As a feudal dynasty, the main financial revenue of the Ming Dynasty was nothing more than agricultural tax and commercial tax. However, the vested interests that controlled the land and avoided paying taxes through privileged status were the civil bureaucracy that used the interests of the state as a shackle to restrain the emperor.

Therefore, historically, all emperors who can make a difference are strong emperors who have a bad reputation in history. This is because it is the civil bureaucracy that represents the vested interests that grasps historical public opinion and writes history, and the powerful emperor can only do something by suppressing and cracking down on the civilian bureaucracy as a vested interest group.

Zhu Youzhen did not see such a truth, so when Wei Zhongxian proposed the method of increasing fiscal revenue by cracking down on corrupt officials and expanding tax revenue by increasing commercial taxes, Zhu Youzhen did not agree with this because he had been indoctrinated and brainwashed by the civilian bureaucracy for many years because he wanted to cover up everything that was completely out of necessity and "not competing with the people for profit."

Wei Zhongxian had long known that this would be the result. He said to Zhu Youzhen very sincerely:

"Emperor, there is a fixed amount of money in this world. This dynasty gives preferential treatment to scholars, so those who have meritorious names are exempt from tax and forced labor. In the early years of the dynasty, it was better, there were few scholars, and the fields were evenly distributed. But after more than 250 years, there are not many people in the world who read books. Nowadays, the officials of the Ming Dynasty are all scholars, and there are countless fertile fields in their families. ”

"What's more, since the opening of the sea in this dynasty, it is also an official gentry who controls the southeast sea trade. The people who ran the Jiangnan business were also officials and gentry. The fields under this world are also in the hands of the officials and gentry, and the trade under this world is also in the hands of the officials and gentry. The emperor didn't want to mistreat the people, so he could only start from the heads of those officials and gentry who had countless silver money and mansions. ”

Seeing Zhu Youzhen frowning, he didn't mean to adopt his opinion at all. Wei Zhongxian finally released his last big move.

"The emperor may think that this scholar is honest and self-controlled. However, the emperor, Xu Jie, the first auxiliary minister of the Shimiao Lord, has more than 400,000 acres of land in Songjiang. There are more fields than ordinary feudal princes. When the temple lord was old, he once cursed the temple lord for being a lot of government now, and the source of His Majesty's illness was in the right capital of the drowning goods and wealth, Li Sancai, who was a giant merchant in Tongzhou, with a family property of more than four million, which was one-fifth of the annual income of the treasury of the Ming Dynasty. ”

Seeing that Zhu Youzhen's expression fluctuated a little, Wei Zhongxian, who felt that he had completed the task of giving the civil minister the last eye medicine, sighed in his heart. He said:

"Emperor, there are more and more places to spend money now. This year is only a little more than halfway through, the officials' salaries have not yet been distributed, and the rice and grain of the vassal king's clan have not been spent. The flooding of the Yellow River and the course of the Grand Canal have not yet been treated. But all the money of the court was empty. The slave maid thought that now there was only one way to go, raising taxes. However, whether this tax is added to the heads of the people or to the heads of the officials and gentry, the slaves and maids dare not act rashly, so they can only ask the emperor to decide for himself. ”

There is a concept in psychology called "stereotyping". Stereotype mainly refers to a generalized and fixed view of a certain thing or object, and by extension, this way of seeing is generalized, believing that this thing or the whole has that characteristic, and ignoring individual differences.

Zhu Youzhen, the young emperor, had a stereotype of eunuchs who were traitors and untrustworthy. Especially for Wei Zhongxian, Zhu Youzhen didn't believe in this powerful eunuch who had sent people to monitor and control him.

Therefore, after he sent Wei Zhongxian away, he immediately invited the two teachers he had chosen into the palace to discuss the solution.

According to later generations, Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youzhen once said before hanging the coal mountain, "The king is not the king of the dead country, and the ministers are the ministers of the dead country". Regardless of whether there is really such a thing, purely from the perspective of personality and emotion, it is reasonable for a person with a personality like Emperor Chongzhen to say such a thing.

But then again. The second half of the sentence "The king is not the king of the dead country, the ministers are the ministers of the dead country", there must be nothing wrong with the second half of the sentence. However, the first half of the sentence needs to be discussed.

The demise of the Ming Dynasty was, on the one hand, a natural disaster, and on the other hand. Objectively speaking, it was indeed the combination of natural disasters caused by the climate of the Xiaoice River and the frenzied plundering of national interests by the civilian bureaucracy as a vested interest group that led to the complete demise of the Ming Dynasty.

However, if we are to be realistic, does Zhu Youzhen, as the emperor, really have no responsibility for the destruction of the country, and even the "death of China" in the opinion of radical people, as he himself thinks?

The answer is no. After all, no matter what, those ministers who died were selected and appointed by Zhu Youzhen himself.

For example, the two teachers he selected himself, Zhang Sizhi and Wen Zhenmeng. These two people were both promoted from the Hanlin Academy to the Ministry of Rites after Zhu Youzhen ascended the throne. In his heart, Zhu Youzhen was prepared to push these two people to the position of cabinet ministers in the future.

Let's just say that these two civil officials who were selected as teachers and vigorously promoted by Zhu Youzhen are very favorable.

Zhang Sizhi later became the first assistant of the cabinet of the Ming Dynasty. However, this person surrendered to the Manchus after the Manchus entered the customs. The Manchu court looked down on him and insultingly gave him an official position of Sipin Daotai. This person, who was the teacher of the emperor of the former dynasty and the first assistant of the cabinet of the Ming Dynasty, actually shaved his head and went to office with a pig's tail.

And although this Wen Zhenmeng died before the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, after he became a cabinet minister in the future, he did not do anything except engage in party strife. He's a politician through and through.

After Zhu Youzhen saw these two people, he had just raised the matter of collecting business taxes, and Wen Zhenmeng, who was a big household in the south of the Yangtze River, had countless fields in his own land and opened three steam textile factories, as if he had been kicked in the crotch of his pants, he hissed and shouted exhaustedly:

"Your Majesty must not compete with the people for profit and repeat the mistakes of Emperor Shenzong"