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"Hey, Shizi, I suddenly thought of a wonderful thing! Shizi, do you still remember Geng Hu's report some time ago? Li Guangdi asked with wide eyes and a smile on his face.

"Ah Hu's recital? Which one is it? He comes in a newsletter every month, which one are you talking about? Geng Jingzhong asked suspiciously.

Li Guangdi raised his eyebrows and replied: "On August 15, the first batch of 115 reserve talents graduated, and the prince replied to Geng Hu that these people should be arranged to be assistants to local stewards in various princess squares first, and they will be familiar with and learn to deal with local affairs!" Remember? ”

Geng Jingzhong immediately reacted, and the senior class of the future school is dedicated to cultivating all kinds of talents for Geng Jingzhong. Military personnel are trained by officers in the army, while other intelligence personnel and administrative talents need to be specially trained. Geng Jingzhong's stall is getting bigger and bigger, and there are more than 100 talents in need of Mr. Bookkeeper. The logistics management of the military also needs specialized personnel, and the ocean-going trading company has a lot of things to do, and it may need a lot of talent.

Geng Jingzhong selected a group from the tenants of Wangfu Grange, and another group from the families of various shareholders, a total of 800 people, divided into 20 classes, and concentrated on teaching and training. The young men who were selected were very clever and literate, and they did not have much to learn in the school, but they must be proficient in arithmetic. The focus of the twenty classes is also divided into several parts, after all, these people are to train them in different directions, which is similar to the professional courses of later generations, except that arithmetic is a compulsory course. After you have completed your studies. They were assigned to various positions according to the original plan.

The most special of these are the three classes. One hundred and twenty people in total. They were all personally selected by Geng Jingzhong, and they all had innocent family backgrounds. In addition to arithmetic, these 120 people were learning how to deal with local affairs, so they studied in another place, and the teachers who taught them were different from the other classes.

Their teachers can be said to be varied, and none of the teachers here are teachers of the Four Books and the Five Classics, and some of them are missionaries who teach mathematics. geographical knowledge, the others are all former yamen officials invited back by Geng Jingzhong, and they are all petty officials. It's just that they're older, and they're all old men, thirty in all. Some of these thirty people used to be secretaries, some were treasurers, and the others were Zhihuzheng, the canon, the instructor, the governor of the Salt Transportation Division, the chief book, the soil master book, as well as Confucius Wailang, the prison, and the Si Chen, etc., these people have been in the yamen all their lives, and they are so familiar with the affairs in the yamen that they can no longer be familiar with it. Geng Jingzhong also had only one requirement for them, to pass on all their experience to these students.

More than three years. These students finally graduated some time ago, in fact. It's the teachers who really don't have much to teach. Of the 120 students, all but five of them did not pass the test, and if they were put directly into the yamen, everything would be handled in an orderly manner. However, this is also theoretical, and the actual exercise is still very lacking. Some time ago, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, Geng Jingzhong arranged for them to go to various princess squares to exercise, and first served as deputies to local stewards.

In the days of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Geng Jingzhong was still worried about how to use these talents next, but now that he thinks about it, isn't it an excellent opportunity in front of him? Let these people be in charge of disaster relief in each region, one can accumulate experience for themselves, and the other can make the local people familiar with them and feel grateful to them. In this way, after a while, Geng Jingzhong will find them a petty official, and it will be obedient!

Geng Jingzhong knew that his Geng family was no better than Wu Sangui's Wu family, and Wu Sangui could arrange for officials to take office directly, that is, "Western Election Officials", but his Geng family couldn't, and he never had this right. There was no way, Geng Jingzhong could only find another way. He can't arrange officials directly, but the imperial court has a huge loophole to exploit, and it is not enough to spend money to buy officials!

"You mean, the matter of donating officials?" Geng Jingzhong asked after reacting.

"Yes, I think this is a great opportunity. To deal with local affairs, we must need a lot of grassroots officials, so our people can come in handy. It's also a great opportunity to get exercise, and it can also get the local people to recognize them, killing two birds with one stone! Li Guangdi said affirmatively.

"Yes, I'll go to Liu Bingzheng later, and I'll do this matter by the way!"

"Donating officials", also known as donations, is a way to allow scholars to donate money and goods to the state to obtain knighthoods and official positions in order to make up for financial difficulties in the feudal society. The history of this donation can be traced back to the Qin Dynasty. Even in the 21st century, where Geng Jingzhong lived before, this phenomenon still exists, but it is carried out in secret. Geng Jingzhong himself knows a real thing, a friend of his own, who is developing in the army, and if he wants to be promoted, he must spend money to buy it from above, and that is almost a clear price!

During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, there were many border affairs at that time, and the treasury was very expensive, and the practice of exchanging titles for food was no longer enough to solve the problem, so he sold his official position to increase his income and pay for huge military expenses. At this point, the idiom of "selling official beards" was merged into one, and this idiom was also formed at this time. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Liu Hong hung the price list of officials inside and outside the Hongdu Gate, and the price list of 2,000 stones was sold for 20 million yuan; Those with 400 stones are sold for 4 million, and the "Three Princes" are sold for 10 million. Cao Song spent 10,000 yuan to buy a Taiwei, and Cui Lie bribed the nanny of the Tongling Emperor to buy Situ at half price. This is also recorded in the Three Kingdoms.

In today's imperial court, donation has become an important system that complements the imperial examination. There are both regular donations and regular donations, and they are managed in a unified manner and the price is clearly marked. People donate official hats such as red tops, yellow tops, and blue tops, but there are no "black tops". Donations became more and more abundant, and 60 percent of the officials in history by the time of Qianlong were self-donated. In addition, the people can not only "donate officials", but also donate canons, false titles and official uniforms, and even donate the prisoners of the national prison, which is the so-called "spending money to buy diplomas".

However, the proliferation of donations will lead to corruption among officials, bribery of public banks, and corruption. The so-called "three years of Qing prefect, 100,000 snowflakes of silver", it costs 4,600 taels of silver to buy a prefect, but his salary is only 60 taels of silver. In order to get back the money from the "donors", the officials concerned will often choose to accept bribes, just to get back the capital, but they have no intention of doing anything. As soon as the rule of officials was bad, thieves were everywhere, and social problems of strict government appeared.

What Geng Jingzhong discussed with Li Guangdi was to spend money on these elites he had cultivated to buy officials. Geng Jingzhong is not ready to buy them how high the officials, although the imperial court system stipulates that the highest officials who can donate county orders, but Geng Jingzhong does not need them, he wants county officials below the county order and officials below the county order. The people who really do things in the government are officials rather than officials, and officials and officials are not the same concept. In fact, if Geng Jingzhong's people control the local grassroots affairs in Fujian, they will also control the whole of Fujian. In a few years, these people will accumulate more experience, and the promotion below will be logical!

Thinking about this, Geng Jingzhong really thinks it's funny, it seems that among all the dynasties in Chinese history, only the Qing Dynasty took donation as a normal way to promote under the state system, although other dynasties had, but they were not as systematic as the Qing Dynasty, and as an important source of national revenue to organize and operate. The imperial court has unified management of this, which stipulates that there are only five items that can be donated, military quarters, and war needs; River worker, the river bursts, governs the river; disaster relief, a big famine; Cultivating and cultivating fields; Coast. These five items can be donated, but not all of them can be donated.

Now, when the typhoon hits Fujian, Zhejiang and other provinces are affected, it is just time to start donating, and the two river workers can resettle these 115 elites. As for the qualifications for donation, you only need to arrange some township neighbors to sign a pledge and guarantee, and then ask all localities to help open a place of origin and innocence book. The officials they were hired for were not big, and they didn't cost much, but it took a little effort to get the real shortage.

In later history, the Qing Dynasty emperor's donation was recorded in detail, and Geng Jingzhong remembered a number of jù, or he had only read it on the Internet when he was bored. Kangxi's conquest of Junggar was insufficient, and he issued an edict to encourage wealthy households to donate, so only Shanxi Province donated 12,000 people to the county in one year, and Gansu made 17,000 in half a year; However, these people cannot be compared with the talents cultivated by Geng Jingzhong, and there is less than one layer of real talent and real learning. During the Yongzheng period, he supervised the examination of the Guozijian to inspect the alternate officials who had paid donations but had not yet officially arrived and were waiting for vacancies, and as a result, more than 9,500 of the more than 10,000 prisoners failed, and even nearly 6 adults handed in blank papers.

However, the test was Baguwen, even if the one hundred and fifteen people under Geng Jingzhong were asked to take the test, they would not pass the test either. Baguwen is very difficult, it won't be no, it won't, take a sentence out of the Four Books and Five Classics to let you break the topic and make a discussion, and if you don't have any real effort, you can only hand in a blank volume; During the Qianlong period, it was stipulated that 20 stones of white rice could be donated to the county, and almost all the banner people in Beijing City exchanged the old rice issued to them for an official; In the later years of Jiaqing, the treasury was empty, and the number of donors was 220,000.

Think about how terrible it is, there are only 1,300 counties in the country, and there are 220,000 candidates eyeing them. Therefore, it is still very difficult to get an official position, and there is basically no hope of getting a real vacancy. Therefore, Geng Jingzhong only wants to get the position of an official, and in Geng Jingzhong's view, placing these people in the government to become a official is more in line with his strategic layout. As long as he spends some more money and opens up the joints between the Fujian governor and the eight prefects, the following things will be a piece of cake! (To be continued......)