In recent years, the elite class of the empire have married too many of each other, and even the marriage with the Fang family of the Empress Dowager's mother's family does not have much practical political impact. It is normal to be named a viscount, and the ministers of the empire have basically obtained knighthoods, and they are all viscounts and barons.

But Jiang Daoquan has an advantage that others can't match, because at the beginning of the year, he had an extra part-time job as the enlightenment teacher of the emperor's eldest son, Lin Xuan.

Well, it is the eldest son of the Emperor of Jiao, Lin Xuan, who is literate and literate.

Although this position does not require him to do anything for the time being, because the emperor's eldest son Lin Xuan is still too young, and the child who is only a few years old is far from officially entering school, he just occasionally reads the stories in the history books of scripture to Lin Xuan, well, to put it bluntly, it is a story.

But the political meaning behind this is very big, because this is a teacher for the prince, which shows that Lin Zhe trusts and appreciates his talents, otherwise there are so many talented people in the empire, why let Jiang Daoquan enlighten the emperor's eldest son, Lin Xuan?

Even one day, when the emperor's eldest son, Lin Xuan, really has a chance to ascend to the throne, he is a proper emperor!

Jiang Daoquan also values this identity, so although he is only acting as a storyteller now, what story to tell and how to tell it has been carefully considered.

The stories told should be interesting, so that the eldest son of the emperor Lin Xuan, who is still a little child, can really listen to it, and at the same time, these stories must also have rich connotations, and they must be able to correctly shape the worldview of the emperor's eldest son Lin Xuan, and the most important thing is the way of the king.

Regardless of whether this Lin Xuan can become a prince and ascend the throne in the future, Jiang Daoquan is cultivated according to the ideal emperor in his heart.

What is his ideal son of heaven?

That is naturally the king of benevolence!

If this Lin Xuan really let him teach him since he was a child, it is estimated that he will be the second Lin Yunwen. Proper king of the dead country.

However, Jiang Daoquan himself didn't know that Lin Zhe had no intention of letting him teach all the time. He just valued Jiang Daoquan's traditional Confucian attainments, and at the same time, Jiang Daoquan's unique dedication to Confucian students.

Regardless of Jiang Daoquan's way of doing things. But his way of being an official is more upright than that of most people in the Empire.

That's right, it's the word 'integrity'.

The reason why this person was able to become the leader of conservative officials and be supported by a large group of old diehards was because this person did have merit, this person was an honest official, and his mansion was given by Lin Zhe, and when those nobles had dozens or even hundreds of maids and servants, there were only a few maids in his house, and he was very strict with his children. Jiang Daoquan's family has never done anything to damage the reputation.

Of course, honesty is nothing for a high-ranking official, and the real key thing is that many of the things Jiang Daoquan has done are for the country and the people.

In order to prevent the military from interfering in the affairs of the harem, he dared to admonish each other with death.

In order to support the relief plan, he was able to put aside his political prejudices and cooperate with Guo Longyun, Song Guanqian and others, and even give up some of his own political interests.

So it doesn't matter what the person does. But for people is not to say.

It's quite good to have such a person as the prince's enlightenment teacher.

However, Lin Zhe did not intend to let him continue to teach like this, and he would be transferred from the education of the princes in a few years, and he would definitely arrange for others to educate the princes in the future, including the generals of the military. Some other ministers.

The education of the princes is that they need to receive a variety of ideas and knowledge, and only when they have more contact can they understand more.

And for now. Jiang Daoquan is the enlightenment teacher of the princes!

In the eyes of outsiders, such a Jiang Daoquan is naturally a sign of the prosperity of the saints.

He and Bi Yutong often cooperate politically. It is used to fight against the new officials led by Guo Longyun who are shouting for various reforms every day.

The struggle for tradition and reform within the empire was fierce, and this was evident in almost all military and political terms. Local and central.

Even in the same case of industrial development, the opinions of conservatives and reformers were very different, and each faction believed that its own opinion was best for the empire.

This clash of opinions is not a personal vendetta, but a difference in political attitudes.

In the years since the empire was founded, this antagonism has been permeated almost everywhere, and almost all the policies issued by the empire have been the result of games played by various political factions.

For example, the recent debate on the rural economy in the cabinet is a typical example!

Guo Longyun's people believed that the traditional rural economic model of the empire was a major obstacle to the industrial development of the empire, and proposed a series of measures to force the transformation of the economic model in rural areas, and to improve the existing family model of farming towards centralized and large-scale farming.

However, Jiang Daoquan and Bi Yu and others believed that the rural economy was related to the foundation of the empire, and that when the vast majority of the empire's population was rural, any measures to shake the existing rural economy could cause large-scale unrest.

For example, it is necessary to standardize and formulate a land sales system, limit the large-scale concentration of land, and then impose a compulsory limit on land rent, so that landless and landless peasants can obtain enough land for survival.

At the same time, the two sides also have huge differences on the development of the cotton spinning industry, Jiang Daoquan believes that the large-scale development of the cotton spinning industry will further persecute the living conditions of the rural bottom people, because the large number of cheap cotton cloth and cotton yarn produced by the factory has actually destroyed the pattern of male farming and female weaving that has lasted for thousands of years, and when the homespun cloth that rural women have worked hard to weave at home cannot be sold, or the price is very cheap by the impact of woven fabrics, then it will seriously reduce the sideline income of rural families.

However, Guo Longyun and others believe that this can encourage more rural people to go to the city to work, earn money by working, and then exchange for cloth and other daily necessities.

These debates have continued since last year, and the Empire has been slow to reform the existing rural economy because the Cabinet itself has not been able to unanimous on its own.

But there is one thing that both sides agree on. That is, the tentacles of the empire must be further extended to the grassroots!

In the early years of the empire, it began to carry out wars in some areas to set up township-level ruling institutions, the earliest of which was in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. Then it expanded to the Gangnam area.

At present, some prefectures and counties in Zhejiang and Jiangsu (southern Jiangsu), especially those with developed economies, have established administrative organs at the town and township levels.

However, there was no official mandate for the promotion of the previous township agencies. Instead, some prefectures and counties launched their own experiments according to the call of the empire.

And the pilot situation in recent years is also relatively good!

At present, the township and township governments established in Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu have relatively simple administrative functions, such as township governments, and there are only one or two actual public officials, and the work they are engaged in is mainly to cooperate with the higher-level governments to publicize some government decrees.

The town-level government is relatively perfect, with patrol police and taxation and other related agencies.

After all, in the past, these two levels of institutions were only available in counties, and the population of a county was as small as tens of thousands, but as large as hundreds of thousands. Most of them do not live in county seats, but are located in rural areas, so it is very troublesome to transfer people from the county when collecting taxes or there are any theft cases.

The establishment of tax and patrol officers in town-level institutions would allow them to reach out more to rural areas.

Due to the relatively good situation of the pilot project in Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu, the cabinet is already preparing to extend this township system to the whole country.

The nationwide promotion of the township system would be formally implemented after February 1862, that is, after the Lunar New Year, when the empire would use an administrative order. Prefectures and counties are required to establish corresponding township and township institutions.

The implementation of the township system will change the situation that China's government decrees for thousands of years do not leave the county seat!

For thousands of years, China's political power basically only covered the county level, and the vast rural system under the county was maintained by traditional gentry and clans.

To put it nicely, it is the self-government of the villagers. To put it mildly, it's lawlessness.

For example, the ancient name 'pig cage invasion' is a product of this traditional system, which represents whether some of the villagers' behaviors will be punished if there is no basic concept of government or legal system in the countryside. Not according to the laws of the regime, but according to certain traditions of the village clans and even the private opinions of some old people.

Why did the gentry in ancient China have so much power? It can even directly influence the decisions of the local government, when some officials take office. The first thing is to read the Squire? It is because in the traditional system, the gentry are the actual rulers of the countryside, and the government cannot interfere in the specific government affairs of the countryside at all.

With the implementation of the township system in the empire, perhaps there will be all kinds of defects and troubles in the early township system, but with the implementation of the township system, after a few years, the empire's complete control of the vast rural areas will not become a utopia, once the empire completely controls the rural areas, then the subsequent series of reforms related to the countryside can be truly implemented.

For example, measures such as land sales restrictions and land rent restrictions, which Bi Yutong, Jiang Daoquan and others highly recommend, sound good now, but there is not much possibility of actual implementation.

This is because even if these reforms are promulgated now, they will at most be at the county level, and the greatest possibility is that ten years after the decree was promulgated, the peasants who had never been out of the village in their lives would not even have heard of it.

Therefore, if we want to truly carry out the reform of the relevant rural systems, then we must first extend the government's tentacles to the rural areas!

The cooperation in the township system can be regarded as a rare sincere cooperation between Guo Longyun, Bi Yutong, Jiang Daoquan and other bigwigs of the civil and official factions, and the sincere cooperation of these civil officials will prevent some contention and conflict among the civil officials, and this is very rare for a decree that popularizes the whole country.

For example, in the allocation of the budget, the Cabinet and the military are in contention, and after the civil and military disputes are over, the various ministries of the Cabinet have to engage in fierce contention.

Jiang Daoquan wants more funds for education, Guo Longyun wants more funds for industrial development, and even the newly established Ministry of Communications has issued its own wants, asking for tens of millions of dollars for railway construction and canal renovation.

And the Ministry of Finance is not to be outdone, saying that the funds are tight, and now there are more and more tax personnel, it is difficult to meet the expenses of the tax system, and the personnel funds are insufficient, resulting in a lot of tax revenue can not be collected or undercollected, resulting in the loss of national tax revenue.

Not long after the Spring Festival, in March 1862, at the imperial budget meeting of the cabinet, these civil officials were all sharp-tongued and fierce to compete for funds, which made Lin Zhe, who was sitting on it, speechless.

Listening to the bitterness and meanness that came out of their mouths, even Jiang Daoquan said foul words, he couldn't help but sigh, how could these courtiers of his have the momentum to develop towards the street aunts, this is too ugly to scold people.

When Jiang Daoquan quoted scriptures and used classical Chinese that ordinary people could not understand to scold Guo Longyun, the minister of economic affairs who advocated cutting education funds, he took a sip of tea to moisten his throat and was about to scold Bi Yutong at length.

Lin Zhe finally coughed lightly!

These ministers don't have to be embarrassed, he Lin Zhe still has to be embarrassed, a good imperial budget meeting has turned into a street war, what is this! (To be continued.) )