Chapter 232: Salt Reform Plan

Although it is said that delegating to Nanjing to stay in the capital as an official is equivalent to throwing idle and scattered, after all, Yang Tinghe is still a household secretary and a person in charge of silver. But his abode is too shabby to look at.

The four brick houses have a small courtyard, which is surrounded not by stone bricks, but by bamboo blocks. On the left side of the courtyard were growing vegetables, and an old man who looked to be about fifty years old was hoeing the soil in a brown cloth coat.

On the right side of the yard, a small chicken farm was also enclosed with bamboo blocks stuck in the ground, and a woman was holding corn in her hand and "clucking" in her mouth, feeding the chickens.

This is the residence of Yang Tinghe, who has gone down in history, in Nanjing? Jiang Xia suddenly felt a little unimaginable.

Pushing open the simple wooden door made of a few wooden blocks, Jiang Xia walked in with Zhu Houzhao.

The woman in the courtyard saw the two of them, so she asked, "Two sons, are you here to find them?"

"This lady is here to ask to see Lord Yang Gongyang."

"Your Majesty?"

As soon as Jiang Xia finished speaking, the old man who was originally hoeing the soil suddenly screamed, and the old man immediately knelt on the ground and shouted: "Weichen Yang Tinghe, see the emperor!" ”

As soon as Yang Tinghe knelt on the ground, the woman immediately knelt on the ground and said, "The people's woman Yang Li is the emperor." ”

It turned out to be Yang Tinghe's wife, Jiang Xia secretly said in his heart, and after carefully looking at the woman, he felt that this woman must be a virtuous woman, and she must have been very beautiful when she was young.

Although she was dressed plainly, Jiang Xia could still feel that she had a sense of knowledge, and it seemed that she should be from a scholarly family.

"Excuse me." Zhu Houzhao said.

Yang Tinghe stood up with his wife.

Zhu Houzhao looked around and said, "Let's go into the house and talk about it." ”

Yang Tinghe nodded, turned his head to look at his wife: "Madam, bother you to prepare a meal and make a pot of tea." “

"Yes." Yang's wife replied and stepped back.

Entering the house, Jiang Xia felt that the room was dim and dark, and there was some dampness.

If you are an ordinary person, you will definitely sigh that Yang Tinghe is an honest official and will admire him for his high style and brightness in his heart.

But Jiang Xia was a little disapproving, he silently calculated in his heart the monthly income of the household department of the book, and secretly thought that even if he was not greedy or not, he should not live in such a house with the monthly income of the household department.

is so deliberately poor, either there is a tendency to masochism, or it is a deliberate fame and reputation.

Jiang Xia was still thinking like this in his heart, Yang Tinghe and Zhu Houzhao had already chatted. Hearing that Zhu Houzhao was coming in Weifu, Yang Tinghe was very dissatisfied, and said with a straight face: "Your Majesty, please forgive the old minister for saying too much, as the so-called son of a daughter can't sit in the hall, you are the king of a country, and you are responsible for the well-being of tens of millions of people in the world and the Ming Dynasty, you"

"Okay, okay, Elder Yang Ge, I know that I am wrong. I promise you, how about not making an example? ”

Yang Tinghe glanced at Zhu Houzhao deeply, sighed slightly and did not speak again.

He knew that Zhu Houzhao was like this, every time he confessed his mistakes, he was faster than anyone else, but if he really changed it afterwards, it was two words.

Then Zhu Houzhao briefly talked about the matter of his desire to investigate the Lianghuai Salt Administration, as well as the matter of inviting Yang Tinghe to return to Beijing to re-enter the cabinet.

Yang Tinghe naturally would not refuse the latter piece, and immediately thanked him after hearing it. And the previous incident Yang Tinghe frowned slightly, and said: "Your Majesty, there must be something wrong with these two Huai Yan Policies, but in the final analysis, the two Huai Yan Policies are very involved, and if you rashly do something about them, I am afraid it will affect the whole body." “

After hearing this, Jiang Xia secretly pointed to the map, these two Huaiyan politics are indeed as deeply involved as Yang Tinghe said. According to the information found by the dragon detectives of the Jiangxia royal family, the Lianghuai Salt Administration not only involved many ministers in the court. At the same time, the major old families in the south of the Yangtze River, and several royal clansmen in the Ming Dynasty are basically inseparable.

If you move rashly, I am afraid it will cause a lot of backlash.

Jiang Xia, who had never intervened, suddenly spoke: "Then what if we don't uproot them, but want to control the two Huai Yanzheng in our own hands?" “

Yang Tinghe glanced at Jiang Xia, and then remembered to ask Zhu Houzhao: "Who is this?" ”

Zhu Houzhao introduced: "Wenyuange University Shi Jiangxia. ”

"Wenyuan Pavilion Scholar?" Yang Tinghe looked at Jiang Xia in surprise, he had never heard of such a young scholar of Wenyuan Pavilion in his life.

Yang Tinghe couldn't help but ask: "Have you entered the cabinet?" “

Jiang Xia shook his head and said, "The kid is shallow, how can he enter the cabinet." “

Yang Tinghe nodded slightly, if he had never entered the pavilion, the scholar of Wenyuan Pavilion was just a false title of a fifth grade, which was acceptable. However, he was awarded this title at such a young age, and he also followed the emperor to make a private visit to Weifu, which shows that this person is very favored by the emperor.

Yang Tinghe hugged his fists slightly at Jiang Xia and said, "Please also tell me Lord Jiang, how to control the two Huai Yanzheng in your own hands?" “

Regarding this matter, Jiang Xia had actually considered it on the way here, and at this moment, Yang Tinghe asked Jiang Xia and said: "Actually, the kid's idea is this, we can implement the 'monopoly system' and the 'salt price monopoly system' in salt politics." ”

Then, Jiang Xia explained these two systems to Yang Tinghe.

The official salt sales in the Ming Dynasty mainly included the introduction method, the opening method, the counting and salt distribution method, the outline method and the ticket method.

The citation is a salt concession system. The law stipulates that "merchants" are allowed by the state to carry and sell salt. There are also "quotes" – areas where salt is allowed to be sold.

Open the Chinese method: that is, when the country is short of food or drought and famine occurs in a certain region, recruit merchants to transport grain and grass and other necessities to the designated area, and after completing the task, the government will issue them salt guides, and the merchants will go to the production area to receive salt with the "lead", and then sell it at the designated place. At that time, the method of opening in the middle of the country was: nano salt, nama salt, nabu salt, banknote salt, iron salt and other forms. It is to transport rice, horses, cloth, banknotes, and iron to the designated place, and then receive salt guides.

The method of calculating and distributing salt: that is, the "Yousi" will issue the number of households in the prefecture and county under its jurisdiction, send people to the "Salt Envoy Division", receive salt back to the county, and then distribute salt to each household, and let them pay nanometers, grain or money to pay military salaries.

Ticket law: It is to implement the ticket law in remote mountainous areas where salt merchants are reluctant to go, as well as in states and counties near salt farms where private salt is prevalent. The ticket law stipulates that 8 cents of silver is paid for every 100 catties of salt, and the indigenous merchants pay the silver to receive the tickets, which are sold and sold. Because ticket salt is cheaper than lead salt, it is sold faster.

In the salt monopoly system in the early Ming Dynasty, the production and marketing system was relatively complete, and the order of salt affairs was relatively good. As a result, the Ming government made a lot of money from table salt.

But in the later period, the method of opening the middle was broken for a long time. Salt merchants and officials collude with each other to indiscriminately distribute salt, or officials directly sell salt to salt merchants without salt introduction, or salt merchants indiscriminately raise the price of salt to sell, and cooperate with salt barons to wantonly dump low-quality salt.

Today's Daming Salt Administration has indeed reached the point where it can't be changed. Jiangxia's salt policy reform was very simple, that is, salt merchants were included in the official system, and only a part of the salt merchants were issued with "monopoly sales licenses", and only those who had these qualifications could buy salt and sell salt.

This is tantamount to depriving the majority of the population of their interests and giving them to only a small number of people. And in order to maintain their own interests, this small group of people will definitely stand in the same camp with the imperial court, because everyone is a community of interests.

They won't allow the salt barons to compete with them for profit, and they won't show their handle for others to catch, otherwise there will be many people waiting to take their place.

And this part of the people will be inspected by the imperial court once a year, and the quality of their salt, the amount of taxes, and the price of salt will be included in the inspection. If the inspection fails, you may be deprived of the salt merchant's qualification, and then recruit others to fill it.

In the future, the price of salt will no longer be set by salt merchants, but by the imperial court. If the salt merchant monopoly household raises the price of salt and sells the salt, and the people use their power to file a complaint with the yamen, once it is verified to be true, they will be immediately deprived of their monopoly qualifications.

After Jiang Xia said his salt reform plan, Yang Tinghe was silent. After a long while, Yang Tinghe spoke: "Jiang Xia, you want to pierce the sky." ”

Indeed, Jiangxia's salt reform method is indeed an effective method, simple, practical, and easy to supervise and operate.

After all, it is much easier to manage a small number of people than it is to manage most people. But in order to fully realize Jiangxia's idea, then the original Salt Transportation Division and Salt Class Promotion Division must first be abolished.

It is already difficult to implement such an action just in the land of the two Huai, and if the land of the two Huai has an effect to be implemented to the whole country, then I am afraid that what will be faced is not the rebound of the strength of one or two parties, but the rebound of the surrounding people, I don't know how many people in the road.

Jiang Xia looked at Yang Tinghe with a smile on the corner of his mouth.

Yang Tinghe suddenly understood, he shook his head and said, "You kid actually hit the old man with his idea. If you can seek well-being for the people of Daming and stabilize the society of the Ming Dynasty, what does it matter if the old man dies. ”

Seeing that Yang Tinghe agreed with his thoughts, Jiang Xia felt in his heart that this Yang Tinghe was indeed a courageous person as recorded in history. Although Jiang Xia's salt reform plan was originally created by Jiang Xia, the last one to implement must be the future cabinet chief assistant in front of him.

After chatting for a while, talking about the details of the salt tax reform, Yang Tinghe's wife knocked on the door and entered the house, asking if it was time to eat.

Yang Tinghe asked Zhu Houzhao with his eyes, and after Zhu Houzhao nodded, Yang's wife began to serve the food.

When the meal was served, Jiang Xia also sat with Zhu Houzhao with a big grin, while Yang Tinghe stood aside with Yang's wife, and the two of them sat down at the table after Zhu Houzhao's permission was granted.

PS: The last few chapters are a bit boring because they involve a lot of foreshadowing of the plot that follows. However, when this trick is over, our obscene Jiang Dagongzi will return immediately. The level of the tiger is limited, and I dare not ask for a reward, so please don't be stingy with subscriptions, red tickets, and collections.

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