Among the courtiers, especially the important ministers, there were still some officials who had grown up with Confucian education.

Therefore, when Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youzhen convened a court meeting and told the Ming officials what he was worried about, many of the ministers were shocked and didn't know what to say.

In the past, the Ming Dynasty was mostly admonished by officials, and the emperor adopted it, and the crisis was also discovered by officials and admonished by the emperor.

But now it was the Ming Emperor Zhu Youzhen who realized this crisis first and raised it to inform the officials below, and the officials were naturally a little caught off guard.

Moreover, these Confucian-educated officials have always been short-sighted or unmotivated, and what they can do is to maintain their current rule according to the will of the gods or the sages, but it is difficult for them to plan ahead and predict the future through the current phenomena.

Not everyone is Zhuge Liang, and before he comes out of the mountain, he knows that the world will be divided into three points.

Zhang Huangyan and other courtiers really didn't expect that the Ming Dynasty would lurk in such a big crisis, in their opinion, it is common for the empire to have some chaos, and if things are uneven, they will be resounding, and people will be like this, which is a normal phenomenon.

But when Zhu Youzhen said, Zhang Huangyan and other courtiers suddenly realized that they were at a loss, and they surrendered their hands in front of the emperor: "The ministers are dull, please show your majesty." ”

Zhu Youzhen was a little speechless, he had to admit that most of the officials in front of him were old-style Confucian bureaucrats, and they only knew how to accumulate wealth and do things according to their own commands, and at most they followed their conscience to do some righteous things, but few dared to propose changing the entire political system.

Zhu Youzhen didn't know if they were afraid of themselves, afraid that they would be executed if they said the wrong thing, or if they were really educated by Confucianism and did not take the initiative to forge ahead and change their thinking habits.

"I don't give you an order to do anything, you are all cabinet ministers, in charge of the Ming Dynasty's taxes, official appointments and dismissals, financial allocations, engineering construction and other powers, I want you to think with me about how to prevent this crisis from happening, so that these contradictions that have arisen can be resolved, how to find a balanced way, this world is not only mine, but also yours, is the whole world, now we are to manage this world, we have to find a way to manage it."

Zhu Youzhen said and said: "Let's talk about the north and the outside of the Guan, these places are the largest places in my Ming Dynasty's ruling area, and now there are a large number of self-cultivated farmers or farmers who contract the land of our Emperor Village, and they support most of my Ming Dynasty's food sources and agricultural tax revenues, which account for how much of the Ming Dynasty's national taxes." ”

"Returning to Your Majesty, this part of the agricultural tax revenue is less than 30% of the imperial national tax, because most of the agricultural income is concentrated in the imperial village and the merchant group and the low tax rate of the imperial court makes this part of the proportion not high, with the development of industry and commerce in this part of the area and the exploitation of the low-level officials, it is estimated that it will be reduced to less than 10% in three or five years."

At this time, Zhang Du, the secretary of the Ministry of Finance, stood up and replied that he was a relatively young official, who had studied for a year in the Tang Qian Law Department of Daming Jingshi University, and had obtained the personal transmission of Qu Shiyun and Yang Mingshen, and was known for his research on "Xu Xue" (Xu Guangqi).

"With the prolongation of the empire's rule and the deepening of the degree of official neglect, there will definitely be more and more officials in these places, and the former 1 government 200 regular servants may become 1 government 200 regular servants and 10,000 white servants (temporary workers), these people will definitely exploit the people, and this is also the most direct factor that may lead to the bankruptcy of the yeoman farmers, including the employees of the Imperial Village, what if these people are directly exempted from agricultural taxes and the tenant farmers are exempted from the rent of the tenant farmers in the Imperial Village?"

Zhu Youzhen said and said: "In this way, the local officials will have no reason to exploit the peasants, and the yeoman farmers will also be protected, their income will also increase, and their consumption power will also increase, which will promote the development of industry and commerce in the Ming Dynasty, but increase the tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty, so that there will be no civil revolt after a hundred years, and the speed of land annexation will also slow down, and the possibility of yeoman farmers selling their land will be reduced." ”

"If what Your Majesty says is implemented, the imperial court will certainly be damaged, but it will indeed be beneficial to the people, but the gentry and rich people in the north will also benefit from it, and they will be more enthusiastic about buying land, so that the peasants will leave the land."

Zhang Huangyan, the first assistant of the cabinet, replied at this time.

"If you don't get tax, you can't stop the squire and rich people from annexing land resources, the stronger is the natural principle, this can't be stopped, but if the court sacrifices this part of the interests, at least it can slow down the process of bankrupting the yeoman farmers, even if something happens, the farmers will not hate the court, and my Ming court did not take any of its profits."

Zhu Youzhen said this, and said: "But in this case, there will still be most of the peasants leaving the land, we can look at the situation in Jiangnan, Jiangnan has developed commerce, attracting a large number of surrounding farmers to the city to become workers, and even farmers take the initiative to leave, and the surrounding villages are very barren, it can be seen that as long as we continue to develop industry and commerce, we can digest this part of the peasants who have left the land, so our court still has to pay attention to the development of industry and commerce." ”

"What Your Majesty said is very true, Wechen has ordered the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and the Imperial Economic Reform Commission to plan for the continuation of the implementation of low-tax zones in the north and outside the customs in order to attract merchants."

As soon as Zhang Huangyan said this, Zhu Youzhen nodded, and said:

"The second is the problem in the Jiangnan region, I went to Nanjing, and I saw a lot of problems, first of all, the low-level officials are too much!

Wantonly abusing his power, as an administrative official, he arbitrarily imposed various orders on the merchants, and even locked up the merchants at will, so as to exploit the middle and lower class merchants, and the upper merchants also complained a lot, saying that you had imposed additional taxes in Jiangnan, and even demanded that you must give priority to the employment of first-class citizens, which increased their business costs and reduced the profits they earned, and they had to move to places outside the customs and even overseas. ”

"Your Majesty, Weichen admits that now the local officials have collected too much money, but if they don't collect money from the merchants, they have to collect money from the citizens, and the citizens are first-class citizens, and they can't be too protected by the imperial court decrees, and there are no merchants to find a reason to naturally collect money from the merchants."

At this time, Shang Shuwen of the Organization Department stood up and said.

"It can't be too much, it can't be uncontrolled, it can't be uncontrolled! The middle and lower class merchants are the foundation of Ming commerce, they bear most of the taxes and the employment of Ming citizens, and they have broken people's property and provoked civil revolt, and it is not you who suffer in the end! ”

Zhu Youzhen scolded loudly, and then sat down calmly: "Okay, today's focus is not to say how hateful these officials are, the focus is on how to protect these businessmen, and not let the officials below be exploited too much, and we have to put a tight spell on them." ”

"Let's take the incident that happened in Tianfu at the request of Tianfu Yin to set up a license as an example, the merchant had already reported to the local industrial and commercial housing to obtain a license at the beginning of opening a shop, workshop, factory company, how could there be a license fee, who issued this order, was it under your cabinet, or did he give it at the whim of Tianfu Yin himself?"

There will be another chapter later

(End of chapter)