Early in the morning of the second day after the establishment of the country, Xiao Yungui held the first state council after the establishment of the country in the Qianqing Palace. At the meeting, Zuo Zongtang, the prime minister of the Kingdom of Heaven, announced a series of decrees on the reform of the political system and the bureaucratic system on the spot, the most notable of which was the establishment of the central cabinet of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The cabinet system appeared in the Ming Dynasty, starting from Yongle, the emperors of all dynasties have sent great policies to the cabinet to varying degrees, and the emperor "can rule the world without receiving his subordinates, so as to have a cabinet minister's vote to prepare for the death". However, none of them dared to take responsibility for violating the ancestral system, and none of them wanted to share a part of the imperial power that had won complete victory with the ministers. As a result, the Cabinet has been slow to progress and has never been able to become a formal administrative body at the central level.

For the first time, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom officially designated the cabinet as a formal administrative body at the central level, and at the same time, the cabinet implemented the responsible cabinet system, but unlike the British responsible cabinet, the responsible cabinet of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was not responsible to the parliament, but to the emperor of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, that is, if the emperor did not trust the cabinet or the ministers had a motion for impeachment, the emperor could choose to remove the cabinet or dissolve the cabinet after the cabinet hearing, and then re-select the cabinet candidate to form the cabinet.

Of course, although the cabinet of the Taiping Heavenly Dynasty was responsible to the emperor, it had more power than the cabinet of the Ming Dynasty. Although the Ming Dynasty cabinet also had greater power, it was always subservient to the imperial power, and in the Ming Dynasty, the cabinet never became a threat to the imperial power. However, the reform of the cabinet system of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a great release of the imperial power from the shackles of cabinet power. The Taiping Cabinet was both involved in the legislation and responsible for the administration, and actually controlled the legislative process of the Heavenly Kingdom. At the same time, the Prime Minister is the head of the Cabinet government and presides over the Cabinet meetings. It has the power to appoint and dismiss cabinet members and all senior government officials. Responsible for formulating and implementing the country's major internal and external policies.

The only means by which the Emperor of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom controlled the cabinet was the cabinet hearing system, and if the emperor disagreed with the cabinet's governance, he could not completely obstruct the cabinet's governance, but could only intervene by removing the cabinet. The current cabinet system of the Taiping Heavenly Empire is like a listed company, the emperor is the chairman, and then the appointed prime minister is the CEO, and the operation of the entire company is controlled and completed by the CEO, and then the board of directors and the chairman have the power to remove the CEO.

At the same time, because the power of the cabinet has greatly increased, and there is no eunuch group in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Palace. Therefore, the cabinet of heaven is more centralized than the cabinet of the Ming Dynasty, because it does not need to compete for power and profit with the eunuch group and the six ministries, which can ensure the smooth operation of the cabinet and there will be no situation where there are multiple orders.

At the same time, in order to ensure effective supervision of the cabinet, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom established the People's Assembly, which is the representatives elected by the common people everywhere, who are only responsible for judging the quality of the country's government affairs and policies, and finally send the results directly to the emperor. The emperor decides on the results of the work of the cabinet by motion of the House of Representatives. This parliament is only a form of information gathering and transmission, and does not have the power to directly recall the cabinet and does not participate in the election of the prime minister. However, this system of electing the House of Representatives is to lay the foundation for the future cabinet to be elected by the people, and at the same time, it also gives the cabinet another kind of constraint.

After the announcement of the cabinet system. It is the reform of the six ministries, the traditional six ministries of the imperial court have seriously hindered the operational efficiency in the face of more and more affairs, and the thirty-six departments under the six ministries should be in charge of all the affairs of the state. Including the military, government, transportation, medical care, education, diplomacy, commerce and trade, agriculture, industry, and so on, but every time the department has official business, it has to go to the six departments to change hands first. This is very inefficient, and there is a lot of redundancy with overlapping responsibilities. Therefore. This time, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom directly abolished the traditional six ministries, directly elevated the 36 departments to the central ministries of the state, and established the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Agriculture, and so on, so that various departments were more professional. Some of the original six ministers, such as Shangshu and Shilang, went directly to the new ministries to take over ministerial positions, and some entered the cabinet.

In addition to the above-mentioned political reforms, there was also the eye-catching military reform, according to the new military system of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Taiping Emperor concurrently served as the commander of the three armies of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which was divided into nine military regions according to the region, including the East China Military Region, the South China Military Region, the Central China Military Region, the North China Military Region, the Northwest Military Region, the Southwest Military Region, the Northeast Region, the Xinjiang Military Region and the Central Military Region. The first seven military regions in the traditional Chinese region are easy to understand, but the Xinjiang Military Region is divided separately because it is still the army of the Yidian, and the central military region is an important manifestation of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's defense force to ensure the capital.

Then there is the division of the armies within each military region, the elite first army and the second army are assigned to the central military region, the rest of the three to eighteenth armies are assigned to the remaining seven military regions, and the Xinjiang Military Region is under the command of Yiwang alone. The military commanders of the above military regions are rotated every three years, with the exception of the Xinjiang Military Region.

Originally, Xiao Yungui also wanted to set up an overseas military region, but the intention of this expansion was too obvious, and he was afraid of bringing bad diplomatic influence, so he did not set it up for the time being, but a few years later, this military region was still established, and there were two, one was the South China Sea Military Region and the other was the Northern Xinjiang Military Region (foreigners call it the Siberian Military Region).

After the reform of the military administration, another major reform of education was announced, that is, the abolition of the thousand-year-old imperial examination system, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom began to implement a three-year compulsory education system for the whole people and a system of national government officials. Three-year compulsory education is a kind of universal education that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has spent a lot of money and investment to promote in order to reduce the illiteracy rate in the whole country, and it is expected that more than 3,000 new primary schools will be opened in the country within three years, and every county in the country will have a public primary school. Because the country has too many people and too many areas, it can only implement three-year compulsory education for the time being, otherwise the financial pressure is still too great, because this compulsory education is paid by the state and is completely free.

As long as you are literate and have a skill, you can participate in the annual government officer examination, and like later generations, the state selects the best candidates, starting from the local government affairs and then gradually promoted to the central government. In this way, we can avoid a group of nerds who can only write eight-strand essays from controlling the country's political situation for a long time, and truly achieve the selection system of reducing talents without sticking to one pattern.

After the various reforms were announced, the old courtiers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom behaved relatively calmly, and they had already known these reforms in their hearts, and they had participated in discussions about many systems before, so they were not surprised. And Yuan Jiasan, Li Hongzhang, Peng Yulin, Qingfeng and other Manchu officials were very surprised.

After the dispersal of the dynasty, Li Hongzhang said to Yuan Jiasan and Peng Yulin when he walked on the road in the palace: "Looking at the atmosphere of my new dynasty, it is opening up a new situation that has not been seen in China for 3,000 years." Peng Yulin said: "Is the new emperor delegating too much power?" Will there be a matter of Ming Taizu? The three of them understood what Peng Yulin said about Ming Taizu, that is, in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang set up the left and right prime ministers, but later the imperial power and the prime minister's power conflicted, and finally Zhu Yuanzhang canceled the prime minister system.

Yuan Jiasan pondered for a long time and said: "The new emperor is an enlightened king, and he will definitely not be a person like Zhu Yuanzhang who indiscriminately killed the founding heroes, and China will be able to rule within a few decades." Yuan Jiasan's words were only half right, Xiao Yungui was indeed not a person who killed heroes indiscriminately, but his wife Hong Yun'er was. Twenty years later, Xiao Yungui died of illness, and then the new emperor succeeded to the throne, in the face of the competition between the domestic bourgeoisie at that time to control the national politics and the traditional feudal forces, Hong Yun'er, who was already the queen mother, in order to ensure the smooth transition of the country and complete the reform of the national capital system, killed more than a dozen old founding courtiers representing the remnants of the feudal forces, including Yuan Jiasan himself. But it's also lucky, when Hong Yuner killed the heroes, many of the heroes had already died of old age, so there weren't too many kills.

At that time, the country already had the conditions for reform, the illiteracy rate of the people dropped sharply, the people's wisdom was opened, the tide of thought surged, the domestic industry and commerce were prosperous and developed, and it was inevitable that the capitalist class that controlled the country's economy would launch a major change. After this change, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom finally embarked on the road of constitutional monarchy, and the Xiao family became an imperial family, just a symbol of the country, and the imperial power was further weakened. The country formed the House of Representatives and the House of State composed of capitalists, that is, the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, and the Prime Minister became responsible to the House of Representatives and the House of State.

After listening to Yuan Jiasan's words, Peng Yulin said: "What about the abolition of the imperial examination system?" Scholars all over the world are afraid that they will be dissatisfied. Li Hongzhang bowed slightly: "It is possible to be dissatisfied, without the names of lifting people and showing talents, it will not be able to exempt some taxes." Yuan Jiasan said: "As far as the country is concerned, we scholars should have paid taxes and food a long time ago, but I think that in the future, unless people who have contributed to the country can be exempted from taxes, it is not reasonable for others to be exempt from taxes for just a few years and years." Moreover, what the country is doing is education for all, and there will be more and more literate people in the future. ”

Li Hongzhang said: "Yes, Sage Confucius has educated one side, and the emperor really wants to educate all the people." Peng Yulin nodded and sighed: "When that time comes, who will dare to bully us?" Perhaps my China will open a prosperous era of the Han and Tang dynasties. ”

While he was talking, he saw a group of people coming towards him, but it was dozens of palace guards escorting more than a dozen prisoners, and the three of them retreated to the side, Peng Yulin recognized this group of people at a glance but they were Zeng Guofan, Guo Songtao, Zeng Guohua and others of the Hunan Army. Peng Yulin hurriedly stepped forward, but was stopped by the guards, and he hurriedly said, "I'm just saying a few words." The guard said, "The emperor is waiting to see them, I'm sorry." With that, he escorted him on.

Zeng Guofan looked back when he heard the voice, just smiled bitterly at Peng Yulin, and then bowed his hand slightly, and Peng Yulin replied deeply. Behind him, Li Hongzhang and Yuan Jiasan stepped forward, and Yuan Jiasan sighed: "Zeng Wenzheng is also a powerful person, but I don't know what the emperor will do with them." Li Hongzhang sighed: "If it was the previous dynasty, it must be a high-ranking official, but this new dynasty, alas, is to say four words according to the law......" (to be continued......