The so-called three-class officials are not necessarily the third class, there may be two types, and it is more likely to be four or five types of officials.

It's just that this term existed as early as the Han Dynasty, and it continued like this, and no one bothered to change the name.

The so-called three classes of officials were divided in this way during the Han and Tang dynasties. The first class is called

"Follow" means to follow the officer. They are responsible for the safety and honor guards of the prefects, and they are also responsible for serving as standing guards when ascending.

The second shift is called

"Taking people", as the name suggests, is responsible for arresting people, and those who are arrested are criminals or people. At that time, officials were very privileged, and once they saw that a common person was not pleasing to their eyes, they would say that this person was Diao Min, and they could be arrested and put in prison without interrogation.

The so-called Diao people are ordinary people who do not obey discipline and have tried or begun to oppose the imperial court. This kind of disobedient person is the person that the imperial court does not want to see, and under normal circumstances, in order to make an example of a hundred people, the imperial court acquiesces to local officials to deal with such people harshly and severely.

So this kind of

The common people are the most afraid of the officials who "take people", for fear that they will be caught by these people, and they will not be able to say clearly when the time comes.

The third class is called

The "jailer" is the official who interrogates and guards the criminal. They have a good way of dealing with so-called criminal suspects, and promise to ask for all the promises they want.

Pass through them

The criminals who came out of the "training" are not only obedient one by one, but they will admit everything, even if they say that the sow will go to the tree, they are born to their son, they will definitely agree.

That's what the dynasties are called

The "testimony" was there, the so-called criminals were also convicted, and the officials were promoted one by one because of their ability to solve the case, and those who made a fortune became rich.

And innocent people are treated as criminals, those who kill their heads are killed, and those who are imprisoned are imprisoned, making their wives separated and miserable.

Later, the third class of officials changed, mainly because the responsibilities became heavier and heavier, and there was a serious shortage of manpower after the refinement of functions.

By the time of the Ming Dynasty, the so-called three-class officials were no longer the so-called three-class officials. Although the name and above are still three classes of officials, there is a big difference in the number and function.

The first class is still

"Personally entourage" is mainly responsible for the safety of county magistrates and other officials. He is also responsible for guarding and patrolling the interior of the county office.

But they are the least numerous of the three classes, and they generally have no real material, as long as they can scare the common people.

Second shift

"Take people", the function has expanded a lot. They are not only responsible for arresting criminals, but also responsible for guarding criminals, patrolling public security, mediating minor disputes, and being promoted to work.

In fact, this class is the real sense of the official arrest, responsible for maintaining the county's public security and public security.

There are three officers in this shift, one is the head of the prison who is responsible for security and arrest, the other is the head of the prison who is responsible for interrogating and guarding the prisoners, and the other is the head of the standing class.

The so-called

"Standing class" refers to the officials who stand on both sides when the adults ascend to the hall. They not only represent the prestige of the imperial court, but also the direct subordinates of the officials who have been promoted to the court, carrying out the orders of the lords, which are equivalent to the bailiffs of the current court.

The head of the squad is the leader of these station shifts, and he is also the person who plays the role of connecting the upper and lower levels. Generally, people with some skills will bribe this team leader, and the team leader can not only influence the judgment of adults in the lobby, but also control the severity of the prisoner's injury.

As long as the money is enough, even if the prefect of the hall orders a heavy beating of fifty boards, the criminals will only hurt their flesh and skin.

If the money is not enough, or if someone deliberately buys it out, even if it is just five boards and ten boards, the inmate can be disabled for life or even die.

The third class is called

"Servants" means officials who are responsible for collecting taxes and pulling strong dings. These people were responsible for assisting the householders, collecting taxes in the countryside and pulling people into labor.

They also have their own skills, and the first ability is to take more and ask for more. When they arrived in the countryside, they were the representatives of the imperial court and the yamen, not only with an arrogant and unreasonable attitude, but also with a vain attitude of eating and drinking for nothing.

Not only must you eat and drink well, but you must also take the things of the common people for nothing. If they don't give it, they will beat and kick the people at the least, and frame the local people for resisting taxes and not paying taxes, which is a big crime to be arrested and imprisoned.

The second ability is

"Big three", big feet, big Hu, big big. The so-called big feet mean that the feet of the officials are strong, and they kick out very hard.

There are two kinds of taxes collected by the imperial court, the first is to collect poll tax, which requires the common people to collect taxes according to the population of their own families, and they pay real money and silver, which needs to be paid in cash.

The second is the grain tax in spring and autumn, which needs to be paid with grain. When handing over the grain, the grain should be weighed in the officially designated hut.

The officials always poured the grain to the brim, and confiscated the grain that fell on the ground and the grain that was bubbling up.

This is not the end, the full Hu has to be kicked hard, and the spilled food is also considered public.

If it is not enough, the people will continue to pour food into the hut, and then kick it again when it is full.

After a few tosses and turns, we officially weighed everyone. The grain that is sprinkled on the ground is the fruit of their private labor.

The so-called Hu Da refers to the fact that they privately modified the official grain collection tools and secretly made Hu bigger, causing the people to suffer a lot.

Whenever the common people doubted the size of Hu, they would arrest the other party on the grounds of suspicion of the imperial court and trying to incite the common people to resist taxes, forcing everyone to dare to be angry and dare not speak out.

The so-called weighing is to make a fuss about the scales. Most of the yamen had several sets of scales when collecting taxes.

When collecting grain, large scales are used instead of smaller scales, so that the common people have to pay a lot more taxes and grains.

In addition, the feet in front are big and the Hu is big, and the common people have to pay at least nearly 30% more tax grain every year, which has become a common practice.

When the common people paid the poll tax, the officials asked the common people to exchange it for broken silver to pay the poll tax on the grounds that the copper coins in the hands of the common people were not easy to collect.

The money dealers and officials who exchanged copper coins had already colluded, and not only did they have problems with the fineness of the silver when exchanging it, but they also changed the ratio of copper coins to silver without authorization.

Generally speaking, the official exchange price is one tael of fine silver for two thousand copper coins. But when it came time to really exchange, the price offered by the money bank was generally one tael of silver for two thousand five to three thousand copper coins.

The common people dared to be angry but did not dare to speak, so they had to suffer this loss. But the silver exchanged was not high-quality silver, and the officials said they wanted it

"Folding", that is, to discount. Eighty-nine folds for better fineness, seven or eight folds for a little worse, and even some silver says that it is only fifty percent, that is, it is said to be five percent off.

In addition, the officials also made their hands and feet on the scales that weighed the silver, and replaced them with lighter scales, so that a pound of silver weighed less than twelve taels, which was a quarter less.

In ancient times, one pound and sixteen taels,

That's how the idiom of "half a catty and eight taels" came from. The officials exchanged the copper coins of the common people for silver at the official standard price, and then exchanged the fine silver from the merchants for the inferior silver of insufficient fineness, and then exchanged the inferior silver for the common people as official silver, so that they could earn almost double the money every year.

The imperial court does not suffer losses, the yamen does not suffer losses, and of course the officials will not suffer losses, only the common people will suffer.

Every year, the common people have to pay nearly twice the actual grain tax than they have to pay in name, and it is unspeakably miserable.

Once there is a famine or a new official takes office, the life of the common people will be even more difficult. It is no wonder that the common people regard the local yamen as enemies, and they are eager to bite these officials and officials to death.

The third class of officials is not only the façade of the yamen, but also the minions and tools of the yamen. Without these officials, the common people would not be afraid of the local yamen, and they would not be afraid of the people who were officials.

In order to deter the local people, for the sake of everyone's safety and majesty, the vast majority of officials had no choice but to allow the officials to oppress the local people.

Compared with the angry people and everyone's irrationality, the officials had no choice but to condone their subordinates to behave indiscriminately.

Knowing that these officials were bullying people and taking advantage of the opportunity to exploit the property of the common people, the officials had no choice but to pretend that they did not know.

Because they know that if their subordinates don't make enough money, they will not do it or slack off passively, and if they don't cooperate, the yamen will be chaotic, and they will not be able to complete the characters assigned by their superiors, so their future will be unsafe.

In this way, some originally kind and loyal scholars soon became local officials, and soon became drifters, gradually learned badly, and even became corrupt officials.

Therefore, officialdom is a melting pot, turning promising young people into corrupt officials who are only interested in profit.

This kind of official abounds, almost all over the country, almost every yamen, how can the common people not hate the yamen?

If we want to change this situation, we can only improve it if we completely change the atmosphere within the yamen and drive out all these moths.

But what official has the courage and energy to do so? How long can it last? Perhaps the atmosphere has not changed, and this official has either been driven away or assassinated.

It's not like this kind of thing has never happened, and it's not like no one has done it. There are always some self-righteous people, or wooden lumps who don't listen to the greetings, don't understand the reasoning, and end up either killed or deposed.

Some people don't even know what mistakes they have made when they go to the underworld or go home to eat rice.