Chapter Ninety-Three

To a large extent, it can be said that it is a financial means of economic levy in response to crises, mainly militarily.

In many cases, this is a helpless premise, and the same is true for a country or a person who has been expropriated.

But more often than not, the collection of more taxes can be said to be a very heavy source of pressure for a country's taxpayers.

The lesson of history in this aspect is very profound, not only that the civil administration system of the Qin Empire may have been levied mainly from the southern conquest of Baiyue and the war led by the Battle of Yinshan in Hetao to form a vicious circle, and similarly, in later generations, the addition of similar taxes can be said to be very harmful.

Its more famous is the three salaries levy at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

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The three salaries are the combined names of the three taxes of Liao, the three taxes of the Liao salary and the training salary that were added at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Liaojiao, also known as Xinjiao, was first conquered in the 46th year of Wanli and was mainly used for the military needs of Liaodong.

By the end of the 48th year of Wanli, except for a few areas such as Guizhou, the Ming Empire levied an average of nine cents of silver per mu of land, totaling 5,200,062 taels. At the time of the apocalypse, and the levy and the pass, the salt and other miscellaneous silver taels. In the fourth year of Chongzhen, he raised the field tax from 9 cents to 1 cent and 2 cents, distributed more than 6,670,000 taels of silver, and collected more than 5,220,000 taels of silver in addition to tariffs, salt taxes and miscellaneous items, totaling 7,488,298 taels of silver.

The total amount of wages for the suppression of the peasant uprising was 2,800,000 taels, which were mainly levied from the land. The original proposal was only levied for one year, but in fact, it was from the tenth year of Chongzhen, and it was not until the thirteenth year that it was forced to stop. In the twelfth year of Chongzhen, according to Yang Sichang's proposal, the training was carried out in the name of training "border soldiers" and strengthening the defense forces of the towns on the nine borders, but in fact it was to deal with the peasant uprising. A total of more than 7.3 million taels of silver were levied on this salary, and one cent was added to each mu of the field, accounting for about half of the total.

According to the corresponding data, there is another calculation result for the figure of the three salaries:

In the forty-sixth year of Wanli, on the grounds of using troops to Liaodong, the military salary was increased according to the mu, and after three increases in the amount, in the first year of Taichang, it was added to nine cents of silver per mu, and five hundred and twenty taels of silver were obtained a year, which was equivalent to one-third of the total amount of the country. By the end of Chongzhen, it had increased to more than nine million taels.

"History of the Ming Dynasty: Food and Goods Zhi II" cloud: "(Chongzhen ten years) reinstated the method of equal loss, because of the grain salary, the mu is counted as six he, the stone is converted into eight coins of silver, and the mu is levied at 164 cents and nine silks. It was originally scheduled for one year, but it was not cancelled after one year. By the end of Chongzhen's last years, a total of 3.3 million taels were levied.

In the twelfth year of Chongzhen, after the suspension of levy and salary, the levy was continued, and it was stipulated that an additional silver would be levied at one point and five cents per mu, with a total of 7.3 million taels.

The addition of the three salaries reflected the corruption of the rule in the late Ming Dynasty, which made the intensified social contradictions more acute and became one of the important reasons for the demise of the Ming Dynasty. After the rulers of the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, in order to win the hearts of the people, they issued an edict to exempt the three salaries, but they did not seriously implement it, especially the nine cents of silver of the Liao salary, which was soon compiled into the "Complete Book of Enlistment" and became the official share of Tian Fu, and the Qing Dynasty never eliminated it again.

However, there is a point of view that according to the principle of historical materialism, the viewpoint of "the people create history" that those who win the hearts of the people win the world, and those who lose the hearts of the people lose the world, analyze the trajectory of the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and the maladministration of the economy is undoubtedly an important basis for shaking the unstable foundation.

According to historical records, in the early years of the Qing Dynasty, when the regent Dolgon summed up the reasons for the death of the Ming Dynasty, he bluntly pointed out that the so-called "three salaries" at the end of the Ming Dynasty was the biggest malpractice that led to the defeat of the Ming Dynasty: "The maladministration of the previous dynasty was the worst for the people, so that the people were poor and stolen, and then they were repaid for all sides. However, these three salaries, several times the positive supply, tired of the small people, fat scraping, far away for more than 20 years, near more than 10 years, the world is screaming, day and night. ”

Although Dorgon, as regent of the Qing Dynasty, may have said things that were sometimes unfair, his views on this issue were undoubtedly accurate and to the point. The fall of the Ming Dynasty was indeed caused by a combination of political, militarized, social and other problems, but the failure of economic missteps was the key problem at the bottom of the kettle.

Generally speaking, tyranny and chaos will also make the people miserable, and decay will also cause the people to lose their spiritual support, but they are not worth the economic bankruptcy that makes the masses miserable and miserable. The "three salaries" policy implemented at the end of the Ming Dynasty was a criminal blow that made matters worse. As a result, the huge edifice of government soon collapsed, and the state apparatus did not function, and only a dead end awaited.

The rampant taxation and miscellaneous taxes in the late Ming Dynasty should be said to be unexpected by Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. He came from a poor background and suffered from the exploitation of excessive taxes and miscellaneous taxes, and the oppression of corrupt officials and corrupt officials. Therefore, after he became emperor, he tried to build a society with light taxation and political clarity. To this end, he has made a lot of efforts, such as treating corruption as hatred, and often killing corrupt officials and corrupt officials. Another example is to take the lead in setting an example of a clean and honest government, standardizing the principles of performing official duties, and calling on the people to participate in supervision.

Maybe people died in politics, after his death, although the Ming Dynasty was still called Ming, and the emperor was still surnamed Zhu, but step by step returned to the old path of the previous dynasty, the emperor did not do his job, corrupt and degenerate, traitorous ministers were in power, black smoke and miasma, eunuchs were chaotic, wanton, party strife, infighting, etc., all of which were different from Zhu Yuanzhang's era.

The most significant difference was that the taxes levied by the imperial court on the common people increased exponentially. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, internal and external troubles were frequent, and the imperial court used this as an excuse to pay additional taxes in addition to the normal taxes originally set. There are three names: Liaoyu, Suppression, and Training. At that time, the Ming Dynasty fought against the Later Jin in the northeast, so it levied Liao pay to replenish military expenses. Later, peasant uprisings broke out in various places one after another, and in order to raise military funds to quell the uprising, taxes were increased in order to suppress wages. Then, in order to cope with the southern invasion of the Qing army, the Ming government trained border soldiers again, so they sent additional training salaries. The "three salaries" were originally temporary taxes in addition to the regular tax, and when the levy was levied, Emperor Chongzhen once said with deep affection, "Temporarily tired of our people for a year". But after the start of the campaign, it almost became customized, and it was not eliminated in the Ming Dynasty.

It is said that in the early years of Wanli, when Zhang Juzheng was in charge of the government, it was the era when the Ming Empire's economic situation was at its best, and the annual income of the Hubu Tai Warehouse was 4 million taels of silver, which was claimed to be full of treasury. During the Chongzhen period, the "three salaries" were increased by nearly 20 million taels of silver per year, which can be imagined to have reached the point of "exhausting national strength".

Historical data show that in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the normal annual income of the government was more than 1,400 taels, and about 600 taels were included in the inner government as the emperor and the court for pleasure, which belonged to the household department for government expenditure, but more than 400 taels. In other words, most of the financial resources were spent on the protection and squandering of the emperor and the palace, and other expenses were naturally few and stretched.

Therefore, in order for the huge state apparatus to operate normally and for officials at all levels to spend normally, they can only adopt the method of increasing taxes and distributing money to forcibly collect and plunder. I have to mention that the "three salaries" added at the end of the Ming Dynasty were as high as more than 2,100 taels in the twelfth year of Chongzhen, far exceeding the income of the regular tax. It can be seen that the burden of the common people has reached an indescribable level.

What is even more odious is that the increase in the burden on the common people is not as simple as a 1.4-fold increase. Because corrupt officials at all levels will not let go of this great opportunity to hitchhike and loot. It was recorded at the time: "Those who secretly add factions do not know how many millions", "There are more private factions than positive endowments". Some local officials even made money, but under the pretext that the common people had a heavy burden, they couldn't bear to accept it, so they withheld the salary and did not pay it to the central government, and enjoyed it themselves. It is said that in some places in Shandong at that time, the burden on the common people increased by as much as six times.

Originally, the purpose of levying the "three salaries" was to maintain internal and external order and stability, but such a practice of killing chickens and taking eggs is undoubtedly forcing the people to take risks. The author saw in an article that an official at that time sighed: "It is to drive the people to think that they are thieves, and how can they be thieves!"

As a result, a misunderstanding and a strange circle were formed. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, natural and man-made disasters, internal and external troubles were endless, the empire's finances could not make ends meet, and it was unable to prepare military salaries to form an army, and it could not let barbarians and rogues ravage the country and ignore it, so it had to levy huge taxes, but forced the good people to rebel. In order to resist the invasion of the enemy, the people were forced to become cowards because of the additional faction, and they had to be sent again if they wanted to slash the coquettish, so a vicious circle and even the destruction of the country. It's an inevitable tragic end.

To sum up, it is an indisputable fact that the "three salaries" at the end of the Ming Dynasty were the ropes strangled around the neck of the Ming Dynasty, and it was undoubtedly the act of destroying the country. No matter from what angle of analysis, the increase of the "three salaries" reflects the corruption of the rule of the late Ming Dynasty, which has made the social contradictions that have intensified more acute, and has become one of the important reasons for the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

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What is more interesting is that many people think that in the early Qing Dynasty, there was a "moral government" of "never increasing endowments" and "abolishing the three salaries".

But the truth is that the Qing Dynasty's never-ending endowment itself was a joke, and the same is true of the "abolition of the three salaries":

And even in the Manchu regime that had just entered the customs, Dolgon issued an edict, accusing the Ming Dynasty of "bad government" and "bad government", and adding "three salaries" to harm the people: "The previous dynasty was malfunctioning, and the worst was to punish the people. However, these three salaries, several times the positive offering, tired the small people, remove the fat and scrape the marrow."

In addition, the official "call for grain and materials" only gave the people one-fifth of the market price, and when the payment was made to the yamen, "there were traitors who took over the money, and they were cunning and restrained, doubling the amount of the three salaries, urging the department to take advantage of the people, and it was particularly malfunctional." Under the "maladministration" and "defective government", "the people are poor" and have no way to live. Since the Ming Dynasty made it impossible for the people to live, then it did not deserve the favor of the cang, and it was a matter of course to perish.

Hawkers, who wouldn't sing well?

According to historical records, the Qing Dynasty maintained a fixed amount of agricultural tax for a long period of time (from the late Kangxi period to before the Taiping Rebellion), and indeed did not increase. However, this is only a formal tax, not an actual burden on the common people. The actual burden, in addition to formal taxes, is also an informal tax, i.e., extra-tax charges.

In the Kangxi era, extra-tax charges were already very serious. An official named Lu Shiyi once said: "The imperial court has 4 million stones in the south of the Yangtze River, and 14 million stones in the south of the Yangtze River." Four million stones may not all belong to the imperial court, and ten million stones are often used for officials, flags, and the mouths of all kinds of beetles. "The official tax amount of Cao grain is 4 million stones, but the actual burden of the common people is as high as 14 million stones, which can only be regarded as an additional endowment, and it is far higher than the official tax amount. Therefore, even if there is no increase in the country's formal tax revenue, it does not mean that there is no increase. What's more, in the late Qing Dynasty, in the face of financial pressure, the state officially levied various agricultural surcharges far more than the formal taxes, such as Sichuan's field endowment in the late Kangxi period was less than 670,000 taels of silver, and at the end of the Qing Dynasty, it was actually levied more than 420 thousand taels.

Kangxi is a face-loving person, in order to win a reputation of benevolence and love for the people, on the one hand, he announced that he would "never increase the endowment", and on the other hand, he turned a blind eye to the extra-tax fees of officials. When Yongzheng took over the baton of power, he felt that he could no longer allow local officials to behave arbitrarily, but to set a rule to limit the amount of levy, and at the same time change fees to taxes, which is a reform of "returning fire consumption to the public". This reform was questioned at the outset, because the nature of "fire consumption" was "endowment", and "returning to the public" was tantamount to acknowledging the legitimacy of "endowment", which was contrary to the promise of "never endowment".

The skeptic said: "In addition to today's positive endowment, we will add positive endowment, and in the future, I am afraid that in addition to envy, we will also consume envy." After Yongzheng, Qianlong, Jiaqing, and Daoguang took over the throne at the beginning of the year, and officials put forward a similar proposal of "returning fire consumption to the public", and the actual reason is that after the fee was changed to tax, there were new fees, and the more they changed, the more they changed, which was "Huang Zongxi's law".

Objectively speaking, society is developing and prices are rising, and a dynasty cannot cope with social changes without increasing endowments, so the key point is not whether or not to increase endowments, but where to use the endowments? Is it for increasing public services or for the personal interests of officials? It is the latter that should be opposed. And the endowment of national history is precisely the latter.

And Huang Zongxi's conclusion may not be known to anyone, but in another word, it is possible that more people have heard of it, that is: the harm of accumulation.

The harm of accumulation is a social phenomenon, which refers to the fact that after a period of decline, the peasants' burdens rise to a higher level before the reform, moving towards the opposite of the original purpose of the reform.

Historical tax and fee reforms such as the 'two tax laws' in the Tang Dynasty, the 'one whip law' in the Ming Dynasty, and the 'apportionment into mu' in the Qing Dynasty; however, after each tax and fee reform, due to the limitations of the social and political environment at that time, the peasants' burdens rose to a higher level before the reform after a period of decline, moving toward the opposite of the original purpose of the reform.

Huang Zongxi, a thinker of the Ming and Qing dynasties, called this situation 'the harm of accumulation and no return', which is also known in history as 'Huang Zongxi's law'.

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