As soon as he returned from the Wa Kingdom, Mao Liangzhe wrote the results of this trip and sent them to Beijing by the Jinyi Foreign Guard. He is the chief treasurer of the maritime trade firm and has the right to play secretly. Half a month later, Song Shu was placed in front of Zhu Youzhen, and after reading it, Zhu Youzhen was overjoyed.

In the summer, he received a note from Mao Liangzhe and Li Yanzhi, saying that this year's market was not good, and he did not get too many maritime trade goods, so Zhu Youzhen did not expect much about this year's maritime trade profits, but just gave Li Yanzhi an order, ordering him to hurry up and exterminate the pirates and allow him to pursue across the border.

As long as Li Kuiqi, Liu Xiang and other pirates wandering in the waters of Fujian and Guangdong can be exterminated, the Fujian sailors will be able to dominate the southeast seas, and they will be able to closely monitor any ship going to sea, and sometimes there will be ways to deal with those maritime merchants.

In another time and space, Zheng Zhilong was still able to dominate the southeast coast, so that all the maritime merchants who went to sea had to pay him money to obtain the qualification to trade at sea. The Royal Maritime Trading House had its own backing and a large fleet of sailors, and it would be a joke if it couldn't handle these coastal gentry.

However, Zhu Youzhen did not expect that Mao Liangzhe and Zheng Zhilong would subdue those maritime merchants in the Wa Kingdom, destroy the unruly Fuzhou and Funing merchant fleets, and force all the maritime merchants in the Wa Kingdom to pay taxes. Although the tax silver collected was only more than one million taels, this was a good omen, which meant a steady stream of sea income in the future.

No matter how large the Royal Maritime Trading House is, it cannot completely monopolize maritime trade, and commercial taxes are a steady stream of income. In the future, the commercial tax will be the responsibility of the maritime trade firm, and the civil officials must not be allowed to interfere. The amount of tax has to be further agreed, after all, the tax will be collected before going to sea in the future, and the amount of tax is not easy to calculate, and the commercial tax can be calculated according to the cargo volume of the sea vessel and the goods carried. Zhu Youzhen said secretly.

Now is the time of lack of money, with this sea trade silver, at least this year will not have to worry about silver. Next, you can devote your energy to the reform of the clan system.

The reason why Zhu Youzhen took action against the clan system again was because of an incident that happened in Beijing some time ago.

Originally, the matter was not big, someone openly robbed the property, and was caught on the spot by the brocade guards patrolling the street. However, after interrogation, it was found that this person turned out to be a clan member with the title of General Fengguo.

The dignified Ming clan actually robbed the street in Beijing, this situation is really incredible. Even Tian Ergeng, the governor of Jinyiwei, didn't dare to deal with it without authorization, so he reported the matter to Zhu Youzhen.

Zhu Youzhen was also surprised, so he ordered someone to bring this Fengguo general to the palace and interrogate him personally, and then learned that the reason why this Fengguo general robbed the street was because he was hungry and had no choice. And the reason why he entered Beijing was to sue the emperor and accuse the contemporary German king Zhu Youshu of bullying the ordinary clan and not distributing Lu rice for a year.

Zhu Youzhen asked in surprise at the time, didn't the reform of the clan three years ago allow ordinary clans to work to support their families, why do they still rely on Lumi?

The lieutenant of Fengguo cried and complained that he also wanted to work, but he couldn't lift his hands or carry it on his shoulders, and no one dared to use his clan identity as a slave, and there was no field to plant at home, so he could only rely on the imperial court to feed him. In the past, the King of Germany issued it in a timely manner, and the big guy could barely survive, but in the past three years, the Lu rice distribution was intermittent, and many of the clans were hungry and had to go to work to carry the work, and the weak clans had no choice but to go to the street to beg. And this year, King De actually cut off the rice of the low-level clan, and he has not sent a grain of grain for a year.

Many low-level clans had no way to sue them, so they scraped together some food and asked this Fengguo lieutenant named Zhu Youjian to go to Beijing to sue the emperor and sue King De Kekoulu rice for forcing the clan to death. However, after Zhu Youlan entered Beijing, he could not find a yamen who could sue, and neither Shuntianfu nor Dali Temple ignored him. The dry food he brought with him had long since been eaten, and he had to go out into the street to grab some belongings in the hungry.

Looking at this general Fengguo, who was his cousin, Zhu Youzhen shook his head slightly. Obviously, he has hands and feet, but he can't even feed himself, and many clans have been raised for more than two hundred years, and they are really useless.

However, King Nade is also really hateful, and he actually embezzled the clan Lumi and forced people to go to Beijing to sue the emperor.

When the reform of the clan system was carried out three years ago, it was stipulated that the low-level clans could work and do business, but they did not stop the rice directly, but gave a certain buffer period, which was to take this situation into account.

It is reasonable to say that the rice of the provincial clans should be distributed by the government, but in many cases, in order to save trouble and profit from it, the government colludes with the vassal king, and deducts a part of the Lumike of each clan and hands it over to the vassal king of that lineage, and the vassal king sends the rice down, so that corruption breeds. For those vassal kings, the bloodline of the low-level clan is too far away from them, and the relatives of 1200 years ago still have any family affection to speak of, so it is inevitable to withhold.

Zhu Youlan was repeatedly questioned about the reform of the German clan, and then Zhu Youzhen found that his reform of the clan three years ago had basically failed.

The reform of the clan three years ago was carried out mainly from three aspects:

The first is to stop the indiscriminate issuance of titles, whether it is a prince or a county king, the title is inherited by the eldest son, and the other sons will no longer be titled whether they are descendants or concubines. below the general, the right to inherit the title will be directly revoked, and their descendants will be directly reduced to civilians.

The second is to relax the control over the clans, so that from now on, the clans can become officials through the imperial examination, and they can farm, work, do business, and make a living, and there will be no more restrictions. For the lower clans, this meant complete liberation.

The third is to check the number of acres of land in the clan, except for the fields given by the emperor over the years, all the fields illegally occupied by the vassal kings have been confiscated, or issued to the original owners of the fields, or used as official fields, and the field taxes of the past years must be paid. Investigate the illegal banknotes and close down the shops, and the vassal king must not compete with the people for profit.

The indiscriminate issuance of titles will not have much effect for at least a few years, and unless most of the clans with existing titles die, a large amount of Lu rice will be saved.

As for the imperial examination of the clan as officials, many clans have read books, but they have not read too deeply, knowing that reading is useless, how can they work hard to study? Therefore, many clans have gone through enlightenment, know some words, and will read idle books for recreation, let them go to the test to take the test to take the exam, and those real scholars to fight, where have they ever spelled?

Deregulation is indeed good for many low-level clans who can't eat, they can work and do business, and they can struggle out of the brink of starvation. But that's all, because they don't have survival skills, they don't have their own fields, they can only work as domestic helpers, they can only do some hard work, and it is basically impossible to think about a good life. And the dignity of the clan makes many clans unwilling to bow their heads, preferring to lead a meager amount of rice rather than work. After all, if you go to work, you will stop distributing rice in the future. So Zhu Youlan couldn't survive and went to Beijing to sue the emperor.

The idea of Zhu Youlan and the clans he represents is very simple, that is, to deal with the king severely, so that he will no longer deduct Lu rice, if Lu rice can be distributed in full according to the rules, Lieutenant Fengguo's 200 stone of Lu rice a year is enough for the family to have no worries about food and clothing.

But how is that possible, even if there is no King De, the local income will not be able to take out so much rice, and it will not be able to support them.

However, in any case, the deregulation will make the life of the low-level clan better, and will reduce the burden on the local government, but that's all, after all, the imperial court has no supporting policies for the employment of the low-level clan, and the reduced distribution of Lu rice has also been deducted and embezzled by the local government and the vassal king, and there is little improvement in the court's finances.

In addition, the third reform is to check the number of acres of land in the clan and return the fields illegally occupied by the vassal kings to the government or to the owner. At the beginning, a lot of fields were indeed found from the vassal kings of King Fu and King Zhou, and these fields did become official fields.

However, there were also some feudal kings who colluded with the local gentry to bring illegally occupied fields into the names of the gentry, and the two sides shared the benefits. And those official fields were also constantly encroached upon by the gentry, and the income of the official fields was encroached upon, and the taxes of the imperial court did not increase much.

It stands to reason that more than 20 princes and more than 900 county kings in the country will find out that there will be a lot of illegally occupied fields, and after all these fields are converted into official fields, they will increase a lot of taxes to the imperial court, but in fact, the annual taxes of the imperial court have not increased much.

Because he didn't point to the treasury tax training, because too many things involved Zhu Youzhen's time, he didn't have the energy to pay attention to the reform of the clan, because at that time Zhu Youzhen also knew that the effect of the reform of the clan system would not be seen until at least one or two decades later, when a large number of the clans that were now alive died, so he didn't pay too much attention to it.

And now it seems that the reform of the clan three years ago was basically a failure. The life of the low-level clans has changed somewhat, but it hasn't changed much, and many low-level clans are still struggling on the verge of starvation. The revenue of the local government did not increase much, because the existing clans with titles had to be given rice, and the imperial court did not receive much benefit, and the taxes did not increase.

The only thing that benefited was the local gentry and the local government, the local gentry and the vassal king colluded, secretly absorbed the vassal king, illegally annexed the fields and even occupied the official land, and the local government and the vassal king colluded to take the opportunity to deduct the rice that should be distributed to the ordinary clan.

Although he sent a large number of imperial historians for the reform of the clan system at that time, the imperial historians were also officials and members of the gentry class, and they would not be corrupt when urging reforms, but many times they would turn a blind eye.

Faced with this situation, Zhu Youzhen was no longer angry. The rule of officials has long been decayed, and it is not surprising that there is such a result.

This incident proves once again that relying on civilian officials to do things can only get worse and worse.

If the system of the Ming Dynasty is not completely changed, no amount of effort will be in vain, and it will not be able to prevent the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

Now that the external troubles have been eliminated, he has been able to free up his hands and start to solve all kinds of stubborn diseases within the Ming Dynasty.

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