As soon as Tang Yin's voice fell, not to mention the merchants, even Pei Si couldn't help but sit up a little straighter.

"This new salt policy can be summed up in three words, contract system!"

The businessmen looked at each other, apparently at a loss for the system.

"Daming salt farms, salt mines, salt wells are not too much, but there are definitely a lot, and the saint sent people to specially map the distribution of salt production in Nanzhili, Jiangnan, Fujian, Guangdong and other places, and a total of 137 salt areas are divided.

After the Holy Authority divided these salt areas, he counted the amount of salt drawn from the salt farms in each salt area over the years, and finally set the contract price.

If you feel that the price is fair and appropriate, and you can earn a sufficient profit on the basis of paying 200,000 taels of silver to the government every year, then you can apply for contracting, and the government will sign a contract with the contractor to set a certain number of years, and the contractor only needs to pay the contract price in full within one year of signing the contract. ”

The merchants understood, Pei Si also understood, and then they were extremely admired!

The imperial court did not sell salt, because the salt was controlled by the government, and the salt merchants would bribe officials in order to obtain more salt, which caused corruption to run rampant, and the government had no right to sell salt, so it naturally stopped the road of indiscriminate salt distribution.

The second is private salt, the official sale of salt has a quota every year, but no one in the officialdom takes the quota seriously, and the salt that circulates out every year is two or three times the quota.

If there is salt to take salt and sell salt, it is the official salt that is not afraid of investigation, but there are more private salt dealers who cannot get salt to lead, because the channels of salt introduction are almost covered by the major salt merchants, and the medium salt merchants are just eating some leftovers.

If you can't get the salt, you can't sell salt openly, but the huge profits of salt make some businessmen willing to take risks to sell salt, and these people naturally become illegal salt dealers.

And among these smuggling salt dealers, there are many serious official salt merchants, why do they sell smuggled salt, the reason is very simple, because private salt does not need salt introduction, as long as the salt factory stewards and eunuchs are fed, get enough illegal salt, and do not need to give salt money, they can naturally make a lot of money!

According to the original system, the sale of salt must be approved by the imperial court, and anything without the permission of the imperial court belongs to the sale of illegal salt.

However, private salt has never been cut off, and in the final analysis, it is nothing more than driven by profit.

The Son of Heaven is ruthless in one place, and this place is the official salt private sale!

This is the core of the contracting system!

That is to say, the official salt trade that has been inherited for thousands of years was completely wiped out in the Jiajing Dynasty, and from then on, there was only private salt and no official salt.

But have Ming's interests been damaged?

No! Not at all!

Pei Si casually estimated that the salt industry under the contract system can bring at least 20 million taels of income to the national treasury every year!

It's income, not taxes!

In the past, the salt tax was only more than two million taels a year, and the annual tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty did not exceed seven million taels, but now the new salt policy is directly eight or nine times that of the previous salt tax and three times the annual tax revenue!

If this system is successfully implemented, the benefits to the Ming Dynasty are unimaginable.

Under the contract system, the contracted businessmen do not need to go to great lengths to get the government to get salt, and the private sale of official salt directly eliminates the illegal salt from the source.

There are also salt people, more than half of these salt people are forced labor by the government, which is also a kind of forced labor, that is, labor that does not cost money.

However, contractors cannot have free labor for conscription to make salt, so they can only hire it, so that salt farmers can get income through work, and reduce the resistance of the people at the bottom to the apportionment of conscription.

What Tang Yin said later, Pei Si almost didn't listen, he was calculating, calculating the gains and losses.

There is no doubt that the contract system of private sale of official salt is of great benefit to the finances of the Ming Dynasty, to crack down on illegal salt, to the people of the people, and even to the salt merchants themselves, so whose interests will be damaged?

It must have been the bureaucrats and the original big salt merchants who benefited from the salt introduction.

This anti-corruption storm is blowing too fiercely and urgently, so that the original big salt merchants are almost wiped out, so the interests of the big salt merchants can be ignored, so what about the officialdom whose interests are seriously damaged?

As vested interests in the original salt introduction, in order not to damage their own interests, they will definitely unite to resist this salt reform!

The power and strength of the civil officials that cannot be ignored and are also determined to reform, and want to become a game between the heroes of the Jiajing Emperor, who will have the last laugh in the end?

If the civil class is defeated, then what will be the emperor's next move?

But if the emperor fails to bear it, his prestige will inevitably be sharply reduced, and if he wants to play any reforms in the future, I am afraid it will be difficult.

However, Pei Si felt that the emperor's defeat might not be too big, not because his daughter was a concubine, so he was naturally close to the royal family, nor did he feel that Jiajing was strong and could force the courtiers to submit through power.

It's about a rational word.

Quite simply, the reason is not on the side of the civil officials......

Pei Si himself is an orthodox Confucian scholar, and naturally represents the interests of the Confucian group, of course, provided that he is not so close to the royal family.

As for now...... Even if Pei Si wants to get rid of the royal family, the Confucian system cannot really trust him, and it can be said that since the day his daughter entered the palace and became a concubine, he is no longer a member of the civil interest group.

But Pei Si thought that the emperor would win, not because of the concubine, but because this time the civil officials had no reason to refute.

Can't refute, can't refute, that's the state that the seven elders of the cabinet are facing today.

"Contracting." Zhu Houwei got up from the throne and said with a smile: "There are more than 130 salt farms, the average contract price of each salt farm is about 200,000 taels, I will not care how the contractor makes salt, even if he recruits 10,000 salt farmers to make salt for him, as long as he can guarantee the wages of these 10,000 salt people, then I will not ask, even if the contractor pays 200,000 taels a year, he can still earn 200,000 or even 500,000, 1 million, I will not ask, because this is the spirit of the contract."

"Your Majesty." Yang Yiqing couldn't help but say: "Even if the salt introduction is changed to contracting, this income should also belong to the household department."

Zhu Houwei smiled, as a cabinet minister and concurrently a secretary of the household department, being able to say such a thing undoubtedly shows one thing.

Compromise!

The cabinet, which represented the interests of the civil officials of the Manchu dynasty, was completely compromised!

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