Chapter 668 667 Guangde's Ambition

Although the "six matters" mentioned by Zhang Juzheng cannot be regarded as specific national policies, they reveal the various contradictions that have emerged in the superstructure of the Ming Dynasty since the "Renzong and Xuanzong's Reign".

These contradictions include the contradictions between the civil service group and the eunuch group, the contradiction between the civil service group and the royal family rule, the contradiction between the superstructure and the ordinary people, and the national defense crisis and the problem of slack military preparations in the Ming Dynasty.

In essence, most of these contradictions and problems reflected in this memorial are the contradictions and problems within the feudal ruling class.

Although he has read it several times, Wei Guangde still feels that he has not fully understood the deep meaning of Zhang Juzheng's memorial.

So, naturally, Wei Guangde plans to go to Chen Yiqin's house tonight to discuss with him, and it seems that he should go home and think about it carefully.

However, when he came out of Chen Yiqin's house in the evening, he not only had Zhang Juzheng's "Chen Liushi Shu" in his hand, but also a memorial by Gao Gong, titled "Wanqiu Xi Yi Chong Sheng Zhi Shu".

This memorial was completed by Gao Gong at the end of the 45th year of Jiajing, but he died before he could submit it to Emperor Jiajing.

In this memorial, Gao Gong summarized the eight major malpractices that he had experienced and observed in the past twenty years: breaking the law, corruption, meanness, jealousy, shirking responsibilities, factionalism, compromise, and gossip. He also proposed a reform plan for the eight malpractices, saying "no pardon for frivolous writing, no pardon for greed, respect for loyalty, reward for honesty, review of courses, public housing, review of merits and crimes, and review of facts", which is referred to as "Eliminating the Eight Malpractices Memorial".

However, when Gao Gong submitted this memorial to Emperor Longqing, he was "commissioned with the important task" to copy books for Emperor Jiajing, so he did not know about it and had not read Gao Gong's memorial.

He did not pay attention, but Chen Yiqin would naturally not let it go.

In Chen Yiqin's view, the two people's governing philosophy had many similarities.

Talking about this, Wei Guangde not only remembered that Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng seemed to have a very close relationship at the beginning.

However, relatively speaking, after reading Gao Gong's "Eliminating Eight Malpractices Memorial", Wei Guangde felt that Gao Gong seemed to be more idealistic than Zhang Juzheng. It was actually difficult to distinguish between curing greed and respecting loyalty and honesty, and rewarding fairness and honesty, which was completely based on the personal judgment of the chief officer.

First of all, it is necessary to ensure that the chief officer does not have these problems in order to implement his policies, which is very difficult.

After returning home, Wei Guangde only looked at it in the backyard, and then went into the study alone, taking two memorials to study, trying to understand the difference between the two.

After reading it twice, Wei Guangde really found some differences, that is, in the rectification of official administration.

Zhang Juzheng talked more about making officials diligent in their work. Although he also talked about discipline, he did not seem to mention the need for severe punishment and how to deal with corrupt officials.

This may also be because in the current Ming Dynasty, finding enough honest officials seems to have become an impossible task.

Since there are none, it is better to let corrupt officials do their work and stop dereliction of duty, and then through investigation, clean up the officials who do bad things and are unqualified.

Gao Gong, on the other hand, would kill corrupt officials without any mercy, as Zhang Juzheng did, putting corruption aside.

Therefore, Wei Guangde had to think of the grand occasion of the whole court's support for Gao Gong last year. What the officials were thinking was actually obvious.

"Reverse the decadent habits and respect the saintly governance memorial, haha"

Wei Guangde's mouth pulled out a little, thinking that if Emperor Jiajing really read this memorial, he would probably dismiss Gao Gong and send him back to his hometown.

As for the reason, of course, you dared to say in front of the wise and powerful Emperor Jiajing that his country was full of decadent habits, and asked Gao Gong to save the situation.

So soon, Wei Guangde put Gao Gong's memorial aside and studied Zhang Juzheng's memorial specifically, because he felt that Zhang Juzheng seemed to be more down-to-earth and operational, and at least he would not be besieged by the ministers of the whole court.

The first one is to save discussion, and there are always many people who oppose when the court makes decisions.

No matter how perfect the plan is, he can always find a lot of faults and criticize it. When you ask him to come up with a countermeasure, he can't say anything, and he only cares about disparaging others, as if only in this way can he show his ability.

The result is that your majesty can't make up his mind and miss the best time to solve the problem.

No decision can be perfect. We should look at the mainstream, weigh the pros and cons, and make efforts as long as the pros outweigh the cons.

If you are fussy about everything and get stuck in endless arguments all day long, it will not only be detrimental to solving problems, but may also intensify conflicts.

When the ministers submit memorials, they should get straight to the point, not go around in circles, concentrate on their own work, and argue less.

This can actually be seen as a certain restriction imposed by Zhang Juzheng on the prevalent system of censors in the Ming Dynasty.

The court specially set up censors and officials. These officials were of lower rank, but had the power to supervise and impeach senior officials, and liked to express their opinions on everything, and basically they were opposing opinions, only knowing how to expose shortcomings but not making suggestions.

The purpose of the second article of the "Revitalizing Discipline" was not only to restore the original laws of the court, but also to criticize the behavior of Emperor Jiajing who promoted or imprisoned ministers according to his preferences during his more than 40 years in power.

Guilt or innocence was entirely up to the emperor, and the officials were useless.

The subsequent re-edict required that all government offices must complete the processing of orders within the specified time after receiving them.

If they could not complete the processing, they had to explain the reasons and come up with solutions.

All orders should be registered and cancelled after completion.

Those who fail to complete their tasks must be held accountable, and the officials’ performance will be evaluated based on their efficiency in completing their tasks.

Zhang Juzheng’s method was to cut off the buck-passing and wrangling between the various departments. When receiving an order, a strict explanation must be given, and then the execution will be supervised according to your explanation. No one is allowed to respond passively.

In other words, it is to clarify responsibilities and quantify tasks through a standard document format, which is convenient for supervision and assessment.

The fourth article is to verify the name and reality. What the country really needs are those who can solve practical problems. The method of judging talents by reputation will result in those who work hard not being promoted, while those who talk big often get promoted.

In the long run, everyone is unwilling to work and the work efficiency is low.

For officials who have served for a certain number of years, precise assessments should be conducted, and their political achievements in all aspects should be comprehensively considered. According to the grades of "competent", "ordinary" and "incompetent", their positions should be adjusted, and their titles should be rewarded or punished.

Among them, Zhang Juzheng especially mentioned the promotion of assistant officials. Officials who have passed the nine-year examination should be promoted in their own departments, rather than being transferred between government offices.

The fifth article, "Strengthening the foundation of the country", is actually a way to solve the financial difficulties.

Finance is the cornerstone of the country, and the economic conditions of the people and a reasonable tax system are the foundation of the country's finances.

In the last ten years of the Jiajing Dynasty, Yan Song controlled the government and was crazy about corruption. Emperor Jiajing devoted himself to Taoism and did not care about government affairs, and the people were poor and exhausted.

Local tyrants annexed land and passed the tax burden to the grassroots people, making the country's finances worse.

Zhang Juzheng hoped to suppress the tyrants and let the people recuperate.

Advocate strict economy, advocate simplicity, and put people first.

Of course, every time he saw this, Wei Guangde's eyes would linger on the so-called famous sentence "To resist foreign aggression, we must first stabilize the country", but this time, although Wei Guangde did not look away, he closed his eyes directly.

Wei Guangde seemed to smell a hint of blood in the last few sentences.

In the first year of Longqing, because of insufficient national funds, the Censorate sent a large number of censors to various places to supervise the collection of taxes, that is, to collect taxes and labor service from various places.

And Zhang Juzheng already knew the result of doing so, "If we seek those who harm the wealth and get rid of them, why should we ask for it from the poor people and waste the vitality of the country?"

"Now how can we deal with it? Nowadays, the customs are extravagant and decadent, and there are no restrictions on the clothes and housing of officials and civilians. Foreign tyrants annex and tax service is uneven, and they spend money on trickery and refuse to pay taxes on land, which burdens the common people."

Wei Guangde opened his eyes suddenly and stared at one of the paragraphs.

"Burning the common people."

Wei Guangde seemed to have realized that when Zhang Juzheng wrote this, perhaps his eyes on making up for the deficit of the court had moved away from the "common people". Why should we ask for it from the "poor people"?

Here, Zhang Juzheng divided the Ming society into three categories: officials, civilians and common people.

The references were very clear, so Wei Guangde could tell at a glance.

But he was also very suspicious. Was Zhang Juzheng going to use the "way to make money" to attack the "officials and the people"?

How was he going to collect it?

There was no mention of it in the main memorial, so Wei Guangde even read the memorial again.

The fundamental reason why he attached so much importance to this matter was that, apart from a little knowledge from later generations, he was not much smarter than Zhang Juzheng, Chen Yiqin and others.

Since he did not have the talent to rule the world, Wei Guangde did not intend to be the elephant.

If he entered the cabinet, should he enter the cabinet to govern?

He certainly did not want to kill himself like Zhang Juzheng did.

But, more importantly, he did not want to give Zhang Juzheng any chance to punish him.

During Zhang Juzheng's reign, he could be said to have invaded the court and the people, and even the emperor had to listen to him.

In Wei Guangde's impression, it was said that because the emperor had some disagreements or hesitations with him in handling the government affairs, Zhang Juzheng dared to show his face to the emperor, forcing the emperor to yield.

If Zhang Juzheng caught him with any evidence, would he force the emperor to arrest him?

Therefore, to avoid such a thing from happening, he must know his thoughts in advance, try to avoid committing these things, and not give him any chance.

He, or the people behind him, are the "officials and civilians" in his memorials. In other words, Zhang Juzheng's way of making money for the court falls on him and the people around him.

At this time, Wei Guangde finally understood that he always felt strange when he first read Zhang Juzheng's "Chen Liu Shi Shu", and now he finally knew where the source was.

"Collecting business taxes like Wei Zhongxian?"

Wei Guangde muttered unconsciously.

He remembered that later generations had a very low evaluation of Wei Zhongxian. The fundamental reason was that Wei Zhongxian turned his attention to merchants in order to make money for the court and himself. Because he was born poor, he naturally knew that the common people could no longer squeeze out oil and water, and squeezing them again would only force the people to rebel.

Of course, he didn't want anyone to rebel, because he would be the unlucky one.

Zhang Juzheng seemed to have a similar view to Wei Zhongxian.

The only difference is that it seems that the power of businessmen is not so great that they can interfere in the court.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the relationship between businessmen and officials was even more entangled, and it was impossible to tear them apart.

It is said that officials in Jiangnan, Shanxi and other places were mostly supported by businessmen at that time, so after they entered the court as officials, they were mostly controlled by businessmen.

Wei Guangde knew that Zhang Juzheng's main achievements were the "One Whip Law" and the "Kaocheng Law", but the "One Whip Law" seemed to have little to do with Zhang Juzheng and had existed for a long time.

Moreover, the "One Whip Law" actually had little impact on "officials and citizens".

He should have done other things.

Wei Guangde had already judged at this time that Zhang Juzheng should have done more things after controlling power, and these things might be the direct reason for pushing the Zhang family into an irretrievable situation.

Wei Guangde carefully recalled for a long time, and he did not expect that when he was interacting with Zhang Juzheng, he had said anything else. His opinions on taxes were more complicated, and he was very supportive of the "One Whip Law".

Wei Guangde did not consider the "hidden fields" and "hidden households". Although he knew, he knew more that to do these things, the court needed a huge investment and would encounter resistance.

The officials below would first give up because of their respective families.

If you do these things in other provinces, others can also check your family background. How can the civil service group dig its own wall?

Forget it, it's too late, so let it be.

Wei Guangde automatically filtered out the matter of military preparation among Zhang Juzheng's six things. He felt that he seemed to understand it better than Zhang Juzheng and started preparing earlier.

In fact, after Wei Guangde passed the imperial examination, he also thought about doing something to achieve success and fame.

For civil officials, is there anything more famous than creating a "prosperous age"?

But he knew how difficult it was to create another "prosperous age". Details can be omitted. At least the treasury should be full and the people should have enough food and clothing.

What was the Kaiyuan prosperous age like?

"Remembering the prosperous days of Kaiyuan, small towns still had tens of thousands of households.

The rice was fat and the millet was white, and the public and private granaries were full."

This is internal.

Externally, there were no major threats around the Tang Dynasty. Even the Tubo, which the Tang Dynasty had repeatedly conquered but failed, chose to ask for a marriage to end this state of war because of the strong national strength of the Tang Empire and suffered from years of war.

Yes, during the Tang Dynasty, the main enemy of the Tang Empire was not the Turks on the northern grasslands, but the Tubo on the Tibetan Plateau.

It was difficult for the Tang army to attack the plateau on a large scale. The strong altitude reaction made the Tang army suffer every time it attacked, and the initiative of the war was always in the hands of Tubo.

It was under such an environment, both internally and externally, that the rare "prosperity" in Chinese history was created.

Wei Guangde's idea in the past was to "lighten the people's taxes". The court finances solved the court's financial problems by opening the sea and imposing heavy taxes on export goods.

Even if it cannot be solved, at least it is good to alleviate it, so that the people can recuperate.

As for the external affairs, it is to use generals who are good at fighting and train an invincible army to directly push the Mongolia in the north, and then "plow the court and sweep the holes" to completely solve the hidden dangers in the northeast.

In his memory, he seems to remember that there was a "Wanli Three Major Expeditions", among which there was a war to aid Korea and resist the Japanese, but he didn't know when it was.

If he was still in the court, he would definitely not end the war so easily.

In the eyes of Western navigators, the Japanese island is a gold and silver island. How can it be given up casually?