In the Song Dynasty, there was no law or order.

The next morning, Zhao Jun went to court with panda eyes.

When the court came back, except for the prime ministers, Li Di was the most excited among all the civil and military officials in the court.

Because Wang Sui fell ill this time and fell into a coma, the imperial physician said that he would not survive until the end of the year and the New Year, and he was almost on his deathbed.

So this time, there might be a vacant prime minister position in the Political System Council, and he would most likely be promoted to the Political System Council.

Before Zhao Jun came back, Li Di was a little worried that Zhao Jun was not in Bianliang, and Lu Yijian would interfere.

But now that Zhao Jun is back, he has nothing to worry about.

Even if he is happy to be promoted after someone dies, it seems a bit inhumane to be so happy.

But first of all, Li Di and Wang Sui have no friendship, so there is no need to be sad for him. Second, this is a politician, and he will fight to the death for power.

After the morning court ended, Li Di wanted to see Zhao Jun, but Zhao Jun had someone pass him a message-be patient.

This sentence made Li Di feel relieved, and he was secretly happy that he had made the right move by joining Zhao Jun.

Although the former prime minister seemed to be willing to be someone's follower, it seemed a bit self-degrading.

But Li Di had been up and down in the officialdom for so many years, and he had already seen it.

Besides, Zhao Jun was too young.

He was so young and sat in this high position, and he was deeply trusted by the government. He might hold power for a long time in the future.

If he could stay with a powerful boss for a long time, it would be a great thing for him and his family's children.

Therefore, Li Di would naturally choose to bet, which was the keen sense of smell of an old politician.

After Zhao Jun finished the morning court, he went to the Constitutional Council. When the meeting was called, except for Fan Zhongyan who was now transferred to Hebei, only Wang Sui, who was seriously ill in bed, did not attend the meeting.

Everyone sat down separately, and Zhao Jun sat back in his own main seat again, put the notebook on it, and started today's topic.

First, let's talk about the current domestic situation.

In terms of military, Fan Zhongyan won two great victories in the northwest, one defensive battle and one counterattack, which severely injured Li Yuanhao. Now he can only hide in his old nest and lick his wounds.

The Liao army in the north went south and deployed troops on the border. The two sides conducted several tests. The Liao army sent a small team to harass the border fortress.

The Song army in the fortress used thunder bombs and directly used catapults to throw pottery jars filled with gunpowder into the enemy camp. At the moment of the explosion, the Liao cavalry fled in panic and dared not approach.

Facing the tortoise shell of the Song Dynasty, Yelu Zongzhen was obviously in a dilemma.

A smart general suggested that they simply bypass the fortresses and cities on the front line of the Song army, go south to raid the valleys and plunder the people of the Song Dynasty, and they didn't believe that they could not do anything with the tortoise shell of the Song Dynasty.

Yelu Zongzhen was so angry that he asked the smart general to lead the troops himself. As a result, the general did bypass it. When he led 5,000 light cavalry south for more than 200 kilometers and ran to Jizhou, he was dumbfounded.

Because the tortoise shell of the Song Dynasty was built directly from Xiongzhou to Beijing Damingfu of the Song Dynasty, although there were also people who farmed, once they found the Liao cavalry, they immediately dropped their hoes, or went into nearby bunkers, or ran to the city.

In fact, the economy and agriculture had already moved to the south during the Song Dynasty. Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, Hebei and Henan have always been the traditional agricultural and economic centers of the Han people because of the relationship with the North China Plain.

During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the population of Hebei reached more than six million, becoming the main area for Yuan Shao to dominate the world.

But in the Song Dynasty, the population of Hebei was still six million, of which the eastern route of Hebei was about 3.3 million and the western route of Hebei was 2.6 million. This was obviously unreasonable in the Song Dynasty, which far exceeded the productivity and agricultural technology of the Han Dynasty.

In contrast, the population of Henan and Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions in the same period exceeded 10 million.

The only reason is that Hebei became the front line of confrontation with the Liao Kingdom. The Song Dynasty court built the border of Hebei and nearby counties into military towns and moved the people of the border to the south.

Therefore, there are fewer people in the border area, and the main population of Hebei is basically concentrated near Damingfu, north of the Yellow River.

The Liao Kingdom wanted to bypass the border fortress and penetrate hundreds of kilometers to attack the heartland of the Song Kingdom. Unless Yelu Zong really gave up the logistics line and planned to go all out, it would be impossible to bypass it.

The end of that clever man was that Fan Zhongyan mobilized troops and directly besieged him in Hejianfu, and the whole army was annihilated.

This battle was actually a test by Yelu Zongzhen.

He was not so stupid as to send people in to die directly, but the result of the test was obvious. The Song Kingdom extended the border line all the way to Damingfu and built too many fortifications, which really made him unable to bite.

Therefore, to a certain extent, the Song Kingdom was in a position to defeat Xixia militarily, the northwest was safe, and the Liao Kingdom in the north could not invade the south, and it was in an invincible position.

Zhao Jun was still very happy to get this result. At least his arrival gave the Song Dynasty military a strong shot in the arm.

There is no need to worry about the military for now.

Old Fan can handle it.

Economically, Lu Yijian and his team have not been sitting idle for the past two years. They have reformed the state-owned trading houses and handed over more than 51% of the operating rights to private enterprises.

The Ministry of Industry and Commerce has also registered several state-owned commercial banks.

As mentioned before, there were actually registered companies in the Song Dynasty. Registering with the government and getting a "shop book" was considered a successful registration. At that time, it was called a commercial bank.

These state-owned commercial banks cooperated with private enterprises, and the operating rights were handed over to private enterprises. As long as they did not violate the law and evade taxes, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce would basically solve the difficulties faced by the officials.

As a result, Bianliang's original state-owned tea, salt, alum, wine, spices, etc. officially entered the private sector, liberalizing the monopoly official system and allowing commerce to flourish.

The only thing that we still specialize in now is ironware.

After all, this thing is a strategic material. If it is allowed to be privately owned, it will not be long before Xixia and Liao Kingdom can obtain a large amount of iron tools, which will be detrimental to the Song Kingdom.

In terms of officialdom restructuring, it has now been extended to the whole country, and a system of linking official positions to grades has been implemented.

For example, Zhao Jun's Zhiyuan Zhiyuan was also the Duke of Song Dynasty, so he was completely genuine.

Lu Yijian and others were both informed by the Political Academy, so they were ranked first in rank.

If there are ministers in each department who observe the candidates and know their identities, they will be the second rank. If there are not, then they will be the second rank.

The levels of assistant officers of various ministries, such as ministers of various ministries, are basically between the third rank and the fourth rank.

And the strategic envoy along the way will be raised to the third rank, the pacification envoy, the transfer envoy, and the punishment department will be the fourth rank, and important areas may be upgraded from the third rank.

The main reason is that the economic and strategic envoys are not permanent and are basically not set up in the south. Only when there is a war, senior civilian officials will be assigned to serve. They have military and political control, which is comparable to the power of the Jiedushi in the Tang Dynasty.

The magistrate at the state level is usually from the fifth rank, and the magistrate of a county is usually from the seventh rank.

Basically, the situation that the original assignments and grades were not linked resulted in confusion in the officialdom and unclear authority.

In addition, the country has also begun to separate public security and judicial organs. Previously, it was temporarily piloted at the road level, and it was officially promoted nationwide last year.

Since then, there have been many basic departments such as the Dali Bureau, the Criminal Trial Bureau, the Education Bureau, and the Industrial and Commercial Bureau.

They assumed the functions of the local courts, the Supervisory Yuan, the Education Bureau and the Industrial and Commercial Bureau. Since then, the county magistrate has begun to focus on local development, while criminal cases are handled by the local county captain (Public Security Bureau) Dali Bureau and Criminal Trial Bureau.

Moreover, at the road level, the Yushitai also has branches, and the assigned censors are all young censors who have just passed the Jinshi examination.

Young people are often more energetic and have not been polluted by the big dye vat of officialdom, so they are more energetic.

They inspect local areas every month and audit the situation in each state and county.

Just like before, Zhao Jun arranged to confiscate the fields of wealthy landlords who violated laws and regulations and turned them into official fields.

If these official fields are found to have been misappropriated by local states or counties by the inspection censor of the Yushitai, or there are local problems, they must be reported to the central government immediately.

Then we have to see if Zhao Jun's knife is sharp.

In terms of education, the primary school knowledge brought by Zhao Jun has been promoted on a pilot basis in Bianliang.

The imperial court established several primary schools to enroll children from poor families free of charge. The main teaching was primary school mathematics and normal Confucian education.

The outstanding ones will be selected to teach junior high school mathematics, chemistry and physics.

Although the books Zhao Jun brought did not completely cover the entire mathematics, physics and chemistry of junior high schools, they still contained a lot of content in this area, such as "Interesting Little Experiments in Physics", "Basic Chemical Reactions", "Nature and Science", etc.

This is bound to promote the development of mathematics, physics and chemistry in the Song Dynasty.

In a few years, after mathematics, physics, and chemistry have slowly taken root among the people, and science is included in the imperial examinations, I am afraid that in less than ten years, mathematics, physics, and chemistry will take root and thrive in the Song Dynasty.

So after hearing the feedback from everyone in the Constitutional Yuan, Zhao Jun is still very satisfied with the current progress.

Basically, except for the military system, tax system, official administration and land, the rest of the political system, economy, education and other reforms have been completed, and the resistance is not very big.

There is naturally little resistance to education reform. These officials do not understand what mathematics, physics and chemistry are.

There are some minor economic obstacles. For example, the officials of the original state-owned market could not accept the loss of their iron rice bowl, and they all made a fuss and opposed it.

But the objection is invalid.

Li Shen struck hard and severely investigated corruption in the original state-owned forecourts. The result was an earthquake, hundreds of officials were arrested, and many people were arrested from Bianliang to Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Now the resistance is gone, and the other officials don't care. They don't care about their affairs anyway, not to mention there are more people in the officialdom now.

After the reform of the official system, many new departments were added, and idle officials took over one after another, which suddenly solved the problem of redundant officials in the Song Dynasty.

But the way to solve the problem is to simply amputate the legs in order to cure the lameness.

Because in the past, redundant officials were idle officials who had no assignments and could receive less salary.

Now that there are errands, the salary is increased, and redundant officials are left to deal with it. However, the official salary expenditure is more, resulting in greater financial pressure.

However, this is not completely without benefits, that is, the new officials will obviously support the Constitutional Yuan more, and the existence of the Constitutional Yuan will allow them to take office, thus forming a new interest group.

Basically, as long as the Constitutional Yuan does not dismiss them again, most of the newly appointed officials will basically maintain the Constitutional Yuan's views.

Therefore, this resulted in a new officialdom restructuring with less resistance.

All that's left now is large-scale restructuring.

"very good."

After hearing everyone's reports, Zhao Jun nodded with satisfaction and said, "It seems like you haven't done anything these days."

Lu Yijian stroked his beard and said proudly: "That's natural, and he has made some achievements."

"Lao Lu, don't be too proud and complacent."

Zhao Jun said with a smile: "These systems are just foreplay, and the resistance will not be too great. If we really want to reform the system, the big one is yet to come."

After hearing Zhao Jun's words, everyone was curious. Wang Zeng asked: "It seems that you have really gained a lot this time."

"I do have some ideas. I need time to sort them out, but the core idea is actually to alleviate the survival pressure of the people at the bottom first. In this way, the domestic conflicts can be temporarily resolved."

"What's the specific method?"

"It's simple."

Zhao Jun said: "For example, we will increase consumption and return it to the public, and cancel a large number of exorbitant taxes such as transfers, scrap money, transfers, boss money, etc. Reduce the proportion of agricultural taxes as much as possible, and increase the tax rate for large landowners and the wealthy class."

"In this case, wouldn't the imperial court receive a lot less tax?"

Sheng Du frowned.

"It just reduced the proportion of agricultural taxes. Do you know how much the taxes were in the Southern Song Dynasty?"

Zhao Jun asked back.

Everyone shook their heads. In the past, people mostly asked about the Northern Song Dynasty and few about the Southern Song Dynasty. Indeed, they had not heard him talk about it in detail.

"Higher than the Northern Song Dynasty, generally more than 100 million strings."

Zhao Jun stretched out a finger and said: "In the Southern Song Dynasty, when only half of the country was in the country and a large area of ​​land north of Huainan and Sichuan was lost, the tax rate was higher than that in the Northern Song Dynasty. In fact, we can see the problem."

Yan Shu was surprised: "Why is this happening?"

"Because of business tax."

Zhao Jun said: "After the Southern Song Dynasty moved to the south, in order to alleviate financial pressure, it vigorously developed trade. Through the Maritime Silk Road and the Ancient Tea Horse Road in Yunnan, goods were exported to Southeast Asia, Central Asia, West Asia and even Europe. Even if they confronted the Jin Kingdom, The market is not closed, and everyone trades with each other, making the economy more active than in the Northern Song Dynasty, and the commercial tax rate is as high as 80%."

"Can you collect 80 million yuan from commercial tax alone?"

Everyone was shocked.

"more than."

Zhao Jun said: "The annual fiscal revenue of the Southern Song Dynasty reached 160 million yuan at its peak, and the commercial tax reached 85%. This shows that the industrial and commercial tax has basically replaced the agricultural tax and became the pillar tax in the Southern Song Dynasty."

"Do you mean that the Song Dynasty should devote all its efforts to developing business?"

Lu Yijian asked.

In fact, the Northern Song Dynasty also vigorously developed industry and commerce, but it was not like the Southern Song Dynasty.

After all, the traditional thinking in ancient times was to emphasize agriculture and suppress business. Therefore, during the Northern Song Dynasty, a balance between agricultural tax and commercial tax was maintained. It was not until the late Northern Song Dynasty that commercial tax completely exceeded agricultural tax, reaching 60%-70%.

"It's not full strength, but there is a degree of tightness."

Zhao Jun said: "Grasp the big ones and let go of the small ones, promote them flexibly, and actively expand externally to increase import and export quotas. I think there are four directions in which Song Dynasty's business can develop externally."

"Which four?"

“The first is from Guangzhou to Central Asia and Southeast Asia, the second is from Qingtang to Central Asia, the third is from Zhejiang and Shandong to Guangzhou, Japan and Korea, and the fourth is from Chengdu to Dali and Southeast Asia. "

Zhao Jun pointed out: "Such two land Silk Roads and two maritime Silk Roads are bound to bring a steady stream of tax revenue to the Song Dynasty. Especially Japan, as long as Japan's silver flows in in large quantities, the money shortage of the Song Dynasty will be solved Solved, the extra copper can be used to make artillery and strengthen military capabilities. "

He continued: "In addition, the expansion of foreign trade can stimulate economic growth internally, reduce agricultural taxes, and develop commerce, which will definitely not reduce tax revenue. It can also promote industrial development. For the people at the bottom of the Song Dynasty, it is It’s all a good thing.”

"Well"

Everyone nodded slightly, it sounded good.

Yan Shu asked: "I remember you said that Yongzheng's reform also included the sharing of land between households and households, so why wasn't this implemented?"

“Because it’s not the right time yet and productivity is not up to standard, spreading the land over a small area is self-destruction.”

Zhao Jun looked around the crowd and said: "The suggestions I put forward are basically things that can be achieved in the Song Dynasty. These things may not be possible in the Ming Dynasty, but they should be possible in the Song Dynasty. The rest cannot be done Things can only be discussed later.”

He refers to increasing consumption and returning it to the public, and canceling a large number of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes. A policy to reduce the proportion of agricultural taxes and increase tax rates for large landowners and the wealthy class.

Although these policies did not work in the Ming Dynasty, it was different in the Song Dynasty.

The Song Dynasty imposed heavy and heavy taxes, which not only forced the peasants to rebel, but also forced a large number of landlords to rebel.

It's not that these landowners want to rebel, but who is in charge of taxation in the Song Dynasty. Even if the family members of officials are doing business, they have to pay taxes first, which is comparable to the Internal Revenue Service of later generations of the American Empire.

Why are candidates, scholars, and officials exempt from tax?

nonexistent.

That was all done by the scholar-bureaucrats of the Ming Dynasty to deceive the emperor of the Ming Dynasty.

In our great Song Dynasty, there were only three things that we could not escape from, one was to do corvee service, the other was to die, and the third was to pay taxes.

The wealthy class could avoid corvee by spending money, but they could not avoid paying taxes by spending money. That was why the Song Dynasty was so wealthy. It typically scraped three feet of land to fatten the court, and then the court spent money on three feet of land to extend its life.

Therefore, these reforms proposed by Zhao Jun were completely achievable by the Song Dynasty.

That is to say, a large number of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes were abolished to reduce the burden on farmers, and then foreign trade was expanded, and large landowners and particularly wealthy people were continued to be squeezed to make up for the reduction in tax revenue caused by the abolition of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes at the bottom.

As for sharing an acre and so on.

a bit difficult.

The policy is definitely a good policy, but once implemented, the population will inevitably grow explosively.

Whether you admit it or not, the population of the Qing Dynasty could reach 400 million, and the spread of small acres only played a driving role. The real decisive role was the introduction of high-yielding crops such as sweet potatoes, corn, and potatoes, which could feed such a large population.

Otherwise, in the case of severe food shortage, if the poll tax is no longer collected, it will inevitably lead to insufficient productivity, but the population will increase, and famine will easily occur.

Therefore, the poll tax is not suitable at least for now.

In addition to these more common policies, Zhao Jun also made some policies that he studied after his own adjustments.

From agriculture to economy, to local system reform, he has his own ideas.

It's just that there are too many things, so for the time being, I will talk about some strategies that are relatively easy to understand, relatively conservative, not so radical, and easier to implement in the feudal society of the Song Dynasty.