New Shun 1730

The starting point of the emperor's actions actually has nothing to do with the last word "people" in the four characters of the plaque of the main hall of the Forbidden Palace that was changed in the year of Jiashen.

However, a qualified emperor must be clear that leaning towards small farmers is to maintain the stability of imperial power. Self-cultivating farmers are the pillars of imperial power, not literati. At critical moments, the self-cultivating farmers are still the ones who can defend imperial power.

Tenant farmers are unreliable, merchants are unreliable, gentry are unreliable, and hired workers are even more unreliable.

The bloody massacre in Huainan was doomed when Liu Yu said that he would prepare inferior rice and corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes and sorghum.

Does the emperor want to reform? Does he know that the literati's policy of exempting miscellaneous labor and exempting local apportionment is encroaching on imperial power and the court's control over the country?

He really wants to, and he knows. But he dare not move. Liu Yu's reforms in southern Jiangsu have achieved remarkable results, especially the per mu tax reform, but the emperor also knows that the situation in southern Jiangsu is special, and that was Liu Yu who touched their interests and gave them a sweet date for investment.

Now, the disguised land reform in Huainan and northern Jiangsu can be regarded as a "slant path" for the emperor. Although it cannot be replicated, the effect can achieve the most desired result.

After pacing for a few times, the emperor looked at the Yellow River on the map, which turned sharply to the south. He looked around Huainan for a few times and gradually moved down.

From Funing, Yancheng, Huai'an, it has reached Yangzhou Prefecture and Zhenjiang Prefecture, and then gradually moved eastward to Changzhou Prefecture, Nantong Prefecture, Suzhou Prefecture...

With the reform of the canal transportation, the garrison of Zhenjiang Prefecture can also be disbanded or replaced.

In the era of canal transportation, if Zhenjiang Prefecture was taken down, it would not be far from the collapse of the centralization of power.

And now, with the reform of the canal transportation, the status of Zhenjiang Prefecture is at least no longer the level of shaking the world once there is a change.

As the starting point of sea transportation and a transit station connecting Japan and Southeast Asia, Songjiang Prefecture has a higher status.

However, Songjiang Prefecture is different from Zhenjiang.

Zhenjiang Prefecture is just the starting point of the canal. If Zhenjiang is defended, the canal can still be unobstructed if there is an external enemy or the enemy comes from the southeast.

But Songjiang Prefecture does not go to the canal, but to the sea.

If Songjiang Prefecture is defended, it will be useless without the control of the sea.

Of course, this is not all bad.

There are advantages as well.

If you don't want external enemies, consider internal troubles.

For example, a peasant uprising may cut off the canal; for example, a local rebellion may cut off the canal.

However, whether it is a peasant uprising or a local rebellion, it is impossible to create a navy.

Even if they create a navy, they can also create a group of officers who can fight at sea.

The navy is a technical branch of the army, at least compared to the army.

As long as they can't create a navy, it means that the court will not collapse due to finances.

With money bags and rice bags in hand, they can always suppress it.

The strategy of the imperial court did not need to consider protecting the canal, protecting the grain transport, protecting this and that. Being led by others, it was easy to use the strategy of "attacking where they must save" - ​​this was the founding history of Dashun, which had played the game of attacking the vassal kings and mobilizing the enemy troops in the past, and it was remembered clearly.

There were good and bad things, and the emperor knew that it was different from the past.

Now the empire that the Li family took over from Gao Yigong has come to this point, and it has reached the point where it has to continue to develop the navy and continue to expand to ensure a safe buffer zone in Nanyang.

With Nanyang becoming a rice production base, to some extent, Malacca has taken over the status of Zhenjiang Prefecture.

At this point, there is actually no way back - once the canal is abandoned, if something really happens at sea, the canal will not be repaired in two or three years.

The abandonment of the canal is a desperate move, and there is no turning back.

The navy is not good, and the canal is repaired overnight. Even if there is a lot of money, it will take several years to repair it. What will happen then?

The Academy of Sciences did produce some rail cars, but the emperor saw them and found them to be just toys. The emperor doubted that he would see the day when they could become a "grand canal that does not need water".

Once you go to the sea, you can't retreat.

The empire was slowly sliding towards a road that had no precedent in the past twenty years.

For a while, the emperor understood why Liu Yu was so nervous about the exchange of money and silver. The inexplicable fear of not knowing the future, the unpredictable things, and the things that could not be inferred by past experience or reasoning always made people panic.

The change of boiling frogs in warm water, accompanied by the need to pay attention to the navy, caused more new problems.

The navy needed a group of new students. Those who read the Thirteen Classics could not be navy officers. How could they be navy officers if they did not understand longitude and latitude?

Even if the emperor had realized that new students in many places might become a big problem - they could not take the imperial examinations, but they still had knowledge - the empire had been forced to pay attention to the navy and trade, and it was impossible to ban new learning, so it could only be allowed to "flood".

If the imperial examinations are indeed not possible, the whole world will be shaken.

However, we have to find something for these people to do.

But what?

The emperor's eyes turned back to the northern Jiangsu and Huainan areas, where Liu Yu was going to kill many people.

Once the local bad gentry were slaughtered by this method of luring the snake out of its hole, could the court learn from the Qin Dynasty system and select new students to serve as minor officials to fill the gaps in the Huainan and northern Jiangsu where the gentry had been slaughtered?

First, once the new Huaihe River is built, someone must take on the original position of the gentry - the state pays for the repair of the Yellow River, but what about the maintenance of the local canals? Someone must be organized.

Second, among the new students, the first-class will enter the Academy of Sciences, the second-class will enter the Navy, and the third-class will become business clerks, but these still cannot give outstanding talents room for advancement. Nanyang is one direction, and Huainan can also be a pool of water.

Third, there is the issue of tax collection.

Ten-tenth tax or even eight-tenth tax, after the land is distributed to small farmers and those local levies are abolished, the people can still afford it. The court also needs an efficient tax system to maintain its operation.

Relying on the collected taxes to pay salaries to those new students, the court still makes money.

In addition to these three points, there is another issue that must be considered.

Ruling below the county level means that many things must be managed.

Ruling is not ruling if it only collects taxes.

This is not the emperor loving the people like his own children, but a very realistic problem.

Usury is also lending, at least it is lending.

On the one hand, sweep away the gentry.

On the other hand, if the court does not fully assume some of the identities of the gentry in the countryside, the countryside will soon be in chaos.

The simplest example is lending in a famine year.

Small farmers are very vulnerable. What if there is a disaster, a flood, a fire, or a house burns down...

Even if your parents die, you have to buy a coffin and blow a percussion instrument, right? Don't they all need urgent money?

Since they are preparing to use a poisonous scheme to sweep away the evil gentry in Huainan, should the court assume the simplest identity of lending that the gentry assumes?

If they do, that is the Qingmiao Law.

The Qingmiao Law, the examples of the previous dynasties are there, and there are many problems. Merchants and gentry can make those who can't repay the loan sell their wives and daughters. Can the court do this?

If Qingmiao loans are not issued, small farmers are so vulnerable. What if there is a disaster and the gentry are swept away, what should these people do?

The little that small farmers have accumulated is only enough for food every year. If they encounter a little disaster, they can't bear it. Although the gentry is hateful, they do take on some things that the court can't control.

To a certain extent, the current dynasty no longer knows how to rule the people directly, and can only choose indirect rule, using gentry as agents - very similar to the colonial rule that the British planned to carry out in Java, with gentry as middlemen between small farmers and the government.

The emperor, the royal family, and the nobles are like a group of colonists who rely on the violence of the army to maintain peace with the gentry class. As the middleman of the colonists, the gentry is responsible for governing the vast rural areas.

Whoever becomes the emperor can do it, as long as the original rules are maintained.

Official lending, regulation, equal sales, suppression of powerful people to force land sales, disaster relief for the people, relief for small disasters... These means are now all thrown away and can't be picked up at all.

These aspects of the people's lives are closely related, and the court doesn't care, so naturally someone will fill this gap.

It seems that the court has made a profit and does not have to bear too many troubles.

In fact, it has resulted in the court being able to collect only 20 to 30 million taels of silver a year. If the purchasing power of silver is converted into inflation, it is hard to say whether it is more than the in-kind tax in the early Ming Dynasty.

Compare it with Britain, which can implement the Enclosure Act, guarantee authorized monopoly, and levy various indirect and direct taxes; compare it with France, which can control the economy and officially control foreign trade and colonization; compare it with France, which only manages war and flood control, and has almost no control over the rest of the economy, land is completely free to buy and sell, and the official cannot even control the exchange rate of legal coin copper coins and silver, which is entirely determined by the market - which one is like the legendary "perfect" "night watchman government"?

There is a reason why the Physiocrats talked about China.

Britain did not say that it could exchange pennies, shillings and pounds, which was entirely determined by the market.

Even the Netherlands, which was ridiculed by Liu Yu all day, did not exchange the copper coins issued and the Dutch guilder. It did not follow the currency value, but the free market exchange, right?

Of course, Liu Yu's evaluation is that the court is incompetent and useless, not that they subjectively want to do so.

Similar to the "trade surplus" of Dashun, or similar to the "ideological liberation" at the end of the previous dynasty.

It's not what the court did, but that it was so incompetent that it didn't know how to do anything, didn't know how to do it, and couldn't do anything even if it knew.

Although Liu Yu's thoughts about the "incompetence and waste" of the Dashun court have been kept in his heart and not spoken out.

But after the emperor came into contact with the outside world over the years, he also had similar thoughts in his heart. Especially after knowing the annual revenue of the British tax treasury, and knowing what the British land tax and various messy taxes can collect, this idea has more or less sprouted.

Relatively speaking, the degree of incompetence is not as serious as the data comparison.

It's wrong to only look at silver. We have to count the nearly three-fold difference caused by the price revolution in Western Europe such as grain and cloth on both sides. Although they are both silver, Dashun's 20 taels and London's 20 taels are really not the same thing. Although Dashun's various bizarre policies were not consciously implemented when the policies were formulated, they did objectively delay the global price revolution brought about by American silver.

However, the emperor did not understand this at all. When he saw the comparison of the silver income data of the treasury, he was naturally terrified and stunned.

In this case, the emperor wanted to try various centralized reforms in Huainan, northern Jiangsu and southern Jiangsu. Southern Jiangsu adopted the interference model, while northern Jiangsu adopted the direct management model.

Since this is the case, in addition to collecting taxes, the gentry will have to take on some of the responsibilities that they originally undertook.

So the Qingmiao loan is inevitable. Someone has to lend money to survive the disaster years and prepare for emergencies.

However, the shadow of the failure of the previous dynasty made the emperor very hesitant.