The Prosperous Era of Longwan

Yes, although Xu Jie still had connections in the officialdom after becoming an official, these connections were certainly not enough to compare with Gao Gong who had returned to court.

But Xu Jie couldn't sit still and wait for death.

Are you kidding me? The dignified chief minister of the Ming Empire was defeated by his own subordinates after he stepped down. Where should he put Xu Jie's face if he was told?

If he was at a loss when he first received a letter from his disciple Zhang Juzheng, now he has finally thought of a way to break the situation.

It is true that you, Gao Gong, were the emperor's teacher. You spent nine years with Emperor Longqing when you were in Yu Zhuan. You are in the heart of the emperor, so what?

I just caught your character of cherishing feathers. Aren't you very strict with yourself and want to be the best in everything, making others impeccable?

I will let people spread rumors in the capital, saying that when Gao Gong returns, he will definitely carry out crazy revenge on those who drove him away.

Everyone says this, I see what else you can do to me with your high arch.

Xu Jie had already made a plan. When Gao Gong returned to the capital, he still didn't believe Gao Gong would take action against him in the face of such rumors.

The word "revenge" would be like a magic rope, tightly binding Gao Gong's hands and feet. He would not dare to touch anyone who attacked him in the past.

As long as you make a move, it will be your revenge, and the charges will be confirmed.

Just when Xu Jie was feeling complacent about finding a way to deal with Gao Gong's return to the court and started to feast, Hai Rui was also troubled in the lobby of Ying Tian's governor's office.

At this time, he was looking at the pile of papers on the public case and felt helpless.

Most of these petitions were filed against the Xu family by people in the area under their jurisdiction. The most common one was that the Xu family took advantage of Xu Jie's status as a minister of the dynasty, teamed up with local officials and rogues to plunder, or committed crimes at low prices or deliberately created unjust cases. Seize land.

While looking at these papers, Hai Rui also noticed that the amount of land owned by the Xu family was staggering.

A group of people sued the Xu family for illegally occupying land, and this did not include the contributions of some families.

In fact, with Hai Rui's official position, it is very simple to check how many fields the Xu family has. He only needs to notify the following prefectures and counties to check the land account books, which have detailed records of the owners of the fields within their jurisdiction.

With just one search, you can find out how much land the Xu family has.

But Hai Rui couldn't do this, because he knew that even if he did, it would be in vain, because it was written in the complaint that a lot of land was not directly under the name of Xu Jiazi.

Why is it said to be Xu Jiazi instead of Xu Jie? Because during the time period mentioned in these petitions, the Xu family's son was the one who made the final decision. He himself was still serving as the second minister of the cabinet in the capital, so he naturally had no chance to do so many things.

Even remote command is unjustifiable for a dignified secondary assistant.

Strictly speaking, the things he did had nothing to do with Xu Jie, but rather the lack of restraint on his two sons, other nephews, and domestic slaves, who deceived the subordinates and concealed the truth from the superiors, and committed evil deeds.

But now, with the prosecution before his case, Hai Rui naturally couldn't turn a blind eye.

Check it out, this thing seems to involve too much.

It is conceivable that there are only so many lawsuits filed because of the dissatisfaction of the victims, involving huge amounts of land, so what about the others that have not been filed?

Hai Rui couldn't help but think of the incident when Xu Zhi sued his brother Xu Jie, saying that the Xu family's children and servants were doing evil and causing harm to the whole party.

Looking at these complaints, apart from land disputes and commercial transactions, I feel like my head is as big as a bucket.

Businessmen in the south of the Yangtze River have started to do business in partnership very early, and the Xu family is one of the very active funds.

However, these businesses often cause many disturbances over time.

The Xu family has great influence in the officialdom, so many of the judgments in these lawsuits are biased in favor of the Xu family.

"Dong Weng, it's best to let the Xu family's affairs go first. Xu Ge lives in the countryside. If this is really investigated, it will be of great importance and I'm afraid it will break the news."

Hai Rui's master was still helping to clean up these files. Seeing Hai Rui frowning, he came over and said.

Before Hai Rui could speak, the master continued: "There is also a whipping method that Dong Weng wants to implement. In my opinion, it is best not to implement it."

"Why?"

Hai Rui asked confused.

You must know that there are many successful cases to be found in the implementation of the one-whip method in the Jiangnan area. If we don’t talk about it far away, let’s just talk about it now. Jiangxi is doing very well.

When he went to Jiangnan before, all the reports from Jiangxi were published in Di Bao and spread all over the country.

"Dong Weng, the petition on this table is just because of your name as "Qingtian". They are asked to come and submit the petition. If you continue to implement this whipping method in Yingtian Shifu, I'm afraid there will be more troubles. I’m afraid I can’t even fit the papers in this room.”

The master also made such a suggestion for the sake of his master's family.

As for the reason, of course it is because of the changes in the Ming Dynasty's tax law, which had a huge impact on the land owners.

"I know that the trend of offering gifts is prevalent in Jiangnan. Is it really true that there are so many?"

Hai Rui frowned.

Although he is a civil servant and has an official status, he has never bought any land for himself. After all, he has been wandering around as an official, so buying land does not mean much to him.

So far, Hai Rui only has a few dozen acres of farmland in his hometown, which he prepared for his future career.

"Dong Weng doesn't know something. From what I heard, the Xu family's property is staggering. It's said that it's over 100,000 acres, or even more.

How did the Xu family earn so much land? Wasn't it just donations from the surrounding big families?

The papers here involve only a few thousand acres of land and dozens of sales.

If a whipping method were implemented, even a hundred thousand acres would not be able to stop it. "

The master lowered his voice and said.

"Let me think about it again."

Hai Rui lowered his head and thought for a moment before saying, "I've sorted out all the papers. I'll look at them tomorrow."

After saying that, Hai Rui slowly walked to the back hall to rest, but he was also weighing what his master had said before.

Before the reform of the Yitiao Whip Law, in addition to collecting land taxes, the imperial court and local officials also collected corvées, such as Lijia, Junyao, and miscellaneous servants.

Since most of the corvees were collected on a household basis, in order to avoid the heavy taxes, many households in the Jiangnan area chose to join the official families, changed their surnames, and became the latter's "family members" or "servants". From this, the two sides formed a relationship. The relationship between master and servant.

The advantage of this is that the donor leaves his original household registration and registers with the official's family, thus avoiding the corvee. After that, he no longer pays land tax, but has to pay rent to the official.

The recipient of the donation was able to avoid taxes and servitude because of his privileges. In addition, he could use methods such as flying wine and sending deceitful mail to avoid land taxes, and he could reap a large amount of economic benefits.

In short, it is beneficial to both contributors and contributors, and it will only harm the ordinary people who keep their own rules and cannot escape taxes and servitude, because they will bear the burden of taxes and servitude passed on because some people "donate".

The reform of the whip law included "using the land of Guaixian County to undertake the service of Guaixian County, thereby abolishing the platoon service system"; "levying silver per acre, sending corvee officials to self-employ themselves, and the people were exempted from the power gap" and so on.

In this way, the people could avoid the pain of corvee simply by bearing the expenses that they could not afford.

You know, taxes only cost money, but corvée is a life-threatening job.

Before the One Whip Law was implemented, many people died of exhaustion due to their hard work, and these people were often the breadwinners of their families.

The pillar of support fell, and the family was not far away from home.

The most detestable thing is that many local gentry take advantage of the power in their hands. When arranging corvee service, they often arrange the most tiring and dangerous work for the owners of the fields they like, and annex the land in this way.

If something happens to people while they are doing corvées, they do not bear any responsibility; each family is responsible for it.

In order to survive, such families have no choice but to sell their land, but that's just to survive for a while.

Because they no longer have the means of production and land to survive, they can only become tenant farmers.

After the introduction of the whip law, the people did not have to do corvee service. As long as they could give money to the poor, and the government collected money to hire people to do things, the life or death of that person had nothing to do with the people.

Since there is no need to worry about corvee service, once Hai Rui introduces a whipping policy in Yingtian Shifu, some of the people who originally contributed will inevitably regret it.

You must know that they contributed to avoid corvee labor. In fact, the state's taxes were not less, but turned into land rent, or even slightly heavier land rent.

But when the increased land rent can cover taxes and poor money, who is willing to continue to live a life of contribution?

If the land becomes someone else's, at least in name the owner of the land is the master, will you still have to be the master's slave for the rest of your life?

Because after the donation, their names were no longer in the household register, and they were just servants of the master's family.

Based on Hai Rui's experience as an official in several places, he knew that his master's words made sense.

Once a whipping law is introduced, many contributing households will come out to cause trouble and become tenants of the Xu family by suing, and they do not need to be their family members to get rid of the tax collection.

Confirming the establishment of the tenant-tenancy relationship, but denying the validity of the previous master-servant relationship.

However, Hai Rui also knew that from Xu Jie's point of view, if he was allowed to withdraw from the land, he would not only suffer financial losses, but also have to accept a change in status, with the donors changing from "family servants" to tenants.

As we all know, status is particularly important for maintaining the status of a "famous clan". It is a sign of distinguishing "honor-inferiority" and "nobility-line". Xu Jie will definitely not accept it.

The word "tax and service" should be viewed separately in ancient times. Fu means tax and service means service.

Tax can be simply understood as land tax. According to the tax rate, you pay as much tax as you have on the land, while servitude refers to labor service, corvee and the like.

In the Ming Dynasty, although scholars had preferential exemptions, the court exempted only their servants and not all taxes, at least that was what was said in the court.

The most recent thing is that in the 24th year of Jiajing, the imperial court also issued regulations on exemptions and exemptions, specifically determining the quotas of exemptions and exemptions for scholars at all levels.

The first-rank imperial official in the capital is exempted from rations of 30 dan and the headcount is 30 dan, and the following decreases to the rank of 9th-rank official, who is exempted from rations of 6 shi and the cadre of 6 dan; foreign officials are halved; those who are promoted, supervised and born are exempted from rations of 2 shi, Ding and others; if you become an official, you will be exempted from seven tenths of this product.

The number of people is actually the exempted population, and the premium and exempted grains are equivalent to acres of land, because the Ming Dynasty divided the fields into upper, middle, and lower grades, and the land tax per mu of land in each grade was different.

But no matter what level of land it is, the number of stones of grain exempted is equivalent to the amount of land tax exempted.

If your family's land tax exceeds the preferential and exempted grain, you will not need to pay the land tax, but you will have to pay the excess.

Moreover, because the land tax in the Ming Dynasty was very low, the equivalent land area was also very large. Therefore, during the Wanli period, new exemptions and exemptions made the figures more clear.

The current Jia Ke Jingguan is exempted from 10,000 acres of land for the first rank, and the following decreases, and the eighth rank is exempted from 2,700 acres; the foreign official is halved; the official is exempted from six tenths; the unofficial Jinshi is exempted from the land up to 3,350 acres. Ten acres, 1,200 acres of free land for those who have not yet been promoted to official positions; 80 acres for students and supervisors.

At this time, the court discovered that someone was using the level of fields to make trouble, so they simply decided on the number of fields instead of talking about preferential grain exemptions.

Although the court had such regulations, it did not stop the gentry from using chicken feathers as arrows. As time went by, the policy changed and the scope of application expanded. In addition, the Ming Dynasty itself had corrupt official administration and low system execution. The gentry secretly They also used their power to enrich their own interests, and the successful ones who were exempted from simple labor later turned into "legal" tax evasion and evasion.

In fact, it can be seen from the changes in the preferential and exemption regulations that the land tax in the Ming Dynasty was really very low. Even if the three rates were later increased, it was actually not high.

The main reason why the people are miserable is not the country, but the corruption at the hands of officials. The various miscellaneous taxes and assessments set by local officials are much more money and food than the regular taxes, making it unbearable for the common people.

Hai Rui also knew these problems very well, but he couldn't go against the system, so he knew but couldn't tell.

After thinking about it all night, Hai Rui was still determined to continue promoting Ying Tianfu's whipping method, and he planned to ignore the complaints on the desk for now.

After all, these lawsuits are actually cases that have been concluded by the officials below.

They hand the petition to themselves, which is equivalent to an appeal. They can choose to accept it or not.

Besides, it stands to reason that it is only right to submit these complaints to the Procuratorate.

As the governor of Yingtian, my main focus is on administration, rather than investigating these cases.

As for the storm that followed, Hai Rui actually had a plan to deal with it in his mind. It was a solution he had come up with when he was a county magistrate in Chun'an and other places - He Xini.

Will all the donated land be recovered?

Impossible, because there is a lot involved here, and it is definitely not what some people think as long as a fair punishment is given.

According to the "Da Ming Law", the act of donating is actually a crime, and both the donor and the recipient must be held accountable.

In particular, the act of accepting donations is punishable by law.

And who can accept the donation is naturally the gentry from all over the country, otherwise others will not have this opportunity.

Therefore, when Hai Rui handles cases, it is not because he can enforce the law impartially, but because he can find a way to decide the case that is acceptable to both parties. If both parties accept it, they will naturally think that he has done a good job as an official.

As for the Xu family's case, Hai Rui planned to ignore other criminal cases and only target the Xu family's land.

If it was a submitted case, he would take it and handle it as a land dispute, minimizing the major issue.

As for how to appease both parties, the best way is to "retreat half way."

Those who have solid evidence will naturally retreat, but often there is not. After all, the Xu family is not stupid and will not leave any evidence.