The Prosperous Era of Longwan

"Do you still have the good ginseng in Shandai Mansion? Sell me two plants and send them back to your hometown."

When Zhang Juzheng heard what Wei Guangde said, he suddenly thought of the fine ginseng collected at his home.

"What are you selling? I'll have someone deliver it to your house when I get back tonight."

Speaking of ginseng, Wei Guangde said indifferently.

Nothing else, but there are still a lot of good ginseng.

The purpose of collecting old ginseng was firstly to make money, and secondly to build relationships. Zhang Juzheng could just give it away naturally if he wanted to.

"Shaloan, I'm here."

Just as Yin Shizhen was about to speak, Wei Guangde interrupted: "We have everything. We will send someone to deliver it tonight."

Although Wei Guangde always regarded Zhang Juzheng as his political opponent in his heart, it was not a big deal to give him ginseng.

And for them, it's not a feud, it's a political matter, as long as they have interests, they can still come together in the end.

As for wanting to shoot people to death all at once, Wei Guangde was not very willing.

You know, Zhang Juzheng was very famous in later generations, and many history novices have heard of this name.

On the contrary, not many people in future generations will know about a powerful minister like Gao Gong who is the most powerful person in the current court.

Wei Guangde still has some scruples about the name of a person and the shadow of a tree. Not to mention the current situation of the Ming Dynasty, he doesn't want to offend anyone. It is better to let Gao Gong rectify the government now and let Zhang Juzheng carry out reforms in the future.

At this time, Wei Guangde even felt that Li Chunfang, the first assistant, was a very wise person.

Although in the cabinet, it seems that the power is about to be eclipsed, but after all, the position is stable because no mistakes are made.

On the contrary, if there was any trouble in government affairs, Gao Gong and Chen Yiqin would discuss and resolve it, and he would just play the role of mediating the dispute, which was quite easy.

When Wei Guangde returned to the duty room to handle official duties, Gao Gong also returned to his duty room, but instead of working, he sat in front of the desk and thought quietly for a long time. As if he had finally made up his mind, he laid out rice paper and prepared to write a memorial. .

Speaking of which, Gao Gong has actually realized a big problem very early on, that is, the Ming Dynasty did not have many officials in name, but in fact it was seriously overstaffed.

Just like the Six Ministries, it is nominally composed of one minister and two ministers. However, due to many reasons, there are usually only three or five ministers in each yamen. Even if the governor and governor who is named as the Ministry of War is excluded, there are still one or two more ministers.

The affairs that the central government needs to handle are complicated, especially for the Ministry of Industry. Large-scale projects usually send ministers to inspect. Under such circumstances, if the establishment is forced to maintain two people, once they go out on business trips, the yamen affairs may not run smoothly.

But this is just the overstaffing of officials, and it is not a big deal. The main reason is that the grassroots officials are seriously overstaffed, especially the imperial guards.

In the Ming Dynasty, as long as they did something that pleased the emperor, the children of ministers could often get a job as a royal guard. Even if the person did not do his job properly and was addicted to eating, drinking, prostitution and gambling, he would still wear this kind of clothes.

I learned from Liu Tigan before that the Ministry of Revenue has reserved a large amount of money, and one of its important uses is to distribute salaries to officials. In Gao Gong's mind, as long as the court returns to the state it was in at the founding of the People's Republic of China, he will naturally not think about how to do it. This will increase the income of the Ministry of Household Affairs, because Zhu Yuanzhang has already set the income of the Ministry of Household Affairs.

What can be done now is to cut expenditures, reduce the expenditure of the imperial court, and eliminate redundant personnel, which is what Gao Gong wants.

There is no doubt that in all official systems, there is only one department that is truly overstaffed, and that is Jinyiwei.

As a result, a memorial about the layoff of redundant personnel gradually took shape under Gao Gong's writing.

In order not to be misunderstood by the emperor that this memorial was directed at the emperor's pro-army, Gao Gong searched his brains and came up with some official positions that did not need to exist in the imperial court, or that were considered to be able to be reduced.

For example, it is superfluous to preside over the Nanjing Governor's Grain Reserve with the capital censor.

The governor-general of Beijing, Ambassador Cangchang, is actually an official from the Ministry of Revenue, and it is naturally necessary for Nanjing to do the same. He only needs to arrange someone from the Ministry of Revenue in Nanjing. At worst, the Metropolitan Procuratorate will send a censor to inspect every year.

Another example is the City Shipping Department. The City Shipping Department in the Ming Dynasty changed drastically and was dismissed and re-established many times. However, there were roughly three offices, namely the Zhejiang City Shipping Department, the Fujian City Shipping Department and the Guangdong City Shipping Department.

The three municipal shipping departments have their own division of labor. The Zhejiang City Shipping Department is responsible for trade with Japan, the Fujian City Shipping Department is responsible for trade with Ryukyu, and the Guangdong City Shipping Department is responsible for trade with Champa, Siam and Western countries.

Each city ship office has one person to promote, two deputy officials to promote, and there is also one person to promote the city ship eunuch, who is actually the real talker of the city ship department.

But an office like Shibosi rarely has reception tasks in a year, especially now.

As far as Gao Gong knew, the two deputy promotions were actually dispensable, so they were also included in the layoff list.

After a little bit of brushing, a memorial was soon finished.

While waiting for the ink to dry, Gao Gong checked the memorial.

He did not plan to pass this memorial to other cabinet ministers for review and use it as a cabinet memorial. Instead, he planned to deliver it to Emperor Longqing in the form of his own personal secret memorial.

After all, he had been back in court for such a long time, and besides presiding over the Ministry of Civil Affairs and punishing a group of incompetent officials, he had few political achievements.

Since the Ministry of Revenue said there was a shortage of money, he therefore tried to find ways to save money for the court.

If His Majesty agrees, he will write another memorial to finalize the matter.

He was not as cautious as Wei Guangde. He checked it and found no problems. After the ink dried, he folded the memorial carefully and put it away, planning to take it with him when His Majesty summoned him.

At this time, Hai Rui didn't know that his official position was about to be dismissed.

In fact, Hai Rui is quite competent as an official. After taking over the post of grain storage in Nanjing, the first thing he did was to conduct inspections at more than 20 grain warehouses around Nanjing.

Although the account books were written clearly and plainly, he already knew the behavior of Ming Dynasty officials, and he did not want to know nothing about the warehouse he managed.

Once the imperial court wants to prepare grain from here, what should we do if we can't get it out of the warehouse?

There are more than 20 warehouses, and it’s not just a quick tour, so it will naturally take a lot of time.

In a month's time, he only inspected a dozen granaries, but he already discovered a lot of problems.

Of course, the biggest problem is that the grain in the account books does not match what is in the warehouse, but this does not mean that the officials in the warehouse are making profits from it, because the difference is due to official documents issued by the government agencies in Huguang, Jiangxi and other places to owe grain.

In other words, the local governments in Huguang and other places did not follow the orders of the Ministry of Revenue to deliver grain to Nanjing on time. In order to cope with the inspection by the Ministry of Revenue, they issued documents to the Nanjing Grain Reserve and obtained a receipt. The Nanjing Grain Reserve This is used to offset this part of the food shortage.

As for the capital, the local government reported that the grain had been delivered to the Nanjing Grain Reserve on time, and there was an official letter from the Nanjing Grain Reserve.

For other officials, this kind of thing is of course a matter of turning a blind eye. After all, it has continued to this day and has actually become an unspoken rule, and there are many tricks in it.

Some officials misappropriated grain and sold it at high prices, and some Nanjing grain storage officials secretly sold the grain stored in warehouses, and then found other local officials to make up such a document to offset the difference.

Hai Rui simply checked a few transactions and realized what was going on.

In his opinion, this matter was not trivial, and he was unwilling to allow the situation to continue to develop.

It was okay if I didn't know before. Now that it has become an errand under his jurisdiction, it is natural to start cleaning up and rectifying it.

Regardless of other things, Hai Rui asked the officials to find all the documents for the vacancies in the more than ten warehouses, and then sent them directly to various places in the form of grain storage yamen to call for grain.

There are accounts for all local grain arrears, and after checking, the balance of the grain that was resold privately can be found.

With the reply letter, he can directly report it to the Metropolitan Procuratorate and the Ministry of Household Affairs, and continue to urge local governments to pay.

Regardless of the outcome, these things will eventually surface and be made known to the court.

As the governor-general of grain storage, it is not considered dereliction of duty, at least he has fulfilled his responsibilities.

"Sir, the grain arrears of the six granaries have been tallied up, and the accounts are correct, you see."

The master sent the compiled documents to Hai Rui and waited for his instructions.

"In the name of the yamen, send a message to these prefecture and county yamen and ask them to verify and respond as soon as possible."

Hai Rui had long thought about it. In the end, whether it was about replenishing food supplies or something else, he had to report the matter to the capital to let the court know about the local fishery.

Although he would not directly lift the lid, with the wisdom of the court officials, it was not difficult to understand the problem.

If the imperial court wanted to put an end to this matter, he could also contribute to this. In fact, as long as the inspection censor could carefully verify every time, such a matter would have been made public long ago, and it would not have become as bad as it is now. The amount is huge, and it has almost accounted for nearly Semi-warehousing.

This is really a part of the warehouse, with nearly half of the grain missing. The rest of the warehouse that I haven't visited yet is not going to be any better.

If he did not report as soon as possible, the imperial court would need to transport grain from Nanjing, and he would be at risk of dereliction of duty, even though he had just taken office.

After the last case involving the Xu family in Huating, Hai Rui understood that he should not be indecisive when doing things, and he would suffer consequences if he continued to make decisions.

Therefore, now that he has the food arrears documents in Cangchang in his hands, he will report the matter immediately as soon as he waits for the officials from various places to reply.

At the same time, in a secluded tavern in Nanjing, a dozen richly dressed men gathered together.

It seemed like it was just an ordinary banquet, but their every move and gesture showed the temperament of an official. It was obvious that these people were all officials in Nanjing.

"Master Li, Hai Rui took away all the documents and said he wanted to calculate the amount. What can we do?"

"Yes, he is the grain inspector with orders. If he wants to inspect it, we can only cooperate. The difference must be accounted for, right?"

Some were crestfallen, while others were trying to explain the situation.

"Okay, okay, I know your difficulties. They all say that the county magistrate is not as good as taking charge now. It is not unfair for you to fall into his hands."

The official known as Mr. Li was scratching his head at this time and behaved at a loss.

Everyone here knows Hai Rui's temperament and knows that he is not easy to tolerate. Otherwise, he would not have been sent to Nanjing to serve as Lao Shizi's grain storage.

Isn’t the official position of Governor Yingtian fragrant?

It's not like he offended Mr. Xu Ge and was punished in the court.

An impeachment memorial was sent to the capital within a few days and had already reached Nanjing.

For the master here, he originally thought he was going to be a "disaster", but he didn't expect that he was sent to his place.

"Those documents have those places. Give me the list and I will contact them there. There will be no mistakes."

Master Li said.

"That's good, that's good. I'm just worried that it will be troublesome if the numbers reported over there don't match up."

An official with a square face said, but what they do may not be honest.

"These things have been discussed long ago. The local government owes part and we appropriate part here. When the court asks, everyone knows what to do.

As long as you keep it secret, don't worry about anything else and let him investigate.

Humph, they're all so far apart, I'd like to see how he investigates. "

Mr. Li said with a look of disdain, no matter what he was thinking in his heart at this moment, at least he had to stabilize people here and not let himself get into trouble.

"Master Li, Hai Rui will come to my warehouse for inspection the day after tomorrow. Look."

One person hesitated for a moment before interjecting and asked.

"Let him investigate as he should. Don't be secretive. These things are very involved. I'm not afraid. What else do you have to be afraid of?

If the sky is falling, there will be a tall roof. We are just ordered to run errands, so what can we do?

This was already the case in Cangchang when I became an official. How could he check it? Are you going to go to the underworld to ask for guilt? It’s a joke.”

"But what if Hai Rui takes those documents and reports to the court?"

"We have people in the court who can speak in the cabinet. What are you afraid of?"

At this point, Mr. Li picked up the wine glass in front of the table and said to everyone: "I have called you here today to reassure you. The higher-ups already know about it and will naturally handle it properly.

As long as nothing happens to you, just let Hai catch you. Don't worry about anything else. Just cooperate with him in the verification.

Come, drink. "

After finishing the glass of wine in one gulp, Mr. Li smiled and said: "If we weren't afraid that so many of you Cangchang ambassadors would appear together to attract attention, why would we come back to this place to drink."

"Yes, yes, yes, Qianjiaofang on the Qinhuai River heard that a stunning lady came recently. Mr. Tang Zhigao spent a thousand taels of silver before but couldn't get it done. I heard that he almost mobilized the government army to destroy the place."

"The Lingbi Marquis is just like that in Nanjing. If we want to talk about it here, Wei Guogong and Chengyi Bo, as well as the Huaiyuan Marquis Chang family, also have to step aside."

Mr. Li's face was full of disdain, as if he didn't even pay attention to nobles such as Lingbi Marquis and Huaiyuan Marquis.

In fact, if you really want to meet the direct descendants of these noble houses, they will be as groveling and helpless.

Although some families have empty titles, the relationship is still here. Most of the old noble families are related to each other.

Let's just say that Huaiyuan Hou is actually a descendant of Zheng Guogong. His ancestor is Chang Yuchun, who is as famous as Xu Da. If it weren't for Zhu Biao's early death, the Chang family would have become the first relative of the Ming Dynasty.

It was also for this reason that the subsequent "Blue Jade Case" severely damaged the family. It was not until the fifth year of Hongzhi reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty that the case was vindicated and the Chang family was rewarded with the hereditary official position of Commander of the Nanjing Jinyi Guard.

In the eleventh year of Jiajing reign of Emperor Shizong of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Jiajing granted titles to the descendants of some of the heroes and gave Chang Yuchun's descendants the title of Marquis of Huaiyuan. Only then did the Chang family regain the status of a distinguished family.

However, the Chang family members were not as good at doing things as the Linhuai Marquis Li family, and were soon forgotten by the emperor. By then, Linhuai Marquis Li Tingzhu gained the emperor's favor and was promoted continuously. (End of chapter)