Do you know: I am the crown prince

Chapter 45 An unexpected start but a tail end
"This time is different." Duke Qi said solemnly, "The government should dismiss the salt commissioner."

"what?"

Princess Pingning exclaimed when she heard this, and now she also realized the seriousness of the matter.

The Salt Administration Commissioner was a third-rank official, only slightly lower than the ministers of various ministries, but higher than the vice ministers of various ministries.

He was dismissed just like that, which shows that the government is serious this time.

"Sir, this matter won't implicate you, right?" Princess Pingning asked with some concern.

The Duke of Qi was the Salt Transport Commissioner of Jingji Road. At first glance, this official title seemed to be in charge of the allocation and transportation of salt.

The position of Transport Commissioner was first established in the Tang Dynasty, and this was indeed its initial duty.

However, in the Song Dynasty, the powers of the transport envoys increased a lot.

For example, the Duke of Qi was the Salt Transport Commissioner of Jingji Road, who was responsible not only for the salt affairs of Bianliang and several surrounding states, but also for supervising the salt affairs and salt accounts.

How could the Duke of Qi, who was the transport envoy, not have noticed the problem?

But the water is too deep. Although he did not participate in it, he still got a lot of benefits, so he chose to remain silent.

If the emperor investigates further, the Duke of Qi will find that he is guilty of a serious crime.

Duke Qi smiled bitterly upon hearing this and said, "It depends on how far the emperor wants to investigate. If the emperor is just trying to scare me, I will probably just be reprimanded. But if the emperor really wants to investigate thoroughly, I will most likely be held accountable."

"This is how to do?"

Princess Pingning asked anxiously, "How about I go to the palace and ask for mercy from the emperor?"

"No, the situation is unclear now and we cannot go into the palace to plead for mercy." Duke Qi shook his head.

"But once the situation becomes clear, it will be too late to plead for mercy," said Princess Pingning.

"Our family is not short of wealth, I didn't want to take the money, but the salt business involved too many things, so I had to take it to reassure them. Although I took the money, I didn't participate in it. If the government really wants to hold me accountable, it's nothing more than dismissing me from my post, not taking away my title.

I am just worried that this incident will affect Heng'er's future. Heng'er is the study companion of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, and His Royal Highness thinks highly of him. If Heng'er's future is affected because of my matter, how can I face Heng'er in the future?" Duke Qi sighed.

As a father, he naturally wants to be a decent person in his son's heart.

The Duke of Qi really didn't know how he would face his son if Qi Heng found out that he had accepted bribes and it affected Qi Heng's future.

"Sir, what should we do?"

Princess Pingning was a proud person, so she placed great hopes on Qi Heng, her only son.

And Qi Heng did not disappoint her. Although he was born into a noble family, he did not have the bad habits of the sons of the lords in Bian Jing.

He studied hard since childhood and was determined to take the imperial examinations to become an official. He did not want to rely on the influence of his ancestors for a title.

Although he is only ten years old now, who among the noble families in Bian Jing does not praise him?

Princess Pingning became even more anxious when she thought that this matter would not only affect her husband but also her son's future.

"You don't have to worry so much. We still don't know what the truth is. There are too many people involved in the salt business, and it is unlikely that the government will really investigate it thoroughly." The Duke of Qi comforted.

The salt affairs involved not only the officials in charge of the affairs, but also the local officials in various places could not have been unaware of it, yet no one ever exposed it.

Even if the truth is uncovered, it is impossible for the government to hold everyone accountable.

His crime is not serious, and as long as the government does not pursue it further, he should be fine.

……

After the court session, many people who were closely related or had common interests gathered together to discuss the government's thorough investigation of the salt administration.

Some of the people involved went to the Wen family, wanting to discuss countermeasures with Wen Xuan.

When Wen Xuan found out, he cursed inwardly, saying that he hadn't seen any of them.

The official's attitude was firm this time. He didn't know how many eyes were staring at him, and these people actually dared to come to him.

Although they didn't want to see each other, Wen Xuan still asked someone to remind them that the most urgent task now was to quickly clear the evidence.

Although the government had some evidence, it was rather one-sided and could not prove that there were problems with the entire salt administration system.

As long as the problems found in the end are not particularly serious, he still has a chance to be reinstated.

Otherwise, he would probably have to retire. He is only fifty years old now and doesn't want to return to his hometown to retire.

In order to save himself, Wen Xuan even sent people to secretly guide public opinion and spread rumors about the problems in the salt administration. Wen Xuan did this not to expose himself, but to arouse public anger. There are so many problems in the salt administration, and the greatest damage is to the interests of the people.

Since there are so many problems with the government-run salt administration, it would be better to let private enterprises run it.

Wen Xuan was aware of the importance of salt revenue to the imperial court. Once public opinion was aroused, the government would not conduct strict inspections of the salt business in order to quell public anger.

Otherwise, if the inside story of the scandal were to be made public, the people would inevitably be outraged and oppose the imperial court's official management of the salt business.

It has to be said that Wen Xuan's method did arouse the anger of the people.

Salt is expensive, but people cannot do without it. Some poor families can only use vinegar cloth instead of salt.

The common people did not know the truth and only thought that the high price of salt was caused by corruption among court officials.

For a time, public opinion was everywhere, bringing great pressure to the court.

In fact, the high price of salt was indeed related to the imperial court, and the imperial court had no way to explain it.

It seems that those officials' corruption has not harmed the interests of the people.

In fact, this is not the case. As mentioned in the previous article, when the imperial court was short of money, in order to avoid directly increasing taxes, it would raise the price of salt, thus achieving the purpose of increasing taxes in disguise.

This has an advantage. If the imperial court directly increases taxes on the people, the local governments will certainly take advantage of it when collecting taxes, and the people will bear a greater burden.

The increase in salt prices did not increase the burden on those people who could not even afford salt.

After all, they can't afford it.

The fundamental reason why the imperial court raised the price of salt was because it was short of money.

The corruption of those people, which caused damage to the interests of the court, was also an indirect cause.

Although the emperor was somewhat troubled by public opinion, it did not affect his determination to thoroughly investigate the salt affairs.

After learning the news, salt officials from all over the country began to collect evidence, but by the time the government ordered a thorough investigation, a lot of evidence had already been found.

With the evidence provided by the government, Yu Xianggong spent half a year to finally "get to the bottom" of the salt business.

The reason for putting it in quotation marks is that the existing evidence can only go this far.

Finally, 176 officials were found to be involved.

When the government learned about this, they directly exiled more than 20 of the main culprits. As for the remaining 140-odd people, half of them had their property confiscated and were dismissed from their posts, while the rest, whose crimes were less serious, were fined and demoted.

When Wen Xuan saw that only a few people were involved, he knew that the government had no intention of investigating the matter thoroughly, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

He asked himself that those people would not dare to betray him. At most, he was derelict in his duty and the government should not take any action against him. They would only issue an imperial decree to reprimand him and fine him a few months' salary.

However, just when he was fantasizing about being reinstated, a eunuch from the palace came to his door.

No one knows what he said exactly, but the next day Wen Xuan wrote a letter to the emperor, citing poor health as an excuse to retire and return home.

The emperor did not try to persuade him to stay, and did not even offer him a posthumous title of retirement, but he just agreed.

Zhao Xing did not participate in the entire process of thoroughly investigating the salt affairs, but he knew roughly what happened.

Zhao Xing had only one comment on this thorough investigation of the salt business - it started off well but ended badly.

It seems that there are a lot of people to be dealt with, but there are thousands of officials in the imperial court and related to the salt administration.

As a result, less than one-fifth of the cases were dealt with. Apart from a third-rank salt commissioner, only two transport commissioners and a dozen deputy transport commissioners were mobilized.

The rest are officials of lower ranks.

Zhao Xing knew that it was unrealistic to deal with all those officials, but too few high-ranking officials were dealt with, so the deterrent effect was not great.

……

Qi Heng returned home after school, but found that the atmosphere in the house was very wrong.

He stopped a servant and asked him, only to find out that the emperor had issued an edict to reprimand his father today.

The specific reason, I don’t know.

Upon hearing the news, Qi Heng asked about his father's whereabouts and hurried to the backyard.

(End of this chapter)