New Shun 1730

"For example, Mr. Lizhou's money reform idea stems from the fact that silver in the previous dynasty was expensive and insufficient, so gold and silver were abolished."

"However, the Xingguo Gong cut the Japanese switch, established the East-West Trading Company, and built banks to prepare banknotes, and the inflow of gold and silver increased day by day."

"The idea of ​​scrapping gold and silver, which was proposed in response to the special circumstances of the previous dynasty, is meaningless at this time."

The staff continued: "Another example is Mr. Funayama's idea of ​​oral taxation and mediocre renting. It was also aimed at the enclosure of land by the vassal kings of the previous dynasty, the deceitful payment of flowers to the students, the excessive expropriation by the eunuchs, the imposition of obligations on the households, and the serious unfairness of taxation. The idea of ​​overdoing it for the sake of waiting.”

"But in fact, Xingguo Gong's reforms in southern Jiangsu proved that the practice of calculating taxes by mouth and abolishing the mu tax and allocating it into the head tax was definitely wrong. Moreover, he followed Zhang Taiyue's whipping method, which proved to be feasible. of."

"Another example is Mr. Xi Zhai's idea of ​​teaching in separate schools. He just thinks that students can't know anything and the country lacks professional practical talents. Therefore, it is better to know nothing than to know nothing. After becoming a student in the county school, various aspects of Learning something is definitely better than learning nothing at all.”

"However, Duke Xingguo started to engage in practical studies twenty years ago to cooperate with the development of overseas trade, war and naval needs, and the needs of industry and commerce. The country really has no shortage of practical talents at this time, not at all. Even...even some Surplus, a group of people who play with cotton, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins; and those who inoculate people with cowpox... What's more, those artillery officers can just look up tables, but do they really need to know geometry, algebra, and physics? ?”

"That's why..."

The staff member concluded: "Therefore, if we only make changes based on reflections on the last years of the previous dynasty, we still have to look at which problems have not yet been resolved."

"For example, Gu Tinglin's original intention was to abolish the students in the world and use the talents of the world. That was indeed a problem that had to be solved in the last years of the previous dynasty. This is the basis of his theory. ”

"But now, the original is not as good as the last. The end of the article lies in the growth of people. At that time, there were four to five million, and now there are seven to eight hundred thousand, and it may exceed one million in the future. And where it is, it is afraid of taking away people The Lord turned it upside down."

"If the students in Yangzhou are clamoring for academic revolution at this time, it is just for the Huainan salt incident, and it is actually for their own selfishness."

"I thought that by exempting them, they would be able to civilize the place on their own. But in fact, they are busy sending away land, evading taxes, annexing land, and engaging in gangsterism."

"So, the previous priority has now taken second place; and the previous secondary priority has now become the first priority. Originally, the primary purpose was to select people who can fight, tax and govern, but now actually The primary problem is to solve the rapid expansion of the population of useless students.”

"So, there are just two choices."

"Either, maintain the original preferential treatment and use means to really achieve the goal of educating the local people, educating the people, and governing the county. Even if they spend some money, it will be no problem to continue the preferential treatment."

"Either, we need to control the number of students and break the relationship between them. Don't let them work for the local tyrants in the name of local sages, and even turn Tai'e upside down, and the court will completely lose control in the local area."

Although, what the staff said was actually quite, quite vague.

But Lin Min was still a little ashamed inside.

If the staff member's meaning was not so subtle, it would actually mean that Lin Min was a fake reformist.

Of course, those who remain unchanged are not reformers.

But he who calls for reform is actually using solutions proposed by others in the past to solve current problems. They can only be regarded as fake reformists.

There is always one of these two words that suits him: waiting for the rabbit and waiting for the rabbit.

He was just an actor wearing a reform costume. Because the emperor seemed to like the drama of reform, he put on the reform costume.

Coupled with this salt policy reform, he looked like a joke throughout the whole process... One can imagine Lin Min's inner depression.

Fortunately, he had enough self-restraint, and because his staff said it privately, and although it was understandable, from another perspective, it was just advice that was offensive to the ears.

Even the staff spoke clearly and could not have been more clear.

If you are not dancing and playing in reform costumes, then you can only start reform from those two directions.

If you just want to wear a reform costume and pretend to be reforming, then avoid these two most difficult directions, and the rest can be pretended to be reforming.

However, the problem is not that simple.

Those two seem to be directions that can be reformed, but in fact, the things involved are huge.

If you think about it a little deeper, you will understand that those two reforms actually point to the same problem.

That is to say: the political conception of the early Ming Dynasty, with rural virtues, rural covenants, and rural autonomy as the underlying basic logic, the entire national system structure must be completely overturned, and a brand new new system completely stripped of the Ming system must be redesigned.

This includes the bureaucracy, the number of officials, the tax system, the degree of state centralization, the tax system, the number of talents within the system, the management logic from the county level down, etc. It is almost necessary to design a completely new institutional structure.

But in fact, the emperor himself had no such intention, and he thought it was absolutely difficult to understand.

Therefore, Lin Min did not know that the emperor's idea was to establish a variant of the Liao Kingdom's northern and southern official system.

After digging out some places such as Dengzhou Prefecture and Jiangsu, the remaining places will still maintain the original system operation. They can even implement a group system and operate according to the original inertia.

And Dengzhou Prefecture, Jiangsu, Jinghai, Nanyang, etc., are another system. Especially in Jiangsu, strengthen the centralized control - if the emperor can't manage the entire empire, can he manage a province?

With the wealth, industry, commerce, taxation, etc. here as the pillars of imperial power, rely on external expansion to ensure sufficient income and wealth.

The inertia and tradition of the internal provinces are enough to maintain normal operation, and basically no major problems will occur.

These special places separated out, strengthen the rule and implement new policies.

Especially this time around the salt policy reform and the previous Huaihe River governance and canal reform, the emperor actually separated Jiangsu.

Jiangsu is directly connected to the capital through sea transportation.

By abolishing the canal, Jiangsu's tradition of water control was stripped away.

The internal core provinces other than Jiangsu maintain the logic of the traditional Celestial Empire: the traditional Celestial Empire of water control, disaster relief, small farmers, and repression.

Jiangsu and other regions and provinces, with a brand-new governance logic, expand outward through overseas trade, control of new commodity grain bases, trade silver, external colonial land taxes, etc.

The ultimate goal, the emperor hoped to achieve before his death: to support 200,000 soldiers without spending a penny on the people in the core areas of the interior.

This is not because he loves the people, but because the emperor is very clear about one thing. Based on the past history and the current reality, the only ones who can overthrow the dynasty are the core provinces of the interior.

The primary task of the core provinces of the interior is neither to collect money nor to levy taxes, but only to provide disaster relief, maintain stability, and exempt taxes.

The new policy provinces use a brand-new logic that is different from the traditional small-peasant tradition of flood control and disaster relief in the past traditional dynasties to be the power of imperial power.

If there is a problem in the new policy provinces, the unlimited manpower of the core provinces of the interior can be used to suppress it. Jiangsu has no strategic location to defend. The navy cuts off the food, and there is not enough food here.

If there is a problem in the core areas of the interior, it can be suppressed by the wealth and resources of the new policy areas.

Therefore, if Lin Min can really figure out the emperor's intentions.

He can really understand what the emperor is thinking.

He can even really understand the logic of changing the reign to Weixin this time.

Then, he would not be so foolish as to think about reforming the imperial examination system and the student system.

Because the emperor would never allow it.

The student system and the imperial examination system are the strongest links between the new policy areas and the traditional areas.

This can ensure that the mainstream culture of the new policy provinces is the same as the mainstream culture of the inland core areas.

It also ensures that once the new policy gets out of control, the more than 20,000 students in Jiangsu can be used to quickly turn back to conservatism.

As for the students' strikes and riots, the emperor thinks that it is a very simple matter. What are soldiers for?

Suppress them and then give them sweet dates.

When the Tartars entered the pass, they could accept the level of continuing to be officials even if they shaved their heads and changed their clothes. They just need to continue to give them the opportunity to be officials.

In the future, those who should take the exam will take it, and those who should think about the imperial examination will think about it. If a province does not serve as an official, it can win the first place, wear a red robe, serve as an official in the inner core area, and even rule the traditional world.

The students of Jiangsu and the imperial examination tradition must never be lost.

However, their arrogance does need to be rectified.

Therefore, the approach that the emperor approved of was to deal with it, to deal with it, and to suppress it.

After suppressing it, continue to give sweet dates.

Tens of thousands of students, as "backup in case all formatting and restoring the old tradition are needed" - officials can be transferred from other places, but local grassroots cannot be found from other places.

Moreover, the emperor actually liked Liu Yu's handling of the situation in southern Jiangsu.

Although the emperor knew that Liu Yu collected the money and distributed it, he was actually deliberately trying to deceive him and induce him to abolish some preferential treatment.

But in fact, the emperor believed that in southern Jiangsu, since the equal land tax reform had been completed, it was unnecessary to further suppress these students economically.

As for distributing the collected money every year, the emperor felt that it was necessary to spend this money.

This money was used to buy off the gentry and students in Jiangsu to ensure that Jiangsu's new policy would not go off the rails and completely out of the control of the court.

If this money is really reluctant to spend, there may be big trouble in the future.

Moreover, the money spent was equivalent to putting chains on the gentry group in Jiangsu. If they were disobedient, they would have no money, which increased the buffer between the court and the students and gentry.

Economic suppression was unnecessary, but political suppression was still necessary, otherwise it would be impossible to achieve absolute control of a province by centralization.

In short, the emperor would never reform the imperial examination system, nor would he reduce the number of students, and some material subsidies and preferential treatments that should be given must be given.

Even though it was known that most of the more than 20,000 people were useless. However, as long as these 20,000 people were still there, the mainstream culture would never change, nor would there be any estrangement or disagreement, and there would always be a local force that could restrain the emerging forces in Jiangsu.

For a possible "full formatting and restoring old traditional backup" that might be used or not used in the future, it would cost more than one million taels every year. Is it worth it?

For Liu Yu, this was four battleships a year, and raising a group of people who were mostly useless and useless, which was a huge loss.

But for the emperor, it was too worth it!

However, for a role-playing enthusiast like Lin Min, who was described by Liu Yu as "still a conservative, not even capable of making some minor changes", he really couldn't understand what the emperor meant by "changing the reign to a new era".

What exactly is this new era?

He didn't know.

At this time, Lin Min, whose thoughts were pointed out by his staff, was thinking: He could use the students' opposition to the salt policy reform to expose their false benevolence and selfishness, and take this opportunity to write to the emperor to test the possibility of reform to solve the student problem.

If possible, he would seize the opportunity and earn his own credit in this reform that he had almost been a runner-up throughout.