Jiangnan has been a prosperous place for industry and commerce since ancient times, and the benefits brought by industry and commerce far exceed the land! With enough money, you can naturally cultivate enough talents! Therefore, the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River cultivated a large number of officials to fill the court. How could these officials who were born among the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River attack their own families or even themselves?
Some people say that the Ming Dynasty was not divided into North and South. The North and South were divided into two groups. Officials in the North should agree to tax the South, right? But everyone has overlooked one thing. Jiangnan has more money and invests more in cultivating scholars, so the quality of the scholars produced will naturally be higher!
Coupled with the additional 20% share, officials from the north are often at a lower level due to mutual competition, and those who really have a voice in the court are all southerners!
Taking the Wanli Dynasty as an example, Zhang Juzheng was born in Jiangling, Hubei, which is now Jingzhou City! Shen Shixing was born in Changzhou County, South Zhili, which is now Suzhou. Wang Xijue was born in Taicang, South Zhili, and was also a native of Suzhou. Zhang Han is from Hangzhou, Zhejiang!
The only secondary assistant, Zhang Siwei, was born in the north, but he was unable to survive alone! Moreover, Zhang Siwei's family was originally a salt merchant and belonged to a merchant family, so how could he be willing to collect business taxes! What's more, he still covets the position of chief minister. It's too late to please those officials to support him, and it's even less likely that he will support the collection of commercial taxes!
So in other words, the high-ranking officials of the Ming Dynasty were often born in the wealthy class of Jiangnan, and people in this wealthy class were basically either from the land, or mainly big businessmen, and they were also the main source of business taxes.
They continued to cultivate scholars, and then the scholars entered the imperial court and became officials. After they watched, they protected this class. Then under their protection, this class continued to grow rapidly, and they continued to invest more money in educating the children of the clan to study. A perfect closed loop has been formed! Anyone who wants to collect business taxes from this class is their enemy, so it is natural to oppose the collection of business taxes!
It is difficult to imagine a situation where a scholar comes from a poor family in this situation where knowledge is almost a monopoly! Even if they appeared, they would be quickly absorbed into their own system by the wealthy gentry through marriage and other means. A small number of people who want to break the confinement are either inexplicably convicted of various crimes and disappear into the officialdom, or they can only struggle within the space and are not allowed to use it! Just like Hai Rui, although he has the title of "Hai Pen Holder", but if you think about it, his actions never exceeded the red line of official circles. This is the reason why he can die a good death!
Therefore, in the late Ming Dynasty, the country's finances became increasingly difficult, and even the palace expenses could not be met! The emperor had to send eunuchs to serve as mine supervisors, tax supervisors, etc. to collect money from various places. But the civil servants used their power of public opinion to directly portray these eunuchs as greedy female thieves who plundered places!
But is this actually the case? not necessarily! The money collected by the eunuchs, in addition to filling their own pockets, at least part of it can also go into the palace and the court, while all the money collected by the civil servants goes into their own pockets!
But once someone opposes it, the public opinion of the entire court will be biased towards these people in an instant! This is because these people safeguard the interests of the business and tax class! But ordinary people have no knowledge at all, so they naturally follow what others say! Anyway, local public opinion is in the hands of big businessmen and scholars. What they say will be believed by the people. Naturally, they will treat these eunuchs as female thieves!
And these things were recorded openly in history books, becoming a model for civil servants to educate the next generation of emperors, hoping to educate another confused emperor in order to maintain their interests!
Therefore, Liu Haojia's memorial was leaked as soon as it arrived in the capital, and the capital was shocked! It was even more crowded in the morning! But their reasons are not that special and sufficient, because the matter of collecting business tax was really decided when Zhu Yuanzhang was in power, but the tax amount is so low! .
Therefore, these officials went out one by one to make impassioned speeches and cited classics to oppose the collection of commercial taxes. The reasons were just these few. If they could not convince anyone, they could only point the finger directly at Liu Haojia himself!
Emperor Wanli listened patiently for a while and then raised his hand and said, "I heard what you all said! Let me talk about the most common thing first. That is, you think that the money received by Wu Ninghou may be corrupted. Yes or no?"
The censor who had spoken the loudest just now said immediately: "Your Majesty, everyone knows that warriors are vulgar! Wu Ninghou and his men may be able to fight in battles, but such state affairs cannot be done by greed! So let them do tax collection. , that is tantamount to opening the door to welcome a thief, your Majesty, please think twice!"
Emperor Wanli glanced at him and said, "What you said makes no sense! If Wu Ninghou was vulgar, how could he cure smallpox? Moreover, before Wu Ninghou collected taxes, you asserted that he and his subordinates must be greedy. Isn’t this a false accusation? And have you really read the entire memorial?”
At this point, Emperor Wanli picked up the memorial on the imperial case and held it up and said: "Wu Ninghou also wrote a lot of things at the back of the memorial. How much tax will be charged on what goods? How to collect tax? How much money is expected to be collected? And It is clearly written down how much money it will cost and how many people will be used, and it also requires the censor to supervise the audit. This is also called greedy for ink! Get back!"
Many officials were overwhelmed by Emperor Wanli's rhetorical questions and fell silent for a while. They were also in a hurry and used the usual methods without discussing it! Greedy Mo's method is that no matter how you do things, right or wrong, I'll pour a basin of sewage on you first! I'll define you as a bad guy first, and then whatever I do with you will make sense!
But they never expected that this principle would not work with Emperor Wanli! The reason has to be attributed to the secret box performance that Emperor Wanli gave to Liu Haojia!
Liu Haojia has never been idle since he left the capital. He has always used a secret box to keep in touch with Emperor Wanli. He continued to instill various truths into Emperor Wanli, and even simplified some economic theories and strategies for governing the country to him. So the current Emperor Wanli is not the little emperor who knew nothing in history at all!
Emperor Wanli defeated these censors with a simple counterattack, but don't forget that the censors are just the vanguard of the civil servants. If the vanguard suffers, others will naturally come out!
At this time, Wang Jianling, the royal censor of the right capital, went out to kneel down and said: "Your Majesty, the court has its own rules for doing things. How can we allow Wuhou and factory guards to participate in the court's tax collection? If so, factory guards are all over the world, as long as they are everywhere The factory guard originally said that by participating in the taxation, he could plunder the world. Wouldn’t that lead to chaos in the world! So please think twice, Your Majesty, this should never be done!”
