"Losing the land." Ji Heng whispered, speaking very calmly.
He already guessed what was going on.
Fusu said: "It is indeed a loss of land."
"If we talk about it according to a new word coined by the local area, it is called annexation."
"What is a merger?"
"The rich and powerful families devour the people's land, just like the big countries in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period annexed the small countries."
"Since Shang Yang's reform, the Qin Dynasty has returned all Qin's fields to the public. Therefore, the Qin Dynasty has completely shifted from the original 'leasing grain' and 'making land' to 'fake private land', that is, leasing state-owned land to landless farmers for production. , the state will then provide seeds, cattle, etc. support to farmers who borrow their fields.”
"For military merit, one will be rewarded with land."
"Shangjun also specially set two rules."
"The first one is inheritance by demotion, that is, a son can inherit the land and title awarded by his father due to his merits. However, if he has to be downgraded two levels to inherit, the corresponding land and house will be reduced accordingly."
"In addition, if the father and son are not of the same family, they cannot inherit."
"The second rule is to seize the land upon death."
"That is, after the death of the person who was granted the land, except for the part of the land inherited by his son, the excess land must be taken back to the state and distributed separately by the state."
"That's why."
"The laws of Qin do not allow the sale of land."
"It's because of the land annexation that few people pay attention to it."
"However, in recent years, officials, nobles, and wealthy merchants in Guanzhong have taken advantage of various opportunities such as famine, migration, and the Cao Canal Project to purchase farmland in Guizhou. The people's farmland has continued to flow into the hands of the powerful, noble, and wealthy, and Guizhou has lost all its land. Since then, many of them have been reduced to domestic farming, no different from the slaves they were back then.”
Fusu looked solemn.
He certainly knew the pros and cons.
After Guizhou loses all its land, it will only become poorer.
This in turn leads to poverty and civil unrest.
Ji Heng poured himself a glass of wine and listened calmly.
Fusu glanced at Ji Heng in surprise and continued: "When I noticed that there was land annexation in the local area, I paid more attention and went to the fields to ask questions from time to time. But I really didn't expect that many local farmers in Guizhou voluntarily sold their fields. .”
Fusu sighed softly and said helplessly: "They don't know that Daqin's fields cannot be bought and sold, but there is currently a lack of young people in the place. Most of the households in Guanzhong have military merit, so the number of fields is not large. Just based on the old, weak, women and children, there is no Farming cannot be done, and the official land rent will not be small, nor can it be easily waived. Therefore, the local plight is noticed by merchants and nobles, and these people purchase the land from households at low prices on the pretext of helping them pay the rent. .”
“Private purchases have become more frequent over the years.”
"Many fields in Guanzhong have fallen into the hands of merchants, nobles, and some officials."
"What makes me even more worried is that the land annexation originally occurred in Guandong, but now it has begun to overflow in Guanzhong. I am afraid that the annexation of Guandong will be even worse, especially when wars in the world have ceased, and the fiefdoms of the nobles of the six countries have also been abolished. I don't know how many counties there are. The county's aristocratic families and wealthy merchants took advantage of this to make their fortunes."
"Families lost their fields and had only a meager amount of money and food. But how long can this money and food last?"
"Eventually, I am afraid that I will go back to the same old path and continue to sell my own fields. If I repeat this process several times, most of the fields in the world will fall into the hands of merchants, officials, and powerful families."
"What will be lost then is the people's farmland? What will be lost is clearly the foundation of the people's hearts and minds."
"It's the Imperial River and Mountain."
Fusu looked upright, his eyes full of anger.
Ji Heng glanced at it briefly, shook his head, and said, "You take the land annexation too lightly."
"Please give me some advice, sir." Fusu cupped his hands and said.
Ji Heng said: "With the continuous emergence of iron tools, household production has greatly improved."
“The past well-field system is becoming more and more intolerable to the world.”
"It was also from this time on that the people in the world were registered as households. This seemed to be to control the country's population for management, but it was actually for the convenience of taxation. The real purpose of this system was to change taxation. From this time on, the world began to The past tribute system continues to transform into normal land taxation.”
"This kind of change first started in Qi."
"The reform of the Qi State was 'respecting the land and reducing the levy', followed by the Jin State's 'making land', and then the Chu State's 'book land', 'measurement and repairing Fu' and so on."
"The Qin Dynasty's reform from tribute to land taxation was called 'Chusuhe'."
"Since the Warring States Period, the six kingdoms of Guandong, or to be precise, the entire world, including Qin, began to annex land."
"It's just that during the Warring States Period, various countries were forced by continuous wars and had many wartime administrations. The nobles of each country had the power to govern their respective fiefdoms. Therefore, the fields in their fiefdoms were the same as their own property. Naturally, there was no need to forcibly purchase private land. At that time, Even if a wealthy merchant can buy and sell private land, the amount is too small to attract attention."
"Besides."
"Businessmen have a low status and dare not make any noise."
"Once discovered by local noble families, they will be conscripted into service, so land annexation is not drastic."
"The same goes for Qin."
"When the land annexation in Qin got a little worse in the future, Shang Yang came out again and killed thousands of related old clans and nobles, completely wiping out the land annexation that had arisen in Qin at that time. In the future, the Qin State vigorously promoted Shang Farmers suppressed businessmen, rewarded farming and fighting, and restricted merchants, so land sales were almost completely controlled.”
"It can never lead to trouble."
"But in the middle and late Warring States Period, various countries implemented reforms one after another."
"The land was converted into private property."
"It was from this time on that the buying and selling of land during the Warring States Period gradually became a scourge for all countries. However, at that time, there were continuous wars and the situation was precarious, so land annexation was still suppressed to some extent. But as you said, as the wars in the world stopped, things began to settle down. , How can a noble and powerful man who has had his fiefdom taken away from him accept it with resignation?"
"As a result, land annexation has gradually become a common trend in the world."
"However, the Great Qin Dynasty prohibited land sales, and there were no laws or regulations related to land sales. Therefore, these sales contracts were not recognized by the government. The government knew this. How could the nobles of the six countries and the wealthy merchants not know this? So at that time, the world Although the trend of buying and selling land has begun to spread, it is far from getting so bad."
"The real trend begins with an edict."
Hear the words.
Fusu was immediately stunned.
edict?
Isn't this issued by the emperor?
When did the Qin Dynasty issue an edict permitting land trading?
Suddenly, Fusu seemed to have thought of something, and there was a hint of surprise in his eyes.
He said solemnly: "The head of Guizhou is under the order of Shitian?"
Ji Heng nodded.
"Did you make a mistake, sir?" Fusu frowned and said, "Your Majesty issued this decree, not to allow the sale of land, nor to acknowledge the private ownership of the land. It was just that the imperial court at that time was dissatisfied with the land rent collected from Guandong, and knew that Guandong was afraid of There are many shady stories, and I wanted to use this to find out the situation in the fields in Kanto, so I issued this decree."
"This is actually a decree to verify land and collect land taxes."
"Indeed."
"The imperial court also used this to encourage people to open up wasteland and allowed these fields to be given to the head of Guizhou."
"But this has nothing to do with permitting land sales."
"How could the imperial court do such a short-sighted thing?"
Fusu looked in disbelief.
He knew something about making the head of Guizhou come from Shitian, so he did not agree with this statement.
Ji Heng smiled and said, "Even so, so what."
"If the imperial court issued a decree and the following officials implemented it according to the facts, Xia, Shang and Zhou would not have perished."
“It is people who enforce the system!”
"The system's binding force on people is limited."
"As long as the interests are big enough, any system can be trampled on."
Fusu's face darkened.
Ji Heng chuckled lightly and continued: "The world was first settled, and the Qin laws had not yet been uniformly implemented. Guandong still followed the old law, that is, fields can be bought and sold."
"At that time, the people of the world were at a loss. They knew nothing about the laws and policies of Qin. The only thing they could hear was the endless abuse and curses of the local nobles against the Qin Dynasty."
"In addition, the world has been afraid of Qin for a long time."
"The people of Guandong are afraid of Qin."
"So it's easy to be bewitched by the powerful local nobles."
"When the officials come down to inspect the fields, they will deliberately hide it and not report it."
"The Qin court saw that the land rent collected from upper and lower levels was getting smaller and smaller every year, so it issued the 'Order to Enable the Head of Guizhou to Realize Fields'. But perhaps Qin Ting himself did not expect that although there were land annexations in the area, it was relatively not bad, and After this decree was issued, land annexation began to become a common practice all over the world."
"the reason is simple."
"Qin Ting gave the legal basis for annexation."
"The imperial court knew that the local government was hiding something and not reporting it, and it also knew that there was a certain amount of land annexation in the local area. It wanted to use this to get the local government to report the farmland truthfully. On the one hand, it wanted to reduce the burden on the people, and on the other hand, it wanted to collect more land rent from the hands of the nobles and powerful people. But you must know clearly that Qin Ting does not know who concealed the information and whose land was annexed."
"This order immediately created a problem."
"The fields that were hidden in the past are still hidden, but the fields that were originally on the accounts gave the nobles a reason to annex them. Because they were 'self-aware of the fields', they could directly seize all the fields that did not originally belong to them. He took it under his own name and then realized the change of ownership of this part of the land."
Fusu's face changed slightly.
Ji Heng said calmly: "The Qin law stipulates that people without land will be punished as hard labor prisoners. However, the Qin Dynasty has ruled the world for several years. No one in the world knows the suffering of hard labor. Therefore, the people who have lost their land will not be punished. Those who dare to say that their family has no land, and because the nobles are so powerful, do not dare to easily avenge the loss of their land."
"In the end, these Guizhou leaders clearly have no land, but they have to pay extra land rent that does not exist."
"And the powerful nobles who 'buy land' will overpay for their land, which will inevitably lead to an increase in land rent and taxes. However, there were a lot of hidden and unreported fields in Kanto before, so in order to make up for the extra rent they pay, they will only intensify their annexation. These fields.”
"thus."
“The trend of local land annexation is getting more and more intense.”
"It is true that the decree issued by the Qin court does not encourage annexation, but the officials below may not be able to implement it."
"The Qin court has given legal principles for annexation. If there are conditions, who wouldn't be greedy?"
"This is a field!"
"Now you know what caused the disaster of losing the land."
(End of chapter)
