To be honest, the people of China are the most industrious people in the world. As long as they are given a peaceful environment and are not over-exploited, they know that they have to make money and work to support their families. So after a few years, people's livelihood improved a lot in the early Ming Dynasty.
"Although Shi Yu is rich, he is endowed with more than envy. Millet Valley has lost a million stones from the capital, and the prefectural warehouse is very abundant, so it is inedible to red rot. Sorry, I am 20 years old. There are often companies that issue Xiaomi bailout loans and then smell them. "
In such a corruption case, it seems that the whole situation is developing towards a stable situation. The Ming government was in harmony, and everything was in ruins. However, history is like a third-rate screenwriter. It seems that the surface situation is excellent, but in fact it is dark and turbulent.
In the eighteenth year of Hongwu, Guo Heng, assistant minister of the Ministry of Finance (equivalent to the current deputy minister of the Ministry of Finance), contacted provincial officials and sold the official grain privately. The amount involved was huge and the influence was particularly bad.
As soon as the case came out, Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly exploded the pot. Anyone familiar with the Ming Dynasty knows that Zhu Yuanzhang was a man with little money and little kindness, and he was a cool thin. He never lets go of the people he fought with, let alone these people.
So Zhu Yuanzhang, in a rage, put all the officials below the six assistant ministers of the Central Committee to death, and all the officials in charge of the official warehouses in the provinces to death. Because this case eventually led to too many officials and involved too many aspects, the whole country was greatly dissatisfied with the handling of this case. In order to quell public anger, Zhu Yuanzhang executed officials and others who tried the case. Just because of an economic case, all officials below Daming, the vice minister of Beijing, were executed, and local officials were in dire straits, which is unprecedented in the history of China.
In fact, this case only needs to bring the people involved to justice, but why is it so extensive that it even feels like a massacre! It can be said that the Ming Dynasty was the feudal dynasty with the greatest anti-corrosion efforts in the history of China, and the scale of anti-corrosion was even unprecedented. Why was the Ming Dynasty so strong and resolute against corruption?
Zhu Yuanzhang! I am a victim of corruption. Among all the emperors in China, Zhu Yuanzhang is the most difficult to start a business, mainly because of his background. Zhu Yuanzhang was born at the bottom of society. When he was a child, his family basically starved to death because of poverty and famine. I'm afraid only Zhu Yuanzhang knows what kind of experience this is.
Born at the bottom, he saw the cold eyes of the world and suffered the cold eyes of the world. It can be said that Zhu Yuanzhang's family did not get any help from the government when they suffered all kinds of hardships. Even if the famine broke out, the officials he met came to collect taxes.
The sufferings of the people do not seem to exist in the eyes of these officials, and exploitation remains. Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang had a deep hatred for the government in his heart. After Zhu Yuanzhang conquered the world and established the Ming Dynasty, he made up his mind to give people a peaceful world.
"At the beginning of the world, people had financial difficulties. For example, birds that have just started flying should not pluck their hair, and newly planted trees should not shake their roots. They should rest in peace. "
Tong Ming Jian records Zhu Yuanzhang's memories of official corruption in his early years. "When I was still in the folk, I found many local officials, many of whom were prodigals. They often went in and out of the land of fireworks and willows, but they couldn't see the sufferings of the folk. I hated this group of people in my heart. Now it is necessary to make laws, and those officials who endanger the people will go to hell to be punished. "
The misfortune of childhood, the suffering of adolescence and the rebellion after youth made Zhu Yuanzhang always have a natural rejection and vigilance against officials. And Zhu Yuanzhang's early experience also shows what Zhu Yuanzhang thinks. He hates corrupt officials very much.
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, when the world began, national corruption cases like Guo Heng began to occur. Under Zhu Yuanzhang's vigorous anti-corruption, corruption has been greatly controlled. However, by the middle and late Ming Dynasty, corruption in the Ming Dynasty was out of control. There is a saying that describes the faces of corrupt officials.
"The treasure of the poor mountain, the fault of exhausting water, the oyster house in the south, the bear's paw in the north, the simmering in the East China Sea, the mare's milk in the western regions, the real ancients, the wealth of the small sea, and the cost of a feast can't be done."
The oyster house here is now oysters, and the braised seafood abalone is now familiar to everyone.
Anyone who knows a little about history knows that Yan Song and his son Yan Shifan were the biggest traitors in the Ming Dynasty. According to records, after Yan Song was convicted of property theft, according to the unified data analysis, he got 32.962 million gold, 2.055 billion silver and countless other jewels.
"Incoming" officials and "Inflowing" officials After the founding of the People's Republic of China in the Ming Dynasty, to unify such a large country, a large number of officials must take the place of the emperor to take charge of the whole system and maintain the operation process of the whole government. The number of candidates for scientific research is increasing every year, but it is far from the actual number. After all, the imperial examination is held once every three years, and there are only a few hundred people, and some of them are in Beijing, so few people can be local officials.
Again, a county government, can a county magistrate manage the whole county? He also needs a county magistrate, an official, a master, a treasurer, an emissary, a soap and a strong people. Therefore, a dozen people have one yamen, and the number of officials has reached three quarters. Governing a place requires an institution with high professional skills. A scholar who has become famous through the four books and five classics is probably difficult to manage.
So we need many small officials with professional skills. The assistance of officials is very complicated, some from military households and civilian households, some from punishing officials who made mistakes, and some even volunteered to be officials after a long period of ineffective study.
Although officials represented the government closest to the people, the Ming government did not care much about the quality and source of these officials. Even in the eyes of the imperial court, it is not a good thing to acquiesce in officials.
"All folk handsome children, all primary school. But the official's mind is broken, so I won't let you take the exam! "
The meaning of this sentence needs no translation. Everyone knows what it means, so I won't explain it, but this sentence is really surprising. Even the imperial court thought that small officials were immoral, so they were not given the right to take the imperial examination.
When Emperor Yongle visited Douchayuan, he randomly selected the identities of 28 censors, basically either Jinshi or Guo Jian Zi. Emperor Yongle was very happy and did not forget to remind him when he left, "Don't reuse officials from now on."
As a very important part of Daming's rule, officials were not allowed to take part in imperial examinations, nor could they become censors and supervisors, which made their status very different from that of officials. Since then, officials have become an inferior profession like performers.
Officials in the Ming Dynasty had a low status, and so did their status. The most terrible thing is that no matter how good their performance is, they can't get rid of their tragic social status and can't see the future.
In addition, because the court looked down on it, the treatment was very low (the income of Ming officials was not high, and a county official was more than a dozen taels of silver a year, so you can imagine how many such officials there were. Faced with the embarrassment of life and the court's handling of them, these officials naturally reached out to the people.
Officials from Confucianism are very unfamiliar with the specific practical operation and Confucian classics because they have learned the Four Books and Five Classics since childhood and it is the hope of the family. These specific affairs, such as collecting taxes, implementing policies, encouraging the masses, etc., can only be entrusted to officials, which led to the fact that in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, officials became hereditary of a certain family and were in charge of the actual power of a place.
An official was sent by the imperial court to a place to be an official. If he can't get on well with local officials, he can't keep his office. The end result was that officials colluded with each other to oppress the people. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, officials were almost in charge of each other.
How to prevent officials from corruption and fraud: First of all, when selecting officials in the Ming Dynasty, moral level was one of the most important factors. No matter how big the official position is, as long as one of the parents dies, they must be filial for three years, otherwise it is unfilial.
An unfilial person cannot be expected to be loyal to the monarch and patriotic. At the same time, the book "Da Gao", which is transformed from various case-solving, is distributed to every official, so that they can read more and learn more, and the book must be tested. The purpose is to tell these officials not to be greedy, and if they are greedy, they will be caught.
Secondly, the supervision of the supervision system is also very important, and the Ming Dynasty did quite well in this respect. The Ming Dynasty set up an inspector group to supervise the whole country. If any government functionary is found to have violated the law and discipline, they will impeach the officials who have violated the law and discipline, report the unjust, false and wrong cases to the Supervision Bureau, and have the right to participate in the examination of suspected cases.
Duchayuan is the central supervisory organization, and the sentencing investigation department is the provincial supervisory organization, which is responsible for the supervisory duties of this province. It is the responsibility to "decide the lawsuit in prison and suppress the injustice". The six ministries are an independent organization, only responsible to the emperor, responsible for supervising the six ministries and working alone. Because they do not belong to any unit, they judge the world and do everything.
Finally, punishment. China has had the habit of imposing heavy punishments on its people since ancient times. To put it bluntly, it is to attach importance to criminal cases and implement the policy of people not reporting and officials not investigating.
The punishment for officials who break the law is also very heavy, such as killing Jiuzu, dying in 2008 and beheading. In the era of Zhu Yuanzhang, there was a criminal law of embezzling sixty taels of silver or even peeling it.
Because in the eyes of ancient law makers, officials have stable and rich income, unparalleled dignity and privileges that few people enjoy. Even so, corruption and fooling people are greedy. So you enjoy it a lot. If something happens, the natural punishment will be particularly severe. Other officials will also be punished. Don't reach out, you will be caught.