Chapter 772 871 Grain Reserves

"Do you have any good ginseng in Shandai? Sell me two and send them back to my hometown."

When Zhang Juzheng heard Wei Guangde say this, he suddenly thought of the good ginseng collected in his home.

"What are you selling? I'll have someone send it to your house when I go back tonight."

When it comes to ginseng, Wei Guangde said indifferently.

There is nothing else, but there are still a lot of good ginseng.

Collecting old ginseng is to make money and to win over relationships. If Zhang Juzheng wants it, he can just send it directly.

"Shandai, I have it."

When Yin Shizhe was about to speak, Wei Guangde interrupted him and said, "I have it all. I'll send someone tonight."

Although Wei Guangde always regarded Zhang Juzheng as a political opponent in his heart, sending ginseng was actually not a big deal.

And for them, it was not a feud. As long as there was interest in politics, they could still come together in the end.

As for wanting to kill someone in one go, Wei Guangde was not very willing.

You know, Zhang Juzheng has a great reputation in later generations, and many history novices have more or less heard of this name.

On the contrary, Gao Gong, a powerful official who has the final say in the court, is not known by many people in later generations.

A person's reputation is like a tree's shadow. Wei Guangde still has some concerns in his heart. Moreover, given the current situation of the Ming Dynasty, he does not want to offend anyone. Now he should let Gao Gong rectify the administration of officials and let Zhang Juzheng carry out the reform in the future.

At this time, Wei Guangde even felt that the chief minister Li Chunfang was a wise man.

Although he seemed to be about to be hollowed out in the cabinet, his position was stable after all because he did not make mistakes.

On the contrary, if there were any troubles in government affairs, Gao Gong and Chen Yiqin would discuss and deal with them. He played the role of mediating disputes, which was very easy.

When Wei Guangde returned to the duty room to handle official business, Gao Gong also returned to his duty room, but he did not work. Instead, he sat in front of the desk and thought quietly for a while. As if he had finally made up his mind, he spread out the rice paper and prepared to write a memorial.

Speaking of which, Gao Gong had actually realized a big problem very early, that is, the Ming Dynasty had not many officials in name, but in fact it was seriously overstaffed.

For example, the six ministries were nominally configured with one minister and two assistant ministers, but due to many reasons, the assistant ministers of each yamen were often three or five people. Even if the governors and governors who were nominally in the Ministry of War were removed, there were still one or two overstaffed.

The central government had to deal with a lot of complicated affairs, especially the Ministry of Works. Large-scale projects generally sent assistant ministers to inspect. Under such circumstances, if the establishment of two people was forced to be maintained, once they went on business trips, the affairs of the yamen might not run smoothly.

But this was just an overstaffing of officials, not a big deal. The main reason was that the grassroots officials were seriously overstaffed, especially the emperor's personal army Jinyiwei.

In the Ming Dynasty, as long as they did something to please the emperor, the children of ministers could often get a job as Jinyiwei. Even if this person was not doing his job properly and had all the five vices of eating, drinking, whoring and gambling, he would still wear this skin.

I learned from Liu Tigan before that the Ministry of Revenue reserved a large amount of silver, one of the important uses of which was to pay salaries to officials. In Gao Gong's mind, as long as the court returned to the state of the founding of the country, he would not consider how to increase the income of the Ministry of Revenue, because Zhu Yuanzhang had already determined the income of the Ministry of Revenue.

What can be done now is to save money and reduce the expenditure of the court's salary rice, and cutting redundant staff has become Gao Gong's idea.

There is no doubt that in all official systems, there is only one department with the most serious overstaffing, that is, the Jinyiwei.

So, a memorial about cutting redundant staff gradually took shape under Gao Gong's pen.

In order to prevent the emperor from mistaking this memorial for the emperor's personal army, Gao Gong racked his brains and came up with some official positions in the court that did not need to exist or were considered to be reduced.

For example, the Nanjing Governor-General's grain storage, which was actually redundant to be presided over by the Chief Censor.

The Beijing Governor's Ambassador to the Warehouse is actually an official from the Ministry of Revenue. Naturally, it is also necessary for Nanjing to do so. It only needs the Nanjing Ministry of Revenue to arrange people. At most, the Censorate will send an imperial censor to inspect it every year.

Another example is the Maritime Customs Office. The Maritime Customs Office in the Ming Dynasty changed dramatically and was abolished and re-established many times, but there were generally three offices, namely the Zhejiang Maritime Customs Office, the Fujian Maritime Customs Office, and the Guangdong Maritime Customs Office.

The three Maritime Customs Offices have their own division of labor. The Zhejiang Maritime Customs Office is responsible for trade with Japan, the Fujian Maritime Customs Office is responsible for trade with Ryukyu, and the Guangdong Maritime Customs Office is responsible for trade with Champa, Siam and Western countries.

Each Maritime Customs Office has one supervisor, two deputy supervisors, and one internal official supervisor, who is the eunuch supervisor of the Maritime Customs Office, and is actually the real person in charge of the Maritime Customs Office.

However, the Maritime Customs Office rarely has reception tasks in a year, especially at present.

As far as Gao Gong knows, the two deputy supervisors are actually dispensable, so they are also included in the list of abolitions.

With a few strokes, a memorial was soon completed.

While waiting for the ink to dry, Gao Gong checked the memorial.

He did not intend to hand it over to other cabinet ministers for review as a cabinet memorial, but intended to hand it over to Emperor Longqing in his own secret memorial.

After all, he had been back to the court for such a long time, except for presiding over the Ministry of Personnel to punish a group of incompetent officials, and had few political achievements.

Since the Ministry of Revenue said that there was a shortage of silver, he would find a way to save silver for the court.

If His Majesty approved, he would submit another memorial to finalize the matter.

He was not as cautious as Wei Guangde. He checked it once and found no problems. After the ink dried, he carefully folded the memorial and put it away, intending to take it to His Majesty when he summoned him.

At this time, Hai Rui did not know that his official position was about to be abolished.

In fact, Hai Rui was competent as an official. After taking over the post of grain storage in Nanjing, the first thing he did was to check more than 20 granaries around Nanjing.

Although the account books were clearly written, he already knew the nature of Ming Dynasty officials. He didn't want to know nothing about the warehouses he managed.

What if the court wanted to transfer grain from here and the warehouses couldn't take it out?

There were more than 20 warehouses, and it was not a quick visit, so it would naturally take a lot of time.

In a month, he only checked more than 10 granaries, but he found a lot of problems.

Of course, the biggest problem was that the grain in the account books didn't match the grain in the warehouses, but it couldn't be said that the officials in the warehouses profited from it, because the difference was due to official documents issued by government offices in Huguang, Jiangxi and other places.

In other words, the government in Huguang and other places did not deliver the grain to Nanjing on time according to the order of the Ministry of Revenue. In order to deal with the inspection of the Ministry of Revenue, they issued a document to the Nanjing Grain Storage and obtained a receipt, which the Nanjing Grain Storage used to offset the shortage of grain.

As for the capital, the local government reported that the grain had been delivered to the Nanjing Grain Storage on time, and there was a public letter issued by the Nanjing Grain Storage.

For other officials, such things would of course be turned a blind eye. After all, it has become an unspoken rule until now, and there are many tricks.

There are officials who embezzle grain and sell it at a high price, and there are also officials in the Nanjing Grain Storage who privately sell the grain stored in the warehouse, and then find other local officials to make up such a document to offset the difference.

Hai Rui simply checked a few items and reacted, guessing the trick.

In his opinion, this matter is very serious, and he is unwilling to let the situation continue to develop.

It would be fine if he didn't know before, but now it has become his job, so he naturally has to start cleaning it up.

Regardless of other things, Hai Rui asked the officials to find all the documents about the shortage of more than ten granaries, and then sent them directly to various places in the form of documents from the grain storage office to urge the payment of grain.

The local arrears of grain are all accounted for, and after checking, the difference of grain that was privately resold can naturally be found.

With the reply letter, he can directly report to the Censorate and the Ministry of Revenue, and continue to urge the local governments to pay.

No matter what the result is, these things will eventually surface and let the court know.

As the governor of grain storage, it is not considered dereliction of duty, at least he has fulfilled his due responsibilities.

"Sir, the documents of arrears of grain in the six granaries have been counted, and they are correct. Look."

The master handed the counted documents to Hai Rui and waited for his instructions.

"In the name of the office, send a letter to these prefecture and county offices, and let them verify and reply as soon as possible."

Hai Rui had already made up his mind. No matter whether they made up for the arrears of grain or something else, he must report this matter to the capital to let the court know about these local tricks.

Although he would not directly open the lid, it would not be difficult for the court officials to understand the problem with their wisdom.

If the court wanted to stop this, he could also contribute to it. In fact, as long as the inspectors could check carefully every time, such things would have been made public long ago, and would not have been so serious now. The amount is huge, almost accounting for nearly half of the warehouses.

This is indeed a part of the warehouses, which has lost nearly half of the grain. The rest of the warehouses that have not been visited are not much better.

If he does not report it as soon as possible, the court needs to transport grain from Nanjing, and he will be at risk of dereliction of duty, although he has just taken office.

After the last case of the Xu family in Huating, Hai Rui knew that he could not be indecisive in doing things, and he would suffer if he did not make a decision.

Therefore, now that he has these documents on the grain arrears in the warehouses in his hand, he will immediately report the matter as soon as possible after waiting for the reply from the local government.

At the same time, in a secluded tavern in Nanjing, a dozen men in luxurious clothes gathered together.

It seemed to be just an ordinary banquet, but their gestures all showed the temperament of an official. Obviously, these people were officials in Nanjing.

"Mr. Li, Hai Rui took away all the documents and said he wanted to count the amount. What can we do?"

"Yes, he is an official who supervises grain by order. We can only cooperate with him if he wants to check. There must be an explanation for the difference."

Some people were dejected at this time, while others were trying to explain the situation at that time.

"Okay, okay, I know your difficulties. It is said that the county magistrate is not as good as the current manager. It is not unfair for you to fall into his hands."

The official called Mr. Li was also scratching his head and behaving at a loss.

Everyone present knew Hai Rui's temper and knew that this person was not easy to compromise, otherwise he would not have been sent to Nanjing to do this useless grain storage.

Isn't the position of Yingtian Governor good?

It's because he offended Xu Ge Lao and was punished by someone in the court.

The impeachment memorials in the capital every few days have long been spread to Nanjing.

For the master here, he originally thought that a "trouble" had gone, but he didn't expect that he was exiled here.

"The documents are all in those places. Give me the list and I will contact them. There will be no mistakes."

Lord Li said.

"That's good, that's good. I was afraid that the numbers reported by the other side would not match, which would be troublesome."

An official with a square face said, but what they did was not necessarily fair and aboveboard.

"These things have been discussed earlier. The local government owes a part, and we embezzle a part here. In the end, when the court asks, everyone knows what to do.

You just need to keep your mouth shut, don't worry about anything else, and let him investigate.

Humph, they're all so far apart, I'd like to see how he investigates. "

Mr. Li said with a look of disdain, no matter what he was thinking in his heart at this moment, at least he had to stabilize people here and not let himself get into trouble.

"Master Li, Hai Rui will come to my warehouse for inspection the day after tomorrow. Look."

One person hesitated for a moment before interjecting and asked.

"Let him investigate as he should. Don't be secretive. These things are very involved. I'm not afraid. What else do you have to be afraid of?

If the sky is falling, there will be a tall roof. We are just ordered to run errands, so what can we do?

This was already the case in Cangchang when I became an official. How could he check it? Are you going to go to the underworld to ask for guilt? It’s a joke.”

"But what if Hai Rui takes those documents and reports to the court?"

"We have people in the court who can speak in the cabinet. What are you afraid of?"

At this point, Mr. Li picked up the wine glass in front of the table and said to everyone: "I have called you here today to reassure you. The higher-ups already know about it and will naturally handle it properly.

As long as nothing happens to you, just let Hai catch you. Don't worry about anything else. Just cooperate with him in the verification.

Come, drink. "

After finishing the glass of wine in one gulp, Mr. Li smiled and said: "If we weren't afraid that so many of you Cangchang ambassadors would appear together to attract attention, why would we come back to this place to drink."

"Yes, yes, yes, Qianjiaofang on the Qinhuai River heard that a stunning lady came recently. Mr. Tang Zhigao spent a thousand taels of silver before but couldn't get it done. I heard that he almost mobilized the government army to destroy the place."

"The Marquis Lingbi is just like that in Nanjing. If we want to talk about it here, Duke Wei and Uncle Chengyi, as well as the Chang family of Huaiyuan Marquis, have to step aside."

Mr. Li's face was full of disdain, as if he didn't even pay attention to nobles such as Lingbi Marquis and Huaiyuan Marquis.

In fact, if you really want to meet the direct descendants of these noble houses, they will be as groveling and helpless.

Although some families have empty titles, the relationship is still here. Most of the old noble families are related to each other.

Let's just say that Huaiyuan Hou is actually a descendant of Zheng Guogong. His ancestor is Chang Yuchun, who is as famous as Xu Da. If it weren't for Zhu Biao's early death, the Chang family would have become the first relative of the Ming Dynasty.

It was also for this reason that the subsequent "Blue Jade Case" severely damaged the family. It was not until the fifth year of Hongzhi reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty that the case was vindicated and the Chang family was rewarded with the hereditary official position of Commander of the Nanjing Jinyi Guard.

In the 11th year of Jiajing reign of Emperor Shizong of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Jiajing granted titles to the descendants of some of the heroes and gave Chang Yuchun's descendants the title of Marquis of Huaiyuan. Only then did the Chang family regain the status of a distinguished family.

However, the people of the Chang family were not as good at doing things as the Marquis of Linhuai Li family, so they were soon forgotten by the emperor. By then, Marquis of Linhuai Li Tingzhu gained the emperor's favor and was promoted continuously. (End of chapter)