Chapter 340 They Thought the Court Was Reasonable

On February 4, the sixth year of the Qingli period, Gong Xu, Pan Shi, Wang Wei, and Zhang Ruohai gathered in the Gong Family Manor in Wu County, Suzhou.

This time, in addition to the four major families, more than ten family heads were added.

They are all large families in Suzhou, and almost every family owns more than 30,000 acres of land.

The local sages in feudal society are landlords, and they control the main wealth.

Different from the wealth of capitalism, the concept of wealth of the landlord class is land and being an official, so they pay attention to farming and reading to pass on the family.

Farming makes money, having money to study, studying to be an official, being an official to make money, being greedy for money to buy land, buying land to grow grain.

This forms an endless cycle, so the more land you control, the more social wealth and "money" you have.

In later generations, "money" is a general equivalent and an exchange product. But in ancient society, money is not only an exchange product, it is also a commodity in itself.

Because money is a kind of precious metal, it has its value. And the bureaucracy and capital core of feudal society actually play with land. The more precious metals and land, the more money.

Therefore, in essence, the biggest capitalists in the feudal period were the landlords.

But their existence was different from that of capitalists.

Although capital breeds evil and every pore is dripping with blood and dirty things, it can also promote social progress. Many emerging technologies and industrial revolutions are promoted and invented by capitalists.

For example, Edison is a complete capitalist, but this does not prevent his inventions from influencing and changing the whole world.

Therefore, the existence of capitalists will improve productivity and expand the cake. Even if most of the cake is eaten by capitalists, there will always be some soup left for the people below.

The landlord class is different. There is only so much land and the cake is so small. Once the land is annexed by the landlord class, the poor without land will become the main force of the rebellion and uprising, causing social instability.

So in the final analysis, capitalists are hateful, but they can make society progress. Landlords are only hateful. Even if they are conscientious landlords, they indirectly cause land annexation in this process and harm the poor.

After all, for the poor who lost their land, it was not that they did not work hard to cultivate, but natural disasters and man-made disasters. A drought, a flood, or collusion between the government and the landlords could make them penniless.

This is the fragility of the small peasant economy.

If Zhao Jun wants to change the Song Dynasty, he must destroy the landlord class. Even if he cannot completely eliminate it like in later generations, he must make it seriously injured and unable to shake the foundation of the country.

Therefore, since the beginning of the fifth year of Qingli, policies have been promoted to continuously suppress landlords and damage their interests from explicit and implicit aspects.

At this moment, the four major families of Gong Xu, Pan Shi, Wang Wei, and Zhang Ruohai gathered in the house, and more than a dozen other landlords in Suzhou were also there.

There was a faint scent of tea in the house, but it was also full of silence.

After a long time, Zhang Ruohai suddenly said: "In the past year, most of the tenants of my farm have left. They were all taken away by the government to repair the river."

As soon as he said this, it seemed to open the chatterbox, and the others also complained.

"You've only said half of it. My farm originally had more than 600 households, but now there are less than 300 households left. I lowered the rent to keep them."

"Whose family is not? Which of us doesn't have hundreds of hectares of land and thousands of tenants? How many are left now?"

"If this continues, our fields will soon become wastelands, and the land will become wasteland."

Everyone was talking.

Everyone had a very helpless expression on their face.

The protection of tenants in the Song Dynasty was still in place, except for some remote areas, such as some deep mountains and old forests in Sichuan, Guizhou, Guangxi, and Fujian.

These places, such as the Sichuan and Xia roads centered on Kuizhou Road, have a sparse population and backward production. Many places still practice slash-and-burn farming.

As a result, the proportion of customers in the total number of households is very high, and the wealthy and powerful families often use hundreds or even thousands of "side households" and "land guests" as servants.

These "side households" and "land guests" not only have to pay rent in kind, but also provide labor service. They were "inherited for several generations" and were "regarded as slaves".

In the Southern Song Dynasty, the landlords in Kuizhou Road not only enslaved the tenants themselves, but also enslaved their families, and even interfered with the marriage of their wives and daughters, making these tenants actually in the status of serfs.

But it was different in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. As the agricultural and economic center of the Song Dynasty, Jiangsu and Zhejiang were always firmly controlled by the court. The government had greater control, and the laws were naturally more sound and complete.

The tenants here were not dependent on the landlords, nor were they the landlords' appendages. The relationship between the tenants and the landlords was just a simple lease relationship.

In addition, the ruling class also recognized the legal status of the tenants. Legally, the landlords did not have many privileges over the tenants, and the landlords were not allowed to and would not interfere with the tenants' own behavior.

Therefore, under the explicit and implicit attacks of the court, the landlords in Jiangsu and Zhejiang suffered great losses.

Needless to say, the explicit aspect was that under the land tax system, the taxes they had to bear were much higher than those of ordinary farmers. The hidden aspect is that the court has driven away all their tenants, leaving them with no one to cultivate the land.

Under such circumstances, the landlords in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are suffering terribly and are now in great pain.

"The court is only happy to force us to death."

Gong Xu sighed.

"Brother Gong, we have to think of a way. This is not going to work."

Everyone looked helpless.

It wasn't like they hadn't thought about it before. They went to the transfer envoy's yamen gate to protest.

I also visited familiar officials and stakeholders.

They even wanted to plan large-scale riots.

But during the protest, Du Qi, the transfer commander, was polite at first, but later just ignored him.

Find officials you are familiar with, or even someone you can talk to in the court.

In the morning, several officials pointed out the dangers of sharing the land with one person, but the next day, Zhao Zhen ordered him to be dismissed and investigated because he stepped into the Chui Gong Hall with his right foot first.

Then the Constitutional Yuan passed the edict at the speed of light, and the Zhongshu Ministry had no intention of rejecting it, so he lost his official position in a daze.

Naturally, no one spoke for them anymore.

The last thing is to plan riots.

As a result, we happened to encounter Zhao Jun who was cracking down on gangsters. The local gangsters in Suzhou City and Hangzhou City were arresting and killing them.

Even several of their friends were taken away and executed, and all the property and land in their names were confiscated.

After all, for ancient landowners, it was definitely unrealistic to not be involved in the underworld. Naturally, they would have thugs under their control, and it was not impossible to even have a few desperadoes.

While they were organizing people and planning riots here, they were arresting people everywhere and causing chaos.

Seeing that some landowners who were originally brothers and sisters were dragged to the execution ground and beheaded by being labeled as the leaders of the evil forces, the riots they originally planned naturally stopped.

If you stir up trouble at this juncture, isn't that simply costing someone's life?

They wanted to protect their own interests and were not stupid enough to send their whole family to the guillotine.

"Oh, I have thought of everything I should think of, no matter what I can think of."

Gong Xu said helplessly: "Now I don't even dare to hide the rent and pay less taxes. The tax collectors in the village are watching."

"Didn't you do something like one or two?"

"It was fine before. I only needed to deal with their leaders. The tax collectors below were nothing to me. But now? If I deal with their leaders, they can report them to the county government or even the state government in the blink of an eye."

"Yes, now we are no longer staring at us. If we want to take care of it, the county government, the county tax bureau, the Imperial City Department, the Yushitai and even the state capital, if we take care of it, we might as well pay taxes."

Everyone sighed with their heads hanging down.

In the past, their taxes were only under the jurisdiction of the county government, so as long as they established good relations with a few officials of the county government, such as the county magistrate, chief registrar, and county lieutenant, they would just send some money to the officials responsible for collecting taxes, and the cost would be the same. Not big.

What now?

Although taxation has been allocated from the county government and is now under the jurisdiction of the Local Taxation Bureau and the National Taxation Bureau, tax payment is also an achievement of the county government. If there is tax evasion, the county government will also keep an eye on it.

At the same time, the Imperial City Department and the Yushitai also monitor many local departments. Once any member of the tax department discovers that their superiors are helping people hide taxes and reports them to the Imperial City Department and the Yushitai, they will be sure to report them.

After all, local officials are now paid, and local fiscal revenue greatly affects their salary income. And if such reports and revelations are meritorious and documented, they are allowed to be recommended as officials.

Although there is no privilege to become a civil servant, it is just like a scholar who passes the provincial examination and becomes a civil servant. He is qualified to take the civil service examination. Once he passes the civil service examination, he is equivalent to being a Jinshi and officially becoming an official.

Therefore, all officials in the world dream of being recommended as officials. Not only do they work hard and make progress, but they also immediately report corruption when they find it, which greatly improves their enthusiasm.

In this case, it would be difficult for them to pay bribes even if they wanted to.

"Everyone."

Pan Shi suddenly said to everyone: "Now the court only gives us two options. One is to sell the land to the government. We will become rich ourselves, but we will have nothing and no land. How can we make any income?"

"You can still go into business. I have a friend of the same age, and we took part in the Jiaxu imperial examination together. Although we both failed, we still have a deep friendship."

Someone said: "After he failed several times, he settled down to run a business at home. Now he has more than ten shops in Yangzhou, with a net worth of hundreds of thousands, and his life is no worse than ours."

"hehe."

Wang Wei sneered and said: "Merchant is a humble business after all, not to mention how risky it is to do business. You all know that if you are not careful, you will lose everything."

"But the imperial court is still promoting commerce and supporting industry and commerce, and there are quite a few preferential treatment for the government."

"So what? Think about it, everyone, we have land in our hands, and as long as there are people working on it, it is a business that is sure to make money without losing money, so why do we need to engage in low-level business?"

"That's true."

"That's true. If it were me, I wouldn't want to take risks to do business."

"If Brother Liu wants to do business, feel free to go. I won't go anyway, what do you think?"

"Yes, when a businessman is precarious, how can he be as comfortable as we are?"

"Uh, just pretend I didn't say that."

The landowner who proposed that he could do business was attacked by a group of people and was speechless.

In the final analysis, although the Song Dynasty abolished the lowly and slave status, the classes were still there, with scholars, peasants, industry and merchants, and merchants having the lowest status.

Especially since ancient times, agriculture has been emphasized over business. The landlord class is mainly engaged in agriculture and naturally discriminates against business.

Besides, as the saying goes, money is hard to make and shit is hard to eat.

Doing business involves a lot of risks, and when the market goes bad, it is common to lose everything.

Landowners like them are different. Although there are natural disasters, as long as the land is still there, the harvest will be guaranteed by droughts and floods. It is nothing more than a matter of making more or less.

"But now the court's second option is to let us become businessmen, saying that we are allowed to invest in steel plants and cement plants."

Pan Shi spread his hands and said, "Isn't this ridiculous?"

"Anyway, I don't want to choose either path. Why don't we all come up with a charter and come up with a solution."

Someone said.

"In my opinion, it's not impossible."

Gong Xu glanced at Pan Shi, Wang Wei, and Zhang Ruohai. This was a plan that the four of them had discussed long ago.

"oh?"

The other family heads all looked over, and someone hurriedly said: "Brother Gong, if there is a countermeasure, it would be better in the morning."

"I think that the reason why this matter has continued to this day is because our request has not been taken seriously by the government and the court."

Gong Xu said in a deep voice: "We also went to protest before, but what happened? They ignored us and even sent people to drive them away and arrest us, so that we had to stop our activities."

"But our power was not strong at that time, and many wealthy families and their surnames were not connected together, so the government underestimated our power."

He looked around and continued: "Now the idea of ​​​​taking small acres into acres has been promoted throughout Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the government is trying every means to take away our tenants and landowners. If this continues, we will be left with only a piece of barren land. I believe , we can see that so many wealthy families in Jiangsu and Zhejiang will not be unaware of it. "

"What does Brother Gong mean?"

Someone asked in surprise: "Unite many wealthy families and put pressure on the government and the court?"

"Exactly."

Gong Xu nodded: "Only when the court sees how many of us there are and how powerful we are, will it truly consider how harmful it will be to us."

"this"

Someone hesitated and said, "What if the court charges us with rebellion?"

"It doesn't matter."

Zhang Ruohai smiled and said: "Firstly, the law does not punish the public. Secondly, we did not raise troops, but went to Hangzhou Fucheng to protest and demonstrate. The court must also be reasonable, otherwise wouldn't everyone in the world be in danger?"

"Yes, this is indeed the case. If we just stand on the streets to protest and they arrest people at will, then where is the legal principle? Where is the justice?"

"I don't believe that there are thousands of wealthy families in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and there are so many people in Jianghuai, they will really kill them all. I also agree with Brother Gong's opinion, now let's contact people everywhere?"

"Don't panic, everyone. I've actually contacted a lot of people. Everyone will go back. Next month, we will bring our tenants with us to Hangzhou to gather. By then, everything will be turned upside down."

"Okay, it would be great if Brother Gong upholds justice."

Everyone agreed.

They actually protested at first, but the court didn't do anything to them, which made them feel that the court was still reasonable.

Secondly, if someone takes the lead, if the court turns against them, the worst case scenario is that the person in charge will be pushed out.

Anyway, a dead Taoist friend is not a poor Taoist.

What's more, there are tens of thousands of landowners in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Does the imperial court really want to kill all of them?

Not realistic.

Now everyone no longer hesitated.

After listening to Gong Shi's words, he agreed again and again, and decided to go back and gather people to make a big fuss in Fucheng, Hangzhou.