Dugu Ming held his hand and looked at the flow of people coming and going on the street outside, and sighed: "I don't know when I will come back next time?"
The person sitting opposite Dugu Ming was Liu Yan, the Minister of Civil Affairs. Liu Yan and Dugu Ming had a good relationship. At first, Liu Yan was responsible for contacting the court, and Dugu Ming was doing secret work for Li Ye. The two had quite a lot of contact.
Liu Yan smiled slightly and said: "Ming Gong is going to Quanzhou to temporarily take charge, and he is not going overseas. Why is he so sad?"
Dugu Ming shook his head, "My eldest brother also went to Quanzhou to take charge, but in the end he went to Dugu Island. Moreover, my eldest brother fell ill on Dugu Island. I should go and see him."
"Okay, why did you fall ill again?" Liu Yan asked with concern.
"It's too hot and humid over there, and my eldest brother is too old. His body can't handle it and he falls ill. This time I went to Quanzhou to take his place and let him return to Chang'an to recuperate."
Liu Yan didn't want to interfere in the Dugu family's family affairs, so he changed the subject and asked with a smile: "I heard that the Yu family wants to come back?"
Dugu Ming sneered and said: "I tried to persuade them at the beginning. They didn't have enough capital to develop the island. They didn't believe it and thought we wouldn't allow them to establish a country. Now they understand how easy it is to do this."
"They don't have enough money?"
"It has a little to do with it, but it's not entirely true. They thought too well before, thinking that the land was fertile and they could grow food three times a year. But now they discovered that the land on the island is very barren and they can't grow food at all. They feel so disappointed.
That’s when I decided to give up.”
"What about the island?"
"What else can we do? The Yu family's island is right next to us, so we took over it."
Liu Yan nodded and filled Dugu Ming's wine glass again, "The land is really so barren that we can't grow food?"
"It's not entirely complete, it still depends on luck. The island of Dugu's family is the best. It has a narrow plain three hundred miles long. The land is very fertile and has abundant water and heat resources. So we are preparing to develop rice and sugar cane in the future.
The island of the Yuan family is dotted with pepper trees that are dozens of miles long. They plan to mainly produce pepper. The island of the Changsun family also produces spices. In short, it is still rich in various products. Now it is mainly about opening up open space.
Build houses and docks.”
"The Yu family's land is very barren, is there nothing?"
Dugu Ming shook his head, "Of course not. I heard that their island is also rich in spices. Their problem lies in the fresh water. The fresh water is in the mountainous area. They have to dig a canal to divert the fresh water out. They don't have that ability."
Liu Yan chuckled and said, "So that's the case. It's really a matter of luck. In fact, we can change the island. The court allows it."
Dugu Ming sighed and said: "The key is that they retreated when they faced difficulties. It is not that easy to build a country. It will take several generations of hard work to achieve initial results."
At this moment, the shopkeeper came in and handed a newspaper to Dugu Ming.
This was naturally a tenth issue of the Tang Dynasty, and Dugu Ming subscribed to every issue, forming a habit.
He looked at the front page, which read "The Imperial Court's Reform of Local Officials' Administration Aroused Warm Responses in Various Places."
Dugu Ming handed the newspaper to Liu Yan, pointed to the title and said, "Is it true?"
Liu Yan looked at it, shook his head and said: "Of course the newspaper wants to boost morale, but the fact is just the opposite. It should trigger a strong boycott!"
"I just said that the reform of local government administration cannot be popular. It should be a hard nut to crack!"
Liu Yan nodded, "That's true. The imperial court wanted to return the power of appointing officials to the imperial court, but it was generally resisted by local clans. States wrote letters one after another, hoping to postpone the implementation of local official governance reforms. They were all worried that it would cause riots and be detrimental to
Local governance, do you think Ming Gong will do it?"
Dugu Ming sneered, "It's completely alarmist. It's difficult for local clans to control county officials, so they can only control subordinate officials. These subordinate officials may seem to have low status, but they all control real power. They are the defenders of the interests of local clans. The court
Once you touch the subordinates, you are actually attacking the powerful people. How can these powerful people give up? Of course, they will use all means to confront the court. The state officials dare not say everything, but most of them have benefited, so naturally they have to speak for the local powerful people."
Liu Yan smiled slightly and said: "These state officials are also stupid. Don't they know that what they say at this time will be evidence of their collusion with local clans?"
Dugu Ming sighed and said: "It's a pity that I can't see this scene anymore. Dear brother, tell the emperor for me that local officials are frozen three feet and cannot be frozen in a day. You must be patient and have a strategy!"
Liu Yan nodded, "I will definitely tell you!"
The desk in Li Ye's imperial study room was piled with notebooks from various places. In the past few days, he had been reading the notebooks from local governments to see why they opposed the reform of local officials.
The reform of local officials that Li Ye wanted to carry out was still a legacy of the Wei and Jin clans. Since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, successive rulers have been fighting against the clans, and the big clans have gradually been eliminated.
The imperial court used the favor order to force the major families to separate. Each family was divided into many houses, and each house was independent, and gradually they became irrelevant.
For example, Wei Gao and Wei Jiansu both have the same surname. They were originally from the same family, but they did not come from the same family, so they have no relationship with each other.
But when he arrived at Li Ye's place, Li Ye began to further attack the local small clans in various counties to break their monopoly on local real power.
Why is it necessary to reform? Because there are huge problems in the implementation of the abolition of slavery at the local level. At the court level and at the local government level, it is easy to implement the abolition of slavery. No official dares to disobey, and those who violate the law are immediately exposed, and they cannot escape.
Lose.
But when it came to the level of the wealthy landowners in each county, the abolition order came to an end. After more than a month, only more than 5,000 slaves were abolished by wealthy counties in the entire country.
The root of the problem lies in the registration. The subordinate staff responsible for the registration arbitrarily falsified the facts, and the county magistrate was unable to verify it. Therefore, basically every wealthy family had no slaves in the government's enthronement book.
This made Li Ye extremely angry, and he was planning to use the inner guards to clean up the family.
But Li Ye suddenly discovered that this was not necessarily a bad thing. He used the forced abolition of slavery to crack down on local powerful people and at the same time bring control of the county back to the court.
The abolition of slavery order is superficial, the withdrawal of local officials is internal, and the combination of external and internal is the best way to attack local tyrants.
The final result was the appointment of subordinate officials by the imperial court.
Li Ye was tired of reading a bunch of memorials. They were all the same and would cause local riots and be detrimental to local stability. Li Ye gave a heavy snort and threw the memorials aside.
At this time, Wei Gao said at the door: "Your Majesty, Wei Xiangguo, Zhang Xiangguo and Liu Shangshu are here!"
"Invite them in!"
Not long after, Wei Jiansu, Zhang Li and Liu Yan walked in, and the three of them saluted together, "See your majesty!"
"My dear friends, please take a seat!"
The three of them sat down, and Li Ye pointed to the more than one hundred memorials on the table and said to them: "I have read more than twenty memorials, and almost all of them have the same argument. It is necessary to be stable and recuperate. It sounds very reasonable.
But if you think about it carefully, am I destroying the stability? Should I destroy the rest and recuperation again? It’s just that on the surface, there are male thieves and female prostitutes. I don’t know how many benefits they have received, just to speak for local wealthy families.”
Wei Jiansu smiled slightly and said: "Your Majesty is right. Maybe they themselves didn't realize that there is no problem with one person's statement, but there is a problem if more than a hundred people express the same position. I believe they regret writing it now.
This is a twist."
Li Ye nodded and said to Liu Yan: "The officials took these documents back, classified them, and made a table for me. The horizontal rows above are various opinions, and the vertical rows below are the names of officials. I want to see if there are any
How many officials are thinking about the court, and how many have ulterior motives?"
Liu Yan nodded, "Wei Chen will sort it out when we get back!"
Li Ye slowly said to Wei Jiansu and Zhang Lida: "I have been thinking about this issue for the past two days. On the surface, the imperial court rules the world, but in fact? In fact, local wealthy families and the imperial court rule the world together. Everyone