Zhao Si turned to Huang Xingguo and asked: "Huang County Magistrate, I heard your introduction today, and I have a deep understanding of the people and things in this county. Then can you tell me, who are the people who serve as Li Zheng and Baozheng in Xinjiang County?"
"
Huang Xingguo stood up quickly, cupped his hands and replied: "Your Majesty, in this county, if a village has a big family that has been passed down from generation to generation, the patriarch will naturally be the one to take charge. If there are many surnames in the village, it is usually the one who pays the most food and tax.
Others are in charge.”
"The person who pays the most grain and tax will be in charge?" Zhao Si blinked, "Is it the person with the most land in the village?"
"To tell you your Majesty, yes. If you have the most land, you will naturally receive the most food and gifts."
"That's the landlord in the village..." Zhao seemed not to continue, but the meaning behind his words was understood by everyone present.
To control the land is to control the core assets. The tenants who work for him will basically be on his side. If the entire village's land is in his hands, that's fine. Anyway, the taxes paid to the court are from
He took it out of his pocket.
Suppose the landlord occupies half of the land in the village and the other villagers occupies half. The landlord is Li Zheng, will he use his hands to make his own taxes pay less and the other land-owning villagers pay more?
Ensuring fairness and justice, and allowing taxes to be borne by the households that should pay them, has been repeatedly emphasized by officials. It is also the most important purpose of the Apocalypse New Deal to search the land population and promote the reform of the tax system.
Just because it is the most important, it is also the most difficult. There are too many interests involved, and the people behind the interests will definitely do everything possible to resist and obstruct it.
Zhao Si asked again: "In Huangzhi County, who are the people who are responsible for keeping justice?"
"In response to Your Majesty, if the clan leader is Li Zheng, then the person in the clan who is Li Zheng is the most powerful person in the clan; if the big family is Li Zheng, then most of them are local strongmen who are close to the big family."
"Township offices, no censorship, no interference?"
"Replying to your majesty, the law states that the maintenance of integrity must be approved by the township office and reported to the county government. The security is led by the township police chief and is responsible for training, passing examinations, etc. But..." Huang Xingguo hesitated.
, let’s continue.
"Your Majesty, everything in the villages and towns is roughly the same. All conflicts can be resolved over a meal or a drink. The police officers in the villages and towns are mostly retired veterans of the Hedong Forbidden Army. They are uneven and it is difficult to ensure that everyone is loyal to their duties.
A selfless person."
Zhao Si waved his hand to show that he understood.
"What Huang Zhixian said is on point. The officials were selected, carefully trained, and passed exams again and again. They all seemed to be talented people. However, after actually taking office, various problems emerged. Can you persist?
There aren’t many people who have the original intention. Why? The entire political environment and officialdom atmosphere are there, and if we don’t make great efforts to correct them, it will be like a big dyeing vat. No matter how many officials fill it in, it will be dyed pitch black.”
After Zhao Si finished speaking, he looked around at everyone with encouraging eyes and said, "Everyone, please tell me what you think."
As the governor of Hedong County, Chang Anmin was the first to speak without hesitation.
"Your Majesty, I feel that in order to change the political environment and officialdom and build a team of officials, we should put pen to paper in many places. First of all, we need to improve the quality of officials themselves. The civil service examination system formulated by the Apocalypse New Deal starts from this aspect. It must be
After more than ten years of systematic education, he stood out through layers of selection, and finally received professional training to become an official."
"Some people complain that the civil service examination of this dynasty is the most difficult in the world. What a joke. I have passed the Jinshi examination. No matter how difficult the national examination is, how can I have an explanation, but the provincial examination is difficult? What kind of rate..." Chang
Anmin was momentarily stuck.
Li Fu reminded him softly from the side: "Admission rate."
"Yes, it's the admission rate. If you look at the admission rate, the national examination is much higher than the provincial examination."
Zhao Si nodded, Chang Anmin was right about this.
There are really not many people who can study now, especially those who can study for more than ten years in one go. Therefore, the number of people who can enter several universities every year is about the same as the scholars who went to Kaifeng to take the provincial examination in the past. The number of people admitted to the provincial examination
It is sometimes high and sometimes low, but in order to win over scholars and bribe literati, Emperor Renzong generally kept it at 30%.
In Chengdu, the first batch of graduates from Biyong University have already graduated. In the national examination, the admission rate is generally more than 70%, and the rest are snatched up by various companies and factories with powerful backgrounds.
It is very popular. Basically, if you are admitted to Sungkyun, Biyong and other universities, a bright future is waiting for you.
"It's just that in the first two years, talents were scarce. In order to provide temporary relief, the imperial court basically selected talents from the original reserve. For example, if the officials with no rank were converted into high-rank officials, they would be included in the administration of officials;
Selected officials enter crash courses offered by various ministries, receive short-term training, and then take up their posts unexpectedly..."
Li Fu's heart moved. He knew that the problems mentioned by Chang Anmin actually involved the management of subordinate officials and the problem of redundant staff.
Li Fu was very thoughtful. He knew that the problem of subordinate officials began to appear in the former Tang Dynasty and became very serious in this dynasty. The officials and the court used the New Deal to deal with it together. They were all integrated into the official system and unified recruitment and examination.
Cheng He was deposed.
The three major problems of this dynasty are redundancy - redundant personnel, redundant troops, and redundant expenses. Redundant expenses are derived from the first two problems. If redundant personnel and redundant troops are solved, redundant expenses can solve most of the problems.
Looking back now, we can see that the problem of redundant troops began to be solved in the autumn of the second year of Yuanfu, when Guan Jia became the envoy to the Privy Council.
The various forbidden armies were reorganized and the elites were organized into military guards.
Some elite veterans who were indeed a little older, but whose physical strength and energy were not at their peak and unable to cope with high-intensity warfare, were transferred to the local Arms and Arms Department - responsible for the training and command of the troops in each county.
Most of the remaining Imperial Guards were converted into police forces.
There are many types of security police, patrol police, road police, marine police, tax police, and special police. Later, a mobile police force that could be mobilized by county and state governments was established - the security police force.
At that time, everyone did not take it seriously and felt that treating the symptoms would not cure the root cause. These big-headed soldiers just changed their names and continued to eat the imperial food.
Some people even made sarcastic comments in newspapers, saying that in a large county or state, a few dozen police officers are enough, so they have to deploy so-called police, which wastes people and money. The so-called redundant management is just a waste of money.
It was a joke. Li Fu was one of them at the time, but now that he thinks about it, he feels ashamed.
Because later on, the benefits of popularizing the police system were gradually seen by people.
The first is local security issues.
Wherever there are people, there are bound to be disputes. How can there be no fights or disputes when tens of thousands of people gather in a city? It was only in the past that the police and government officials suppressed them and resolved them privately, so it seemed that "the place was peaceful."
"Don't pick up lost things on the road" has become a boasted achievement in the writings of civil servants.
In fact, the local security conflicts have not been resolved, but merely covered up.
