The senior masters probably already knew that Mr. Li was very opinionated and liked to make decisions when things happened, so they pressed the feather fan to come up with ideas and just asked: "How should the proprietor deal with it?"
If Mr. Li has no idea, it's not too late to show off.
Li You recalled what he had done since taking office. There were so many things about the county government affairs. In the past two months, his main focus was on familiarizing himself with the situation, integrating power, and increasing his sense of presence. In the past two days, he had gone to the Defense Department.
We must also concentrate on controlling the Defense Department.
This is a necessary process for every new local official to go through after taking office. If he cannot bear his temper and his foundation is unstable, he will not be able to accomplish anything.
As for the outside world, there was a lot of thunder and a lot of rain during this period, including the attitude towards salt merchants. Whether it was pursuing the "arrears" of salt classes or arresting six suspected salt merchants, the screams were fierce, the words were loud, and the actual actions were
rare.
This county has been quiet for too long, so long that some people have become accustomed to it...
Making a plan in his mind, County Master Li sent Mr. Hu to the government office to negotiate, asking the government office to send the six salt merchants back to the county government office for interrogation.
Mr. Zhuang advised with some worry: "The local salt merchant has a big tree with deep roots, and the host and guest change positions. The proprietor must not act like he did in Suzhou Prefecture."
"For the country and the people, even if you die without regrets, you will live and die to benefit the country, how can you avoid it because of misfortunes and blessings." Mr. Li replied abruptly.
Faced with such a majestic and upright statement, Master Zhuang was speechless. He suspected that the proprietor was a bit dissatisfied with the rich mentality of the Yangzhou salt merchants who earned millions of dollars every year from their nest eggs.
Mr. Zhuang is indeed very knowledgeable but not very knowledgeable. He doesn't even think about how much it would cost if he could find a way to help the imperial court, which is always in tight treasury, to collect an additional one million silver, or two million, or even hundreds of thousands of silver every year without exploiting the common people.
Credit?
Not long after, Master Hu came back angrily. Without asking, he knew that he must be flatly rejected.
"That's it." Mr. Li said in a normal tone but with murderous intent, and handed the document he had just written to Mr. Hu.
After Hu Zhenru opened it and took a few glances, his head was sweating, but his hands could not help but tremble. He murmured in his mouth: "There will never be peace in Yangzhou City from now on!"
July 4th is the day when the government government interrogates six salt merchants who surrendered themselves to the police.
Wang Chun, Liu Zhongxuan, Zhou Heng, Wu Yu, Yao Shiquan, and Sun Kaiding, the six salt industry merchants who had been wanted by Mr. Li for a month and a half, set off from their respective positions with a relaxed look, preparing to gather outside the gate of the government office, and then go to the hall together for a formality.
.
They know that the government will definitely find them not guilty today, which will completely put an end to the moderate pressure that the county government has brought to them for a month and a half of pursuit.
The six people met under the archway outside the gate of the government office and exchanged a few words with each other. Their entourage also gathered together to chat with people they knew, and the atmosphere was joyful and peaceful.
When he was about to enter the government office, suddenly a guard of honor came from a distance, and a large official sedan parked beside it, and a young official in a black gauze official robe got out of the sedan.
Although the Six Salt Merchants and Li Xianzun had never met before, from the other party's appearance and age, they all immediately recognized that the official in front of them was definitely Li Xianzun, and there would not be another like him in Yangzhou City.
Li You said coldly: "I am here in person to advise you to find your way back and go to the county government office to settle the case. Don't make the same mistake again and again, as small things can lead to big troubles."
The six people looked at each other in confusion. This dog official still persisted in his persistence and even ran to the door of the government office to intercept him?
If they didn't have the summons from the government office in their hands, they would have been kidnapped by the county government on the spot. Thinking about this, the six people became more courageous. The dog officer couldn't catch them even though he issued notices twice, and he felt a huge loss of face.
That’s it.
A sharp voice came from the entourage of the Six Salt Merchants, "Your Majesty Li County is really ignorant. Let's go back and learn carefully how to be an official in Yangzhou City! Haven't you heard that Yangzhou City is the Yangzhou City of our salt merchants?
As an official, just obey and don't make any senseless jokes like this time in the future!"
The six people were very happy when they heard it, as if they had been told something they wanted to say but did not dare to say, but they immediately felt that the words were very inappropriate.
There is always no shortage of idle people at the yamen gate. After seeing this scene, I felt that my trip this morning was worthwhile. Tsk tsk, these salt merchants are so loud, they regard Yangzhou City as their backyard. tsk tsk, Mr. Li County seems to be too.
There was nothing he could do, after all, this was the gate of the government office, not his county government office.
But he saw that Mr. Li was so angry that his face turned red, "Okay, okay, okay, like a slave, like a master, these are what you think, I understand!"
After saying that, he walked away.
The six salt merchants were not interested in retaining Li Xianzun. After watching him leave, they looked back to look for the entourage who had just spoken, only to find that they could no longer be found. It was strange that the six of their entourages were all together, and they all thought it was the one who had humiliated Li Xian.
The person you respected belonged to another family, but now he has disappeared. Could it be that he was a righteous man who saw injustice on the road?
However, none of the six people paid much attention to this incident. As long as the government office was dealt with, the county government could do nothing to them.
One day later, a new notice quietly appeared on the eight-character wall outside the county government gate. There are endless county government notices here, which is really not a new thing, but this one still attracted attention.
“There are more than a thousand Huizhou people who live in Guangling and are registered in Jiangdu County, and there are countless scholars, all of whom took the imperial examination in this county.
Just think about the imperial examination system, where the registration is determined by provinces, and each has its own quota. It is natural and logical to enter the school in the place of origin. It is the grace of the court to send people to study in a foreign land, or it can take care of people who live in foreign lands.
Unexpectedly, to this day, the big businessmen of Xin'an are all over Jiangdu, and they only regard Yangzhou as Huizhou. They rely on their wealth to study in their homes. Instead, they occupy the magpie's nest and crowd out the imperial examination. This is an excessive reward of the imperial court's favor! The indigenous scholars
The child's life is extremely difficult, and there is no justice.
Also, Hui people from the county can take the exam in their native place or in Yangzhou. There is no reason in the world for people from one prefecture to take the imperial exam in two prefectures! Xin'an and Guangling are not far apart, not thousands of miles away. You can go back to your hometown to take the exam.
There is no need to take the Jiangdu Boy Examination.
In the county examination in August of the eighth year of Jinghe, those registered in Huizhou are not allowed to register. In the prefectural examination in the ninth year of Jinghe, children registered in Jiangdu County, Huizhou, are not allowed to participate. Please inform me."
It was signed "Jiangdu County Zhengtang Li" and stamped with a bright red seal.
This notice was rambling with several hundred words, but its core meaning was that there were too many Huizhou people registering in Jiangdu County. County Honorable Li believed that they had seriously squeezed out the imperial examination quota for the indigenous people, and prohibited them from participating in the county examination and registering for the government examination.
This is an era in which "everything is low-grade, only studying is high". This is an era in which only by studying can you become an official. This is an era in which only achievements in the imperial examination can truly shine. Anything that involves studying in the imperial examination is a matter of great public concern.
Eye-catching.
The so-called residence registration is relative to the native residence. If you live in another place for a long time and it is inconvenient not to have a household registration, you can apply for a residence registration in the place of residence in the form of a dependency.
There are many Huizhou people doing business abroad, and Huizhou merchants are registered in many places, but there are not as many as in Yangzhou. After Emperor Gaozong's resurgence, there were about thousands of Huizhou households with 20,000 to 30,000 people registered in Yangzhou, 9% of them
Ten people gathered in Jiangdu County, the capital city, where many people had been registered for decades.
If you have enough food and clothing, you will know honor and disgrace, and if you have enough warehouses, you will know etiquette. When Huizhou merchants have money, they naturally have to provide for their children to study and become officials, and Yangzhou salt merchants are no exception.
Li County Zun cannot control the township examination, the college examination, or the government examination, but he can control the county examination in Jiangdu County and the registration work for the county examination. The county examination is the first step in the great cause of the imperial examination, although it is only a small step.
It's a small step, but if you fail the county examination, you won't even think about the government examination and the academy examination to promote talents and Jinshi.
This simple and ordinary notice immediately blocked the 20,000 to 30,000 people from Huizhou in Yangzhou City from the imperial examination, and 90% of the salt merchants were included in this circle.
This is not an empty statement like the pursuit of six salt merchants, but a real government ban, and it is a ban that the government can definitely implement if it wants to do so.
Theoretically, the official body of a county has unlimited power within the county. If the theory can be transformed into reality and maintained, the power will be infinite.
This time, one stone immediately had the effect of stirring up a thousand waves, causing an uproar that could be said to have shaken the whole city, and was discussed among the salt merchants.
Li Xianzun's move was too cruel. He wanted to fundamentally cut off all the children of salt merchants from studying and becoming officials! At least that was the case when he was in Yangzhou.
Although some people in the country have a tradition of ending the government, there is also a tradition of successors giving face to their predecessors. If Mr. Li is promoted, his successors will not dare to offend others, so it is very likely that the ban will not be lifted. It is easier to maintain the status quo than to change.
Besides, Mr. Li will have to stay in Jiangdu County for at least a few more years. Could it be that in the past few years, the children of the clan who they spent a lot of money to train specifically for the imperial examination can only stay at home and waste their time? Or will it always be like this in the future?
Go back to your hometown to take the exam? Huizhou is originally a small and densely populated place, so it is very popular to go out to do business and live in other places. Studying and becoming an official is also a path with high hopes. One or two are not bad, so many elites return to their hometown to compete for the precious imperial examination.
If you have a quota, you shouldn’t be stabbed to death by your ancestors and fellow villagers?
If the passage to the upper level is blocked, it will still be the end of the Four People, so what's the point of making more money?
There is no hatred for killing his father or taking away his wife. Why did Mr. Li do this? Why?
However, considerable resentment was also transferred to the six salt merchants. Jin He Tianma and other seven or eight giants did not hear of humiliating the county magistrate in person and openly shouting "Yangzhou City is the Yangzhou City of the salt merchants".
Just think about it in your mind.
These six idiots, worth tens of thousands taels at most, were so unscrupulous and did not know how to restrain themselves, openly humiliating the county government in broad daylight. Otherwise, how could they have incurred such violent, rude and indiscriminate revenge?
But the fool is on his side after all, and he will be taught a lesson from now on. The top priority now is how to deal with Mr. Li, who seems to be extremely angry.
At the same time, Master Li's ban aroused strong reactions and heartfelt cheers among 80% of the people in Yangzhou City.
Those who cheered for Mr. Li and wished they could live long live were the native Jiangdu County natives, especially the gentry and scholars. The Huizhou people living in Yangzhou City were rich and invested heavily in education. The standards of the educated children they cultivated naturally increased. In the imperial examination
The competition among students is very competitive and they can often grab half of the places from native natives.
In the past, everyone could only look forward and sigh, feel envious and helpless, but today they discovered that it can still be like this. They couldn't help but praise with tears in their eyes, "Li Qingtian really understands the sentiments of the people!"
The eight characters of "Serving as an official and benefiting a party" are simply tailor-made for this old man.
According to the three-year term of the Qingtian Grand Master, at least in these three years, there will be no Huizhou people in the county examination. After the county examination, there will naturally be no Huizhou people in the government examination and the college examination. It is like there are more people out of thin air.
Double the quota.
Not mentioning the heated discussions outside, it was said that in the county government, only Master Hu, who was familiar with the local situation, saw the inside story. The other masters had to rely on Master Hu's guidance before they all understood what the proprietor was planning.
Mind you, this is by no means pure revenge.
In the time and space of Li You's previous life, there had been a massacre like the Yangzhou Tenth Day Massacre. At that time, almost all the indigenous people in Yangzhou city were slaughtered. Although Yangzhou later recovered its vitality due to the salt industry, it completely became an immigrant city and a colony of Huizhou merchants.
In this time and space, the massacre did not occur. Although Huizhou salt merchants continued to rise due to historical inertia, and after decades of accumulation, they became the masters of Yangzhou City with their huge wealth, but the local indigenous people still maintained an absolute advantage in numbers.
However, the locals are generally from the middle and lower classes. In 21st century terms, they are grassroots. Compared with the wealth of Huizhou people, especially the salt merchants, the locals see the outsiders getting rich, especially the salt merchants.
Mr. Li doesn't believe that merchants have been able to get rich for two or three generations by relying on the hereditary salt nest, which is also the privilege of a monopoly license.
At this time, the salt merchants only thought about the damage to their immediate interests. Due to their limited knowledge, they did not have time to realize the more profound consequences, and they had no idea what was in the Pandora's box opened by Mr. Li.
In fact, people like Li You who have been on the Internet in the 21st century know that posts on class conflicts and regional conflicts are very easy to become popular, and can easily lead to large-scale disputes. This is mapped to the inequality of wealth and poverty in this time and space, and regional conflicts.
Li You feels the same way about Jiangdu County in Yangzhou City, which is clearly divided between the poor and the rich.
Didn’t Mr. Zhuang say that when a tree is big and its roots are deep, the host and the guest change positions? Compared with the salt merchants, he, Li You, is a guest and has a shallow local foundation. But compared to the overwhelming majority of the natives, the salt merchants are the guests!
Creating contradictions even when there are no contradictions is one of Mr. Li's specialties...
Just when Li You sent someone to inquire about the results, a county school official was panting and stumbled into the room by Zhang San, shouting: "Boss is not good either! The local students and boarding students in the county school
The officers started fighting!"
Li You was taken aback. He never expected that after he provoked such a fight, he didn't expect the scholars to start fighting first. But it's not surprising. He originally used the most sensitive imperial examination as a lead-in, and it was normal for the school to be affected first.
.
There are a total of one hundred and twenty students in the county who are registered students, extension students, and affiliated students, and there are about a few hundred who are not on campus. About forty or fifty of the students on campus are from their place of residence, and seventy or eighty
They are natives and are fully equipped with the material conditions to fight in groups. Besides, they also have to compete for the opportunity to participate in the township examination every three years. Jiangdu County only has forty places to participate in the township examination each session.
Thinking of this, Mr. Li did not ask any questions and said, "Jiangdu County School is the place where students from Jiangdu County are raised. I have ordered that all students registered in Jiangdu County be moved out of the county school."
Li You did not have the power to exempt students from the title of scholar, so he would have to go to the imperial censor to study with the great master, but he had the power to manage the county school. However, although the students who were removed from the county school were still scholars, they could not take part in the provincial examination and pass the exam.
If you fail, you will lose the opportunity to move to the next level.
If banning the Huizhou residents from participating in the county examination is like opening a fire, then expelling the Huizhou residents who have already achieved meritorious status in the county school is like exploding the pot.
"This is the seed of study that has destroyed our salt merchants!" roared a salt merchant whose son was expelled from a county school.
