Chapter 362: Questioning
Starting from the winter of the eighth year of Jianyan, the imperial court officially began large-scale land division and inspection in the southeast, specifically in the most prosperous Liangzhe Road and Jiangdong Road.
Under the direct pressure from Phoenix Mountain, all the local officials in the southeast almost gritted their teeth and began the most core and most relevant work that they had never dared to think about before. However, the local scholars and officials who might directly hinder the inspection and local decision-making were summoned to Phoenix Mountain in batches, and then, like the local officials, they also faced the pressure from the current Emperor Jianyan.
Besides, the Emperor Jianyan had been on the throne for seven or eight years, and was quite skilled in martial arts, known for his revival... To put it bluntly, not everyone had the courage to say no to this emperor. After the martial arts conference, even most people lost the courage to discuss relevant issues with the emperor.
Not to mention, these people in the southeast, whether they were officials, literati or situation-conscious people, naturally lacked the experience of dealing with an emperor.
However, even so, after just a few months of getting along, these members of the so-called Southeast 'ruling group' still saw some clues... Apart from anything else, the official's attitude of going through fire and water once he made up his mind was really frightening.
It is precisely because of this that, as the land inspection and land division began, the entire southeast was plunged into a strange atmosphere:
First of all, it is definitely not right to say that all horses are silent, because Phoenix Mountain, on the contrary, shows a vibrant attitude and a relaxed political atmosphere.
It's really relaxed and vibrant.
Old officials from the southeast like Ye Mengde were pardoned, and southeastern scholar leaders like Zhang Jiuchen were directly promoted to senior officials of the Secret Cabinet... Who can say this is not lenient?
However, people like Zhang Jiuchen and Ye Mengde are still far away from everyone else. What really makes the Southeastern literati and the people with the best situation feel eager to try is, after all, the government.
While inspecting the land and making local decisions, the public cabinet also quickly and resolutely established a three-level local public cabinet system of road, state and county, with a structure similar to the state school and county school in the Sanshe system. Under this system, the literati and powerful households in the southeast, as well as wealthy merchants and famous monks and Taoists were almost all caught in one fell swoop.
And this public pavilion was by no means a mere empty shell used to accommodate those with influence. At the foot of Phoenix Mountain, everyone witnessed with their own eyes that many common literati, who were once around them, used the public pavilion as a springboard to obtain political prospects that they would never have dared to imagine before through political statements and talent displays. From such prestigious assignments as editors of court newspapers to actual vacancies such as Tongpan and magistrates, Emperor Zhao was not stingy at all and used real political power to buy off people politically.
Even those households with official positions, as well as purely wealthy businessmen, landlords, monks and Taoists, had their sons and nephews transferred to state and county schools in large numbers because they entered the government. Some of them who were somewhat famous were directly given the title of martial arts and became close attendants of the officials. This not only gave these households a political identity, but also gave them the extra expectation that their descendants would rise to become superior people.
Learn literary and martial arts, and sell them to the emperor. Isn't this what these people, regardless of whether they are officials or not, are trying to do?
In this kind of atmosphere, it's okay to rush to be the first, but who dares to say that everyone is silent?
However, the weird thing is here - obviously everyone knows that Emperor Zhao did these things to ensure his two reforms concerning population tax, namely the so-called "no tax for increasing the number of people" and "equalizing the tax on land". But except for a very small number of scholars who expressed their support in form by writing letters in order to become officials, almost everyone avoided talking about the specific development of this matter intentionally or unintentionally.
At the same time, the inspection and judgment of local lands were not so smooth. There was no open policy resistance, but there were private obstructions, delays in various ways, complaints to the local officials, and bribery of the executive officials. Even after Lu Yihao, the prime minister, issued a note to ask the officials of various prefectures to conduct mutual investigations, there were still cases where the officials went out for a drink on a snowy day and burned the hay field next to their public housing.
However, the only thing that was protected by the dragon flag of Emperor Zhao on Phoenix Mountain was that no one died, which made everyone marvel at it.
In short, for a time, the vigorous vitality of Phoenix Mountain and the tense and serious local situation, the repeated instructions in official documents and the drunken chanting in the West Lake restaurant formed a strong sense of separation.
It can only be said that this phenomenon not only illustrates the instinctive resistance of these poor households to reform, but also fully demonstrates their contradictory mentality when faced with the coexistence of political bribery and harsh attitude of Emperor Zhao.
In this way, before the New Year, which was about the time when the government affairs were discussed in the Tokyo Imperial Academy, the light snow had just stopped and Emperor Zhao formally convened a general meeting of all the officials from Liangzhe Road and Jiangnan East Road at the foot of Phoenix Mountain. Without mentioning the various trivial matters in between, at the end of the meeting, Prime Minister Lu Yihao suddenly stood up and announced three new regulations on the situation of households in public.
First, it is to include wealthy merchants, landlords, and temples and monasteries whose real estate and assets reach a certain amount (annual rent of 300 dan and interest of 300 guan) into the category of situation households, which means that the situation households will be completely worthy of the name.
Moreover, as the name suggests, the situation households refer to the families with local situation, that is, the so-called wealthy and powerful families.
But in the Song Dynasty, "Situational Household" was still a special term. There really was a household registration book, which was full of official households and clerk households. Once a family fell into decline or had insufficient property, they would be moved out of the situational household and transferred to a common household... Those who were both rich and had official status were of course typical wealthy and powerful people.
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