Li Banghua looked at the troubled Xuzhou prefect and knew very well what trouble he was in.
"Get on board!" Li Banghua ordered while standing at the bow.
"Yes." Xuzhou magistrate Chen Guidong agreed immediately.
Li Banghua's official ship did not make any move to dock, so Chen Guidong first boarded a small boat and then boarded Li Banghua's large ship from the small boat.
After entering the cabin, Chen Guidong took a quick look and found that in addition to Li Banghua, there were two sturdy men standing in the cabin.
The two of them were dressed in casual clothes, with swords at their waists, standing on the left and right sides of the cabin respectively.
"Who are these two...?" Chen Guidong asked.
"They are my servants, responsible for protecting my safety. If you have anything to say, just speak directly. There is no need to hide anything."
Chen Guidong fell to his knees with a thud: "Lord, help me! I have committed a capital crime, please save me."
Li Banghua put his hands behind his back and said calmly, "The government office caught fire?"
Chen Guidong looked up in surprise, staring at Li Banghua's back in a daze.
He didn't expect that Li Banghua would guess the trouble he was in.
Could it be that...someone told the Prime Minister what happened last night in advance?
The more Chen Guidong thought about it, the more frightened he became, and at the same time he felt waves of chills coming over his body.
"To reply to your question, there was a fire in the government office last night. Everything else was fine, except for the books recording the tax collection over the years that were burned."
"I investigated thoroughly overnight after receiving the news, but did not find any clues."
Li Banghua turned back and stared at Chen Guidong and asked, "Was it lightning or arson?"
If the fire was caused by thunder, the court would basically not hold officials accountable as long as the damage was not serious.
After all, in the eyes of those people at that time, thunder and fire were a punishment from heaven. If anyone was to hold someone accountable, the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty would bear the greatest responsibility.
After all, he is the emperor.
But if it was arson, the court would hold the officials accountable, regardless of whether they knew about it or not. The punishment could be a fine, caning, or demotion, or even dismissal, imprisonment, exile, or even death.
Chen Guidong lowered his head and said in a low voice: "I didn't hear any thunder last night, so the fire was most likely caused by human beings."
Li Banghua paced back and forth in the cabin with his hands behind his back.
This time when we went south, we encountered such a big trouble as soon as we arrived in Xuzhou. It seems that the water in the south of the Yangtze River is deeper than we imagined.
What’s even more fatal is that he doesn’t know whether Chen Guidong is good or bad.
If Chen Guidong is a bad person, then the fire was set by Chen Guidong, who pretended to be innocent after setting the fire.
If Chen Guidong was not suspicious, then the fire was most likely caused by the local gentry.
They want to resist taxation in this way.
"Chen Guidong." Li Banghua stopped.
"I am here."
"Xuzhou is a prefecture under the jurisdiction of Nanzhili, and all documents and materials are kept on file in the Ministry of Revenue in Nanjing. This fire apparently burned the evidence, but in fact, nothing was burned, right?" Li Banghua looked calm.
Chen Guidong stared at Li Banghua for a while with a strange look on his face. "You don't know, the Ministry of Revenue in Nanjing has limited manpower, so it does not accept documents from various prefectures and states for filing."
Li Banghua was a little surprised, but not too surprised. After all, the arsonist must have thought of this. If there really was a backup, they would not dare to set fire to the state government office.
Li Banghua walked slowly to the table in the cabin and took out a piece of white paper. He held the table and paper with his left hand, picked up the brush with his right hand, and began to write on it.
After a moment, the snow-white paper was filled with words.
(The papermaking technology in the Ming Dynasty was already very mature. For example, the white cotton paper used in the Wanli edition was said to be as white as jade.)
After writing, Li Banghua asked someone to pass the paper over and said, "The soldiers guarding Xuzhou now come from Yangzhou Prefecture, and the garrison commander is also from Yangzhou Prefecture. I will now hand over the command of part of the Xuzhou garrison to you. As long as they don't rebel or rob the people, you can let them do anything."
"See if there is any problem with the official document I wrote."
Chen Guidong took the document and looked at it carefully.
It was clearly written that Xuzhou currently had 3,200 garrisons. Li Banghua temporarily assigned 1,200 of them to his account in the name of an imperial envoy, and they would only obey his command.
The remaining two thousand men continued to guard Xuzhou and were under the jurisdiction of the Nanjing Ministry of War.
"Mr. Lord, what does this mean?" Chen Guidong was very confused.
"Disaster relief, checking accounts, collecting taxes, arresting people, killing people!" Li Banghua was as calm as water.
"But the account books have been burned..."
"The account book has been burned, but there are other documents. Let's check the equalization documents first."
The function of the Ming Dynasty's Junping Youtie is somewhat similar to modern tax payment notices and tax payment certificates.
Before collecting taxes, each county will send an equal amount to the head of the village through a post, and the head of the village will then distribute it to each household.
The equalization letter is in triplicate, and contains the details and total amount of taxes that the household should pay that year.
After the household pays the tax, the village head and the county official in charge of taxation will sign and seal the tax receipt.
After signing and stamping, three copies are equally distributed, one for the county, one for the taxpayer, and one for the tax collector (usually the head of the village).
In other words, in addition to the receipts in the county government offices, the village head and the common people each have a tax payment receipt.
Chen Guidong took a breath of cold air.
This was obviously a huge project, but the court still did it, which shows how determined the court was.
"Lord, what if there is no certificate? After all, this thing is just a certificate, and the people may have lost it."
Li Banghua sneered: "The common people will not lose such things, especially the poor people. They are afraid that you local officials will collect taxes twice, so they will treasure the equalization certificate."
"Those who don't have the Equalization Certificate are most likely in arrears with the imperial court. Even if there are some who have lost theirs, they are rare. The decision is up to you."
"After checking the balance, we will check backwards based on the total amount of taxes."
"For example, in the 16th year of my dynasty, Xuzhou paid 10,000 taels of silver in taxes to the Nanjing Ministry of Revenue. When the taxes were collected, each of your clerks was responsible for a different area. How much money did they pay? You should have records of that, right?"
"Yes, yes!" Chen Guidong answered repeatedly.
Even if he forgot to register, the county treasury would have a record of the deposit.
Li Banghua nodded and continued to talk about solutions.
Chen Guidong was a little confused at first, but finally understood what was going on after Li Banghua's explanation.
In fact, the method is very simple, just check down one level at a time.
For example, there are three households in the east of the city. Each of them owns ten acres of land, and the total amount of taxes they should pay is thirty taels (for example).
Among them, A does not want to pay taxes, so the officials will divide the thirty taels of tax silver equally between B and C in order to settle the accounts.
B and C each paid fifteen taels of silver, and the official gave each of them a ticket for an equalization of fifteen taels of silver.
Since A did not pay taxes, he will not receive the equalization post and needs to collect the outstanding debt.
If there is a note of equalization, it means that the official in charge of collecting taxes has embezzled the extra silver.
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