If you want to be valued by Chongzhen, you must first get on Chongzhen’s ship.
However, it is easy to get on the boat but difficult to get off!
Xie Sanbin is currently facing this situation.
He did not want to propose the plan of selling official positions in the court and take the blame for Chongzhen.
But he also knew that if he didn't take the blame for Chongzhen, he would be held accountable by Chongzhen.
Faced with the possibility of death and immediate death, he reluctantly chose the former.
Now that things have come to this, he only hopes that Chongzhen will not abandon him.
A few days later in the morning.
When Xie Sanbin proposed the plan of selling official positions in public, the whole court was shocked!
The imperial censors in the court were the first to take action.
"Xie Sanbin! You are a Jinshi in the fifth year of Tianqi, and you know the difficulty of studying and becoming an official. It would be fine if you didn't think of finding more ways out for scholars, but you actually came up with the bad idea of buying an official position. You deserve to be killed!"
"Xie Sanbin, Xie Sanbin, have you read all the books of the saints into your head? In every dynasty, people studied to become officials. How can there be a reason to sell official positions?"
"Yeah, what's your bad idea?"
"Officials are sold when a country is about to perish. The Ming Dynasty is at its peak. This move not only alludes to Your Majesty and the court, but also disrupts the government!"
"I ask Your Majesty to remove Xie Sanbin from his post and put him in prison, and execute him in the autumn to set things right."
For a moment, everyone in the court started to protest.
Chongzhen counted them.
Except for the Eunuch Party, which did not take any action, all other parties, even the Donglin Party and the Ministry of Revenue Party, impeached Xie Sanbin.
It cannot be blamed on them for turning against him. The main reason is that Xie Sanbin's action harmed the interests of all scholars in the world.
Previously, one could only become an official if he or she was well educated.
Even if the official position is granted by Yinzi, the person who is granted the position still needs to study.
They are from a scholarly family, so naturally they want to protect their own interests in this way.
Although Xie Sanbin felt a little nervous, he was not particularly nervous.
After all, Chongzhen was supporting him in secret.
"Your Majesty," Xie Sanbin bowed deeply to Chongzhen, and then bowed to the others: "My colleagues!"
"This is not the same as selling an official position!"
"What's the difference between this official and that official? Aren't they all the same?" someone scolded.
"Of course it's different!" Xie Sanbin straightened his back: "What I mean by buying an official position is that I don't give him real power or salary, I just give him a set of official uniforms."
Amid everyone's surprised expressions, Xie Sanbin re-elaborated what Chongzhen had said to him and repeated it again.
"That won't work either!" Huang Jin, the Minister of Rites, pointed at Xie Sanbin's nose and said, "Wealth and honor cannot corrupt him, poverty and humbleness cannot move him, and power and might cannot bend him. This is what a real man is! The teachings of Confucius and Mencius are used to rule the world, not to bow to money."
"Minister Huang is right, wealth and honor cannot lead to debauchery! Xie Sanbin is unworthy of being a minister."
"Alas," the Minister of War Wang Jiayan sighed, "The Minister of Revenue of the Ming Dynasty was actually swayed by money. How sad, pitiful, and lamentable!"
When everyone had lost their temper, Xie Sanbin launched a counterattack.
He pointed at the imperial censors and said, "Everyone, the war in Liaodong is tense and we need money and food urgently! But the treasury is empty and there is no money to use! I came up with this plan just to solve the urgent problem."
Without waiting for the censors to respond, he directed his criticism at the Minister of Rites Huang Jin.
"The Ministry of Rites only cares about spending money, not making money! As the saying goes, you don't know how expensive firewood, rice, oil and salt are until you run a household. If I didn't allocate funds to the Ministry of Rites for a year, you wouldn't be so arrogant!"
"You..." Huang Jin pointed at the nose where "you" was written three times and was about to start scolding.
However, Xie Sanbin did not give him any chance and turned his attention to the Minister of War Wang Jiayan.
He took out an official document from his bosom, held it high in the air and showed it to everyone: "Everyone, this is the document from the Ministry of War requesting funding! More than 10,000 of our soldiers died in the Battle of Ningyuan. The pension alone will cost more than 500,000 taels, not to mention the subsequent support for their families. Including the support, at least 1 million taels will be needed!"
"There are also hundreds of thousands of taels of reward silver!"
"These are not numbers, but bright white Ming Dynasty round treasures!"
Wang Jiayan's face instantly turned red and white.
Xie Sanbin has inherited the true teachings of Chongzhen and has always adhered to the idea of taking advantage of the opponent's illness to kill him.
He held up the document and said to Wang Jiayan, "Minister Wang, you also know that there is a war going on in Liaodong! Now we have finally recovered Ningyuan and opened up the Liaoxi Corridor! If the generals on the front line know that the treasury has no money, no pensions, and no rewards... can we still win the next battle?"
"You..." Wang Jiayan was speechless.
"Everyone!" Seeing that others were about to raise a wave of rebuttal, Xie Sanbin stretched out his hands to signal everyone to be quiet: "I know that selling official positions is humiliating! I also know that it is against the rules."
"But... there is a war going on in Liaodong! The soldiers on the frontline are fighting with their lives, with their lives!"
“The Martyrs’ Shrine is huge, but it can’t hold so many names!”
"I am doing this for the sake of the court and the country. Besides, this is just a temporary solution, not a long-term solution! When the war in Liaodong stops and the treasury is no longer empty, the court will naturally no longer need to sell officials."
"And now, for the sake of military affairs, I must suggest to the court and His Majesty that you sell official positions! If you think I did something wrong, you can scold me as much as you want, I can bear it!"
Xie Sanbin clasped his fists towards all the court officials, then turned around and bowed deeply to Chongzhen, then took a step back and returned to the queue.
The Qianqing Palace was quiet and no one objected.
What is being debated in the court is the word "reason"!
Xie Sanbin always emphasized that selling official positions was to fill the national treasury to deal with the war in Liaodong.
If you want to refute him, you either have to solve the deficit in the national treasury or resolve the war in Liaodong.
If you can't solve it, just shut up.
Everyone present is smart.
They quickly thought of another layer.
Since Xie Sanbin dared to mention selling official positions, it meant that he had informed Chongzhen in advance.
Otherwise, he would never dare to say it openly in the court.
Chongzhen had not spoken out against it until now, which meant that he had acquiesced to Xie Sanbin's plan to sell official positions.
It is no use to object at this point.
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