Yangzhou Post Station.
The Salt Inspector Song Quan got up early and rinsed his mouth as usual.
He is the first person in charge of salt patrol.
All the civil and military officials in the court and local officials were watching his every word and action.
To avoid leaving any evidence, you need to be a hard-working person.
So he would go to work on time and leave on time every day.
Neither be late nor leave early.
After breakfast, Song Quan took a sedan chair to the Lianghuai Salt Transport Commissioner's Office.
On the way there, he began to think about two things.
The first thing is how much money should be paid to the court by the end of the year.
This question is very important.
It not only involved his personal future, but also the war in Liaodong and even the operation of the entire court.
At the beginning of the year, the court estimated the deficit to be three million taels.
According to the latest news.
Due to the construction of forts in the Liaoxi Corridor, the compensation for the fallen soldiers in Liaodong and the floods in Shandong, the court's deficit this year was much higher than the estimate at the beginning of the year.
It’s about 4.5 million taels.
If there was a deficit of three million taels, he would hand over three million taels.
After all, just complete the task.
Now the price has suddenly risen to 4.5 million taels, and he is reluctant to hand it over.
That’s right!
The money he earned from inspecting the salt reserves was more than three million taels. The exact amount involves the second question.
How should the money from salt inspection be divided?
In the Ming Dynasty.
In officialdom, power and money are separate and cannot be linked together.
At least that's what it looks like on the surface.
Let’s take the Ministry of Revenue, which is in charge of money, as an example.
Every penny spent will not only go through layers of internal review, but also be checked by other government offices.
Finally, it had to be submitted to the Imperial Household Department and Chongzhen for verification.
It is simply impossible to play tricks on the accounts.
Of course.
If something really goes wrong, these officials will unite to protect themselves for fear of being implicated.
If the rules are so strict, how do officials commit corruption?
This is a very profound question.
Those who were able to gain a foothold in officialdom at that time were all the best among the smart people.
Each of them has his own way of making money.
In the county, the easiest way to make money is to exploit the people.
Of course, this kind of thing cannot be handled by the county magistrate himself, but it must be handed over to the county magistrate, the chief clerk, the registrar and others.
They either used extortion through torture or increased corvée labor to get money, and then took out a portion of the money to pay tribute to the county magistrate.
There are many ways to show filial piety.
The lowest level method is for the county magistrate to collect the money directly.
But problems also arise.
The magistrate accepted money from his subordinates, which was tantamount to giving them an advantage.
If something happens to the people below, the county magistrate will be implicated.
In order to avoid getting into trouble himself, the magistrate had to show favoritism to the people below him.
The result was that the county magistrate was dragged into the water by the people below...
Therefore, any county magistrate who is a little bit smart would not do this.
Their method is usually to ask a relative to visit him with local specialties.
Because the relative brought so many local specialties, he sold them locally.
As for the price...one word: expensive!
Four words: Ridiculously expensive!
The county magistrate and the chief clerk would pay for it without hesitation to complete the bribery.
Or perhaps a friend of the magistrate brought a bunch of broken antique porcelain to the local area, and they were "accidentally" broken by the county magistrate's family.
The county magistrate had to pay a large sum of silver as compensation.
These acts of bribery all went through a third party.
After the incident, even if the county magistrate, the chief clerk and others wanted to point fingers, they could not directly point to the county magistrate.
After all, there is a third person in the middle.
And this third person is even more mysterious. The county magistrate and his colleagues neither know each other's name nor their home address.
There is no way to identify it.
Even if this person was finally found, it was a voluntary act of the county magistrate and the registrar.
Nothing to do with anything else.
Secondly, bribery is a point-to-point behavior.
The county magistrate knew how much money he had given to the county magistrate, but he didn't know how much money the chief clerk and the registrar had given to the county magistrate.
Similarly, the chief clerk did not know the details of the county magistrate and the registrar.
People in the same yamen didn't know that each other had given money to their superiors, let alone who the county magistrate bribed after receiving their money.
There are many ways of giving and receiving bribes that combine both technology and art.
so.
It is very difficult to combat corruption according to the law, and the only option is to resort to torture when the time is right.
Song Quan's mission this time was to inspect the salt.
The full name of Xunyan is Inspecting Salt Affairs.
To put it simply, salt taxes are collected from salt merchants who are in arrears with salt taxes.
However, this is not enough.
Because since the implementation of the Salt Monopoly Law, the annual salt tax paid by each salt merchant has been fixed.
In order to complete its tasks, the transport department would collect taxes from salt merchants in a timely manner every year.
Even if there is any arrears, it will not be too much.
Therefore, there is only one source of money for salt inspection: asking for it from local salt merchants!
Salt merchants gained huge wealth through the salt trading rights granted by the imperial court.
Now they are asked to take out some money to support the court, and they dare not disobey.
Therefore, since the beginning of the salt inspection, Song Quan set himself a task of six million taels of silver.
Of this, three million was handed over to the imperial court, and the remaining three million was shared with the Minister of Revenue, Xie Sanbin.
Now the court's deficit suddenly increased to 4.5 million taels, 1.5 million taels more than before.
As a result, all his plans were disrupted.
If he took out 1.5 million taels from his and Xie Sanbin's money, he would be unwilling and Xie Sanbin would not agree either.
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