I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 513 Entry Point

In order to evade the poll tax, a large number of unregistered households were created throughout the country, and the population of the Ming Dynasty did not increase much compared to the early years of the founding of the country. Local officials and village chiefs all made random assignments and had long since stopped following the household registration system. Yang Tinghe's worries were completely unnecessary.

Several hundred years later, a scholar named Ma Boyong discovered a strange case from historical materials, which perfectly showed how chaotic the head tax was in the Ming Dynasty.

However, there was a man named Shuai Jiamo who worked as an accountant in Huizhou Prefecture. He discovered that the silk tax (a kind of head tax) for the six counties of Huizhou was all charged to the people of She County, while the other five counties had not paid for two hundred years.

Shuai Jiamo immediately submitted a petition to the court and reported the matter to the Censorate. After the news leaked, Shuai Jiamo was hunted down and managed to escape and return home.

A few years later, Shuai Jiamo returned to Huizhou to serve as an official, and his position became even higher. Of course, he wanted to avenge his previous humiliation. The gentry and people of the five counties united to resist the taxation and surrounded the Huizhou government office. The matter was brought to the central government, and the court was forced to reduce taxes and let the six counties share the tax. In order to ease the resentment of the five counties, Shuai Jiamo, who provoked the incident, was dismissed from office and sent into exile.

If local governments levy head taxes in this way, it will be useless no matter how well the household registration system is established!
Zhu Houxuan continued: "Let's not talk about the local counties, just take Beijing as an example, how many vagrants are there? It is better to relax the household registration restrictions, allow vagrants to exist, and let the place where they are registered compile a vagrant register. Within the province, vagrant documents can be used as road permits. And as long as the household registration is correct, the descendants of vagrants can also participate in the imperial examinations."

Due to the development of Ming Dynasty society and economy, a large number of farmers poured into the cities. In the early days of reform and opening up in New China, these people were called blind migrants, and later they were called migrant workers, while in Ming Dynasty they were called "vagrants" and "vagrants".

The vagrants have no legal status, and even when they rent houses in the city, the landlords can exploit them at will. The vagrants dare not report to the authorities because they are illegal residents. Even if they have a legitimate household registration in the countryside, they are still illegal residents in the city.

Yang Tinghe asked: "If we compile a list of vagrants, to whom will the tax be paid?"

Zhu Houxuan replied: "You must have a legitimate household registration in the place where your household registration is located in order to be registered as a legal vagrant."

"Then this policy is feasible." Yang Tinghe said, "You can draw up a vagrant register, but it cannot be enforced, otherwise good governance will turn into bad governance."

Zhu Houxuan smiled and said, "Of course, reforms must be done slowly. How can we achieve success overnight? However, in this tax reform, some of the canal soldiers and workers will be converted into civilian households. Local officials must compile a vagrant register for them to ensure their legal livelihood in the future. Otherwise, they will have no land and cannot work in the city, which will inevitably cause a lot of trouble."

The ministers discussed for a while and did not raise the issue of tax reform again.

In fact, the Ming Dynasty now has the material basis for the monetization of taxation. It has been twelve years since the issuance of silver coins and nine years since the issuance of silver yuan coupons. During these ten years, Zhu Houxuan has been carefully maintaining the credit and value of these two new currencies, and these two currencies have also been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people of the Ming Dynasty.

Moreover, thanks to Zhu Houzhao's expedition to the Western Regions and the continuous inflow of gold and silver from the Americas, Zhu Houxuan continued to increase the issuance of silver yuan notes, which made the circulation of silver yuan notes no longer limited to Northern Zhili. Northern Zhili and even the northern part of the Ming Dynasty could not digest so many silver yuan notes, so silver yuan notes circulated throughout the country at the fastest speed.
At this time, silver dollar certificates had more face values. The Royal Bank issued many small-denomination auxiliary banknotes and also provided copper coin exchange services. People could exchange copper coins for silver dollar certificates at the Royal Bank.

In the capital, the headquarters of the Royal Bank, people have completely abandoned copper coins and only use silver yuan coupons for daily transactions because they are so convenient.

It is precisely because silver dollar coupons were widely circulated throughout the country and were much more convenient to circulate than gold, silver and copper coins that local gentry and officials were unable to artificially create scarcity, thus preventing the people from being exploited.

The court designated the use of silver coins and silver dollar certificates to pay taxes, which could further strengthen the credit of silver coins and silver dollar certificates, stabilize the value of silver coins and silver dollar certificates, and thus promote a virtuous cycle.
Zhu Houxuan proposed the policy of traveling households in order to further stimulate the vitality of the people and increase their mobility.
Reform cannot be achieved overnight, but must start from a small point and work its way up to the larger scale.

Zhu Houxuan was very satisfied with the current situation, and he completed these two matters with almost no effort.

But today he wants to bring about more reforms.
"The reform of the Wei Suo has been going on for four years. Many Wei Suo in the country have moved to new places and started a new life. But after they moved away, they left behind a lot of land. These lands are cultivated lands and belong to the state, and should belong to the state. But I recently heard that many lands left behind after the relocation of the Wei Suo have been occupied by others," Zhu Houxuan continued, while observing the expressions of the ministers attending the court meeting.

"So I plan to send out several inspection teams to various places to investigate the situation of land occupation left behind after the relocation of the garrisons. What do you think?" Zhu Houxuan asked.

Now all the ministers in the court were alert. They didn't understand why Zhu Houxun suddenly brought up this matter. You have to know that the first migration of the garrisons was in the 13th year of Zhengde, when Zhu Houzhao conquered the Hetao area. Then the court urgently mobilized the three garrisons in Shanxi to migrate to the Hetao area for farming.

Then there is the continuous relocation of the guard posts in the past four years.
But after so many years, Zhu Houxun suddenly brought up the issue of the garrison land again. What had he done before?
So this matter must be not simple. Based on our understanding of Zhu Houxuan, he is a man who takes one step and looks three steps ahead. It is definitely not without purpose that he suddenly mentioned this matter.
So everyone present was in high spirits.
Sure enough, after a while, a minister stepped out and said, "Your Highness's proposal is of course no problem, but I have heard something about the land issues of the garrisons. The land of the garrisons is not just occupied by others, but many military households have sold their land to nearby civilians."

Zhu Houxuan looked at the minister with interest. Sure enough, someone stood up when the topic of land was mentioned.
The population of the Wei-Suo system theoretically accounted for 10% of the entire Ming Dynasty's population, but the land owned by the Wei-Suo system accounted for more than 10% of all the land in the Ming Dynasty. Because the Wei-Suo soldiers had the task of military garrison and had to support themselves, they were allocated more land than ordinary households at the beginning of the country, and much of the land was very fertile.

Therefore, these lands became popular in the eyes of many people. Not only the hereditary officials in the garrisons were busy occupying them, but also the surrounding gentry were busy occupying them.
(End of this chapter)