Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 255 Who is willing to petition the court to open the sea?
"I dare not deceive Your Majesty. You will know the truth when you check it out!" Xia Yan replied.

"Go to the Royal Taxation Bureau," Zhu Houzhao waved his hand and hurried to the Royal Taxation Bureau, or to be precise, the Royal General Taxation Bureau.

Ever since Zhu Houzhao forced the civil officials to agree that the internal treasury would be under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Revenue and directly responsible to the emperor by promising not to auction the imperial property in person after the first Imperial Expo, he renamed his internal treasury the Imperial Taxation Bureau. Up to now, the main taxes of the empire are still divided into two parts: one is the land tax that was deposited in Taicang, and the other is the commercial tax.

All commercial taxes are subject to the Royal Taxation Administration, which has tax bureaus, branches and even tax offices throughout the country.

Since Zhu Houzhao did not impose additional commercial taxes, and the imperial power was still able to suppress the civil service group, naturally no major conflicts arose.

The revenues of the Royal Tax Administration are kept in the vaults of the Royal Bank.

Therefore, although Zhu Houzhao said he was going to the Royal Taxation Bureau, he actually went to the Royal Bank's general warehouse.

The Royal Bank's main warehouse is located in the imperial city. It is heavily guarded and ordinary people cannot enter. Naturally, there is no need to worry about theft.

However, when Zhu Houzhao arrived at the Royal Taxation Bureau, almost all the cabinet ministers, officials from the Ministry of Revenue, and even officials from the Censorate, as well as officials and soldiers from the Ministry of War, Ministry of Justice, and Shuntian Prefecture gathered here.

There is no other reason.

There was so much gold and silver stored in the warehouse that the staff of the Royal Bank was simply overwhelmed. Moreover, for the Ming Empire, the arrival of so much gold and silver in the capital would naturally shock the entire court and the public!

"Your Majesty, it's not just Minister Xia who brought back more than 2,000 kilograms of gold and more than 60,000 kilograms of silver!"

"The customs duties from Malacca Sea City totaling 1.65 million taels of silver have also arrived in Beijing!"

"After the opening of trade between Guangdong and Guangxi, the customs duties and commercial taxes of 2.14 million taels of silver have also arrived in Beijing!"

"In addition, the 1.47 million taels of silver from the Ming Maritime Trade Company have also arrived in Beijing!"

……

"I estimate that a total of more than 10 million taels of gold and silver will be deposited into the warehouse, so we can only ask the Ministry of Revenue to help us review it. We also specially asked the cabinet to agree to let the Tongzhou Ironworks and Baoquan Bureau recast it together! It is estimated that it will take three months before all of them can be stored in the warehouse!"

When Zhu Houzhao asked about the situation of gold and silver deposited in the warehouse, Qiao Yu, the minister in charge of the Royal Taxation Bureau, reported back.

The chief minister of the cabinet Liu Yu, the second minister Wang Qiong, the third minister Kang Hai, and the minister of the Ministry of Revenue Liu Kai were all greatly shocked.

"Last year, the grain collected by Taicang was only 21.12 million dan. In addition, there were a lot of short cloth and pepper to make up for the loss. The silver was only 2.14 million taels. This is the extra 2 million taels that Your Majesty ordered to share the internal treasury mining tax with Taicang. But it can't be compared with the income of the Royal Taxation Bureau!"

The Minister of Revenue Liu Kai could not help but sigh. He was really jealous of the boxes of gold and silver that went into the royal treasury, but he couldn't say that the emperor was wrong to collect this money. After all, it was in accordance with the rules that commercial tax revenue and royal property income should be included in the imperial treasury.

"Who would have thought that opening up the Guangdong and Guangxi regions alone would increase taxes so much! If the whole world were to open up the sea, the deposits of the Royal Taxation Bureau and the Royal Bank would be piled up all over the capital!"

The chief minister of the cabinet, Liu Yu, couldn't help but feel a little jealous.

"I didn't expect Xia Yan to bring back so much silver and gold after his voyage to the West. Didn't some old ministers and scholars say that going to the West was a waste of money and labor? At that time, several ministers wrote petitions to Your Majesty, forcing Your Majesty to only use his own treasury to provide funding, and the Ministry of Revenue and the dignitaries did not contribute. As a result, Xia Yan brought back so much gold and silver, and they all went to the Royal Taxation Bureau. I was really confused when I was the Minister of Revenue!
If at that time, the Ministry of Revenue had been ruthlessly allowed to invest, the national treasury would have more than 3 million taels of silver, and the embankment of the Han River could have been repaired! It would have benefited the people of Jingchu, and I don’t know how much grain production would have increased! "Wang Qiong, who was once the Minister of Revenue, was a good calculator, and he also shook his head and regretted it secretly. Of course, he was not only thinking that if this money went to the national treasury, it would benefit the people. He also thought that the construction of the embankment of the Han River could be entrusted to the Infrastructure Bureau, and as a shareholder of the Infrastructure Bureau, he would naturally also receive a generous income.

Zhu Houzhao wanted to laugh when he saw the civil servants behind him, each of them was either frowning or beating their chests or sighing. He remembered very clearly that when Xia Yan went to the West and Zhang Yanling sailed on the ocean, these civil servants either opposed or remained silent. They refused to pay a penny, so he had to let the Royal Tax Bureau pay and borrow money from the Royal Bank. Now he was the only one making the big profit.

At this time, Wei Ying, the left assistant minister of the Ministry of Revenue, stepped forward and said to Zhu Houzhao, "Your Majesty, the current Royal Taxation Bureau can earn tens of millions of taels of silver just from tariffs and maritime trade. In my opinion, it would be better to abolish the mining tax throughout the country. This will not only help the people, but also benefit future generations."

The mining tax is a type of tax imposed on merchants after the industrial development of the Ming Dynasty led to a huge increase in the demand for raw materials such as ores and the number of mining workshops increased significantly. This is different from the historical practice of Wanli collecting mining taxes and letting eunuchs go mining, and then collecting mining taxes from the gentry and common people. In order to avoid the mining tax from intensifying the conflicts between the royal court and the outer court as well as the common people, Zhu Houzhao transferred the mining tax as a national tax. At the same time, it was better to collect profits from merchants mining than to suffer the harm caused to the people during mining.

However, most of the Ming Dynasty's mineral resources were mined by officials and gentry, so naturally they were the ones who paid the mining tax. Now, Wei Ying, the Left Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, was thinking that the treasury would receive tens of millions of taels of silver at one time, and that the Emperor would not need the money, so he wanted to abolish the mining tax.

"If I remember correctly, I transferred the mining tax revenue to Taicang as silver for disaster preparedness. The Ming Dynasty is vast and disasters occur frequently. We need to prepare a sum of silver to provide relief in the event of a major disaster or to provide food relief to the people during a famine. If the mining tax is abolished, how can we have the silver for disaster preparedness? And if we really want to relieve the people's suffering, how much can the abolition of the mining tax relieve? How can ordinary people know about mining? I think it would be better to abolish corvee labor throughout the country!"

Zhu Houzhao rejected Wei Ying's proposal. He would not let the conspiracy of the official gentry group succeed. However, Zhu Houzhao had already had the idea of ​​abolishing corvee labor throughout the world. After all, as the emperor, he now had strong capital and no longer needed to enslave the people of the world. The national income had also increased a lot. Capitalism began to emerge in the Ming Dynasty, and the employment-based cooperative relationship gradually replaced the system of selling oneself. Exempting the people of the world from the suffering of corvee labor was undoubtedly the best way to increase personal income and grain production.

"I thank Your Majesty on behalf of the people of the world! If corvée labor is abolished, poor families will no longer miss farming time due to labor service, and wealthy families will no longer be impoverished due to heavy labor fees!"

Liu Yu grew up in a poor family and was deeply touched by the heavy corvee labor. When he saw that Zhu Houzhao wanted to exempt the whole country from corvee labor, he first paid great tribute to Zhu Houzhao.

"This is truly a blessing for all the people in the world. Long live our emperor!" Wang Qiong also echoed.

"The people are free from corvée and taxes, and the annual tax has been greatly reduced. Your Majesty is a wise ruler rarely seen in the history. If it were not for the prosperous times, how could such a blessing be possible!"

Liu Kai, the Minister of Revenue, was no longer jealous of the emperor's huge income, and he burst into tears. But he could not help asking, "Your Majesty, if the corvée is exempted, when the Ministry of Revenue needs the labor of the people, won't the expenditure increase greatly? Where will the money come from?"

"What I'm talking about is that the whole country can be exempted from corvée labor. As long as one of you is willing to submit a petition to open up the world to the sea, I will agree that all customs duties of the Ming Dynasty will be returned to the national treasury! The Maritime Customs Office will be headed by officials from the outer court! In this way, the Ministry of Revenue will naturally have money to use when the people's manpower is needed."

Zhu Houzhao's words were equivalent to posing a difficult question to the civil servants present, and for a moment no one dared to answer it.

"Whether or not I am willing to help the people in this world is up to you, not me!"

Zhu Houzhao turned and walked away. Suddenly, an official shouted from behind: "Your Majesty! I would like to make a petition and ask the court to open the sea!"

"Who dares to go against the world like this?"

Wei Ying, the Left Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, was furious.

He was feeling very upset because he was not able to get the Emperor to abolish the mining tax when the Emperor was in a good mood, but instead let the Emperor use the opportunity of exempting the whole country from corvée labor to force him and other civil officials to petition for the opening of the sea. At this time, there were people who actually wanted to petition the Emperor to open the sea for the sake of the people of the world. So, he was so angry that he looked in the direction of the voice.

It should be explained here that with the power of Emperor Zhu Houzhao, it was actually possible to force the full opening of the sea, but Zhu Houzhao felt that it would be better to let some civil servants take the initiative to propose the opening of the sea, so as to avoid the intensification of internal conflicts caused by forced implementation. With the development of industry and commerce in the Ming Dynasty, the opening of the sea was inevitable. Didn't there also the Longwan Sea Opening in history? Now that the time traveler Zhu Houzhao has appeared, it is time for the Ming Dynasty to fully open the sea. After all, everyone in the court has seen the benefits of going to sea. The silver brought back by Xia Yan and others is there, and no one wants the emperor to make all the money alone, leaving the treasury to rely solely on collecting grain to survive.

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(End of this chapter)