amaotonovel Chapter 1187 Is this still the Ming Dynasty?
Chapter 1187 Is this still the Ming Dynasty?
The court assemblies held before and after the New Year had a profound impact on the Ming Dynasty.
First, the Censorate was finally split up.
The Censorate was responsible for the entire Ming Dynasty, including officials and common people. It supervised whether officials were corrupt, reviewed cases of local officials, and decided whether to transfer them to the Court of Judicial Review.
The Discipline Division was specifically for all officials, including nobles.
Correspondingly, the Ministry of Justice, the Court of Judicial Review, and even local government offices underwent sweeping reforms.
The Dali Temple was transformed from a government agency within the imperial court into a multi-level government office extending from the imperial court to the local level. It took over the power of local officials to adjudicate cases and was directly managed by the higher-level government offices. Local government offices could supervise and make suggestions, but could not directly manage the cases.
The Ministry of Justice, which was originally in charge of drafting criminal laws and handling criminal cases nationwide, was split into two parts. One part was assigned to the Cabinet to draft non-legal regulations, while the other part was reorganized into the Police Guard, which was responsible for cases handled by the Ministry of Justice. This was equivalent to taking over the power of local officials and yamen runners to investigate and adjudicate cases.
The most crucial point is that the portion assigned to the cabinet can only formulate regulations, not laws.
For example, the "Great Ming Code".
If the Ming Dynasty were to be amended again, the Grand Secretariat, or the Ministry of Justice under the Grand Secretariat, could only propose amendments during the emperor's triennial audience with the people. Whether or not amendments were made would be decided by a vote of all the people being received by the emperor.
That's right, Old Deng was ready to meet with the people, and even prepared to transfer some power to the people he was meeting.
In this regard, Lao Deng's idea amazed Yang Shaofeng even more—every three years, the Ministry of Civil Affairs would randomly select three farmers and three laborers from each prefecture and county, and the local government would arrange for people to escort them to the capital, with the Embroidered Uniform Guard accompanying them throughout the process.
When the Ministry of Civil Affairs selects personnel, the emperor, the Censorate, the Discipline Inspection Commission, the Embroidered Uniform Guard, and the Grand Military Commission must send people to supervise the entire process.
The list had to be sealed completely before it was sent to the local government. After arriving in the capital, the emperor and the cabinet arranged accommodations for these people. The Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Police Guard, and the Grand General's Office provided protection throughout the process. Even the "Da Ming Daily" had to send people to accompany them.
With a whole bunch of messy rules and regulations, coupled with those ancestral rules that frequently "allow all people to serve the emperor" and "allow all people to purge the emperor's inner circle," the entire Ming Dynasty had become something that Yang Shaofeng found both familiar and strange.
Is this still the Ming Dynasty?
What truly baffled Yang Shaofeng was that Lao Deng, for reasons unknown, issued an edict to use the Yellow Emperor's Era.
Starting from the eighth year of the Hongwu reign, the Ming Dynasty began to use the first year of the Yellow Emperor's reign as the standard for its era name. That is, the official name for the eighth year of the Hongwu reign was the 4072nd year of the Yellow Emperor's reign. The reign titles of the Ming emperors were no longer used as the official method of era name.
As for the reorganization of the territory directly under the Ming Dynasty into thirty-six provincial administrations, the change of Zhili to Anhui Provincial Administration Commission, the placement of Nanjing under the direct jurisdiction of the Cabinet, the construction of a steam engine railway station outside the city, the selection of sites by the Ministry of Industry to build steam engine workshops in the Ming Dynasty, and the preparation of thirty-six universities and seventy-two technical colleges by the Ministry of Education which was split from the Ministry of Rites, all these messy and messy things were completely beyond Yang Shaofeng's imagination.
Yang Shaofeng leaned back in his recliner, took a sip of the small dragon ball, and couldn't help but exclaim, "These guys are like gods! I'm almost falling behind the times!"
Old Deng is fortunate to have such a group of god-like talents.
……
Yang Shaofeng sighed deeply in the Prince Consort's mansion, feeling that he was about to become a relic of the old era, while Emperor Zhu was also sighing in the palace at this moment.
"Auditing is good, we need to audit."
"If it weren't for this auditing agency, we really wouldn't know that we've been fooled like idiots since the first year of the reign of King Wu."
Emperor Zhu pointed to the memorial in Li Shanchang's hand and said with a half-smile, "They dare to embezzle the taxes that should be paid to the national treasury, they dare to embezzle the goods in the workshops, they dare to embezzle the salt in the salt fields, and they even dare to invent pretexts to collect exorbitant taxes that should not be levied."
"How many Ming Dynasty treasuries is this worth?"
"Let's not talk about the Ming Dynasty's treasury in the first year of Hongwu's reign. Just take last year's tax revenue of 100 million and 50 million strings of cash as an example. They've already embezzled two treasuries' worth of it."
"Damn it, 300 million strings of cash, what are they planning to do?"
"Take it back to fill the grave?"
Li Shanchang slowly flipped through the memorial in his hand, momentarily at a loss for how to answer Emperor Zhu's question.
It was nearly 300 million strings of cash. This was the result that more than a hundred clerks in the Audit Office calculated after repeated calculations, almost making the abacus beads smoke.
In other words, from the first year of Wu (1366) after Xiaoming Wang drowned to the seventh year of Hongwu, a total of nine years, these officials embezzled more than 30 million strings of cash every year.
Damn it, it only cost about two million strings of cash to repair the city wall of Nanjing.
The money these officials embezzled in a year was enough to build fifteen city walls of Nanjing for the Ming Dynasty.
Li Shanchang smacked his lips, handed the memorial in his hand to Liu Bowen, and then bowed to Emperor Zhu, saying, "Your Majesty, this money must be recovered, and not only the money, but also the people. Even if they are dead, their corpses must be dug up and whipped. Otherwise, it will not appease public anger!"
Liu Bowen was flipping through the memorial in his hand when he heard this, but without looking up, he said, "I second that suggestion."
As he looked around, Liu Bowen raised his head again and looked at Emperor Zhu, saying, "Your Majesty, of these 300 million strings of cash, nearly 5 million strings were involved in the misappropriation of living people, and this only gradually decreased after the fourth year of Hongwu's reign."
Emperor Zhu sneered and said, "If it weren't for the black laborer case and the forced labor and mutilation case in the fourth year of Hongwu, I'm afraid these bastards wouldn't have been scared off."
"The same goes for the case of the remnants of the Pu family that broke out in Fujian this time."
"If it weren't for the Pu family remnant case, those scoundrels who colluded with maritime merchants, aristocratic families, officials, and gentry would never have surfaced."
When the matter of the Pu family remnants in Fujian was mentioned, Emperor Zhu's face immediately filled with murderous intent.
"A bunch of money-grubbers."
"A group of people who lend money at interest."
"A gang is entrenched on the beach, sucking the blood off our Great Ming Dynasty."
"Another group is entrenched in the heart of our Great Ming, making connections everywhere."
"These bastards weren't satisfied with selling out the Song Dynasty; they want to sell out our Ming Dynasty as well."
"They're all incredibly talented."
Li Shanchang smiled and said, "Don't worry about your position. These people are all scoundrels who can't stand the light of day. They used to hide very well, but now they've all surfaced. Dealing with them is just a matter for a jailer."
Emperor Zhu scoffed and said, "Give it to the jailers? That would be too easy on them!"