Emperors of various dynasties have a unique trick of saving money: how did the emperor embezzle state property?

There is a tradition in the history of China, that is, royal finance and state finance are often separated. The royal family belongs to the royal family, and the country belongs to the country. However, because the world is public, the emperor will inevitably put his hand into the treasury and steal the money from the treasury into the royal treasury.

"All over the world, it is the land of kings, the land of land, and the land of princes?" Since the family and the country are one, then the emperor should not have any private money and should not set up a small treasury. Even so, in fact, before the Qing dynasty, the emperor still had a small vault independent of the state finance. It's a small vault, but it's not small There may be more money in it than in foreign treasury. Therefore, the treasury of the ancient emperor was not short of money, but private.

There is a tradition in the history of China, that is, royal finance and state finance are often separated, and the royal family belongs to the royal family and the state belongs to the state. However, because the world is public, the emperor will inevitably put his hand into the treasury and steal the money from the treasury into the royal treasury.

Take the Western Han Dynasty as an example. At that time, the land tax stipulated by the state, the poll tax for adults above 14, the income from selling officials and titles, and the income from salt and iron monopoly were all owned by the state. The income from the production of earth tribute, Yamazawa Garden Pool, customs duties and wine taxes all belong to the royal family. Interestingly, the poll tax for/kloc-minors under 0/4, called oral money, is 23 per year, of which 20 belong to the royal family and 3 belong to the state. In other words, many extravagant expenses of the Emperor's couple and their children come from the poll tax for children aged 3 to 14. So, how big is the impact of poll tax on the people?

According to historical records, Gong Yu, the minister, told the emperor that some families could not afford their children's money, and the children were strangled at birth. It stands to reason that a child's 23 pence a year doesn't seem to be much. As for strangling your child alive? However, the actual situation is not so simple. It turns out that 23 items per child per year are only the above regulations, but the following implementation has become repeated collection many times a year. In addition, there are various additional places, and the amount is already several times the prescribed amount. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty advanced the poll tax for children from 7 to 3 years old. When children are kept below, they often have to pay taxes when they land. Therefore, the child poll tax has caused a large number of infanticide among the people. It can be seen how sinful and bloody the treasury of the Han emperor was.

Even at this stage, Emperor Han Ling, who is notorious in history, is not satisfied and has been trying to generate income. So he opened a big store, specializing in the wholesale of official hats, and unceremoniously pulled the income from selling officials and titles into his own small treasury. In order to make his official hat wholesale business prosperous, he set up an official hat exchange and other institutions in Xiyuan to bargain with some people who are keen on buying officials and hats. Cui Lie, a famous family, bought a Stuart for 5 million yuan and asked his son what he thought of buying an official. His son told the truth: "The critics think it stinks." Selling officials stinks, but it doesn't seem to be the worst compared with collecting money to force the poor to kill babies.

This was basically the case in subsequent dynasties. Zhao Kuangyin, the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty, set up a special internal storehouse, which is called "the pile-sealing storehouse", that is, the national finance saved every year is hidden in this storehouse. Originally intended as a financial reserve to deal with national emergencies, it later changed its nature and became the emperor's coffers. Of course, once the country encounters major events such as war and famine, ministers will always say that they want the emperor to break some money and take some private money from the small treasury to tide over the difficulties. Sometimes even the officials in charge of the three departments of finance have the cheek to borrow money from the emperor. Although the emperor was reluctant, he had to lend money to * * *.

Although * * * is honest, he can always return the emperor's private money on time, but even so, the emperor can't stand this so-called borrowing money. Zhenzong had to stipulate that 600,000 yuan should be allocated from the small treasury to the three companies for free every year, and at the same time, he wrote a letter to "cut off the three companies and never make fake loans again", and at the same time ruthlessly stipulated that "the amount of money and silks in the national treasury should not be reported to the outside world, and offenders would be beheaded". Because of this family law, no one knows how many coffers the emperor of the Song Dynasty had. During Song Gaozong's time, it was rumored that his coffers accounted for half of the national fiscal revenue every year.

Although the Emperor of the Song Dynasty was very reluctant, he sometimes took out the money in the small vault to support * * *. The Ming emperor did the opposite. Instead of taking money from his pocket, he tried to blackmail * * * into putting the money from the state treasury into his pocket. It became the most common thing for the imperial government to move hundreds of thousands of silver from the national treasury to the inner treasury. At the most, he even took 24 million silver. In the face of internal and external troubles, * * * has no money to pay his salary, but the emperor "instructed his officials to be the country's long-term policy, not to invite them from inside." This means that ministers should come up with long-term plans instead of always thinking about the emperor's coffers, and the emperor has to live!

Ministers had no choice but to raise taxes, so they had to levy three more salaries on the people: Liao soldiers, suppression soldiers and training soldiers. The so-called "three salaries" is the military expenditure for training soldiers, conquering the late Northeast and suppressing Li Zicheng. In addition to the "three rates", ministers were also rated as "helping rates". The "three salaries" and "helping salaries" aroused widespread indignation and further intensified various social contradictions, and the Ming Dynasty collapsed in this financial dilemma. After Li Zicheng entered Beijing, he found that the treasure in Emperor Chongzhen's treasury was 37 million yuan, so he organized thousands of mules and horses and tens of thousands of cavalry to escort these treasures back to his hometown in Shaanxi. Emperor Chongzhen worked hard, but only accumulated possession for others.

The Qing Dynasty distinguished the "state" and "private" finances of the royal family, that is, confiscated the emperor's "small treasury", ending the history of China's royal and state finances being indistinguishable before and after the Ming Dynasty. The confiscation of the emperor's "small treasury" certainly does not affect the daily expenses of the emperor. If the emperor wants to spend money, he can always withdraw it from the Ministry of Finance-as long as the Ministry of Finance can still get the money. In this way, in addition to managing the national finance, the Ministry of Housing also became the emperor's private treasury. When an emperor spends money like water, or there are too many extravagant and wasteful royal family members, the national finance will be under great pressure, and it is easy to be deformed or even paralyzed, leading to social chaos.

In the history of China, there are countless phenomena that emperors spend money indiscriminately, but after all, one person's extravagance is limited, and the whole royal family is a huge group, and its interests must be guaranteed. Their expenditure has had a particularly terrible impact on the national finance. Those courtiers who are concerned about the country and the people can do nothing about it. After all, even the world belongs to others, so why not get more pocket money? But this pocket money is sometimes amazing.

As far as the royal family in the Ming Dynasty is concerned, there were only a few dozen people in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, but by the Wanli era, the population had reached nearly 200,000. The expanding imperial clan population became the biggest financial burden and the most serious social problem in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. As early as the Jiajing period of Wanli, some people regarded Hokuriku, Yellow River and imperial clan as three social evils.

According to the provisions of the early Ming Dynasty, the warlord Mi Lu was made a prince for one year, but later the national finance was overwhelmed and the payment standard had to be lowered. But even so, in the Jiajing era, the imperial clan still reached 8.53 million stones, more than one-third of the national fiscal revenue. According to the original design, the southern provinces provided 4 million stone rice to Beijing, and the northern provinces provided 8 million stone rations to the border guards. However, the imperial clan's Mi Lu actually exceeded the rations, which seriously undermined financial security. Even raising the royal family has become a problem. What about this world? Its important performance is that it can't be paid normally and local disasters can't be relieved. The former leads to army mutiny, while the latter leads to refugees everywhere. On the other hand, in order to ensure financial security, the government increased the collection of taxes and fees, which led to farmers' resistance. Financial problems cause social instability, lead to a vicious circle of social development, and finally get a terminal illness. To the point of hopeless, how did the Ming Dynasty survive in the predicament of internal troubles and foreign invasion?

Based on the lessons of the Ming Dynasty, it is an important task for the rulers of the Qing Dynasty to solve the royal finance, make it independent of the national finance and avoid its damage to the national financial security. The solution to this problem in the Qing Dynasty was to set up the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was responsible for managing the royal finances, having dinner with some families in charge of the national public finances, doing their own jobs, maintaining relative independence and non-interference. The Ministry usually only needs to allocate 65,438+20,000 silver to the Ministry of Internal Affairs every year as the emperor's expenses. In other cases, the emperor has no right to ask the Ministry for funds. In order to maintain the image of "benevolent king" who spends money wisely and prospers by loving the people, the emperor generally does not take the initiative to make such a request to the minister.

The kitchen dining system within the government and between families in the Qing Dynasty played an important role in the normal operation of finance in the Qing Dynasty. Until the Taiping Rebellion, the finance of the Qing Dynasty remained relatively stable, and the revenue and expenditure operated relatively normally. However, this does not mean that the financial relationship has been completely straightened out. In fact, it still contains many problems. One of the most prominent problems was caused by the emperor himself, because it was inconvenient for the emperor to contact the household department and his personal expenses were restricted, so he had to find other ways to make up for it.

The emperor of the Qing dynasty thought of many tricks, one of which was to ask local governors to pay "discussion punishment", and with a few exceptions, all the proceeds were "handed over to the Ministry of Internal Affairs for confiscation" and remitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The fineness of silver ranges from 22,000 to about 32,000. The most common example is that in the fifty-ninth year of Qianlong (1794), the salt administration in Germany was fined 384,000 taels of silver.

Another method is to send officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to take charge of salt management and tax settlement, and extract money from businessmen. Judging from the thinking of Qing emperors, agriculture is the "foundation" and commerce is the "purpose". In order to maintain social stability, it is not necessary to increase the burden on farmers, but it has little to do with reaching out to businessmen. Therefore, most of the places where salt taxes and tariffs were collected in the Qing Dynasty were managed by the emperor's own agency (* * *). For example, the salt tax is the highest in Huaibei, so the salt policy in Huaibei must be a member of the interior office-for example, Cao Xueqin's grandfather once held this position, and Cao's family is Tu's family. In terms of tariffs, Guangdong Customs has the most, so after the rapid growth of foreign trade volume in Qianlong era, Guangdong Customs supervision has been held by officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In the Qing Dynasty, the emperor appointed officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to important positions to collect more business taxes. One of the purposes is to replenish blood for the Ministry of Internal Affairs through informal financial channels. The minions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, while making money for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, of course, do not forget to make a fortune, which leads to increased burden on businessmen, chaotic business order and conflicts between businessmen and officials. In particular, Guangdong Customs' practice of collecting money has repeatedly caused contradictions between China and Britain, which has a noticeable impact on the outbreak of the Opium War.

The emperor can ask local officials to pay "discussion fines", and he can also get benefits by appointing officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to control salt taxes and tariffs, which ensures the effective operation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs' finances. However, the official income of local officials from the state finance is extremely limited, and they have to try their best to seek gray income and corruption and bribery, which leads to problems such as floating income and unfair justice when collecting taxes, which not only makes the grass-roots operation abnormal, but also intensifies the contradiction between the government and the people. In addition, although the Qing emperor could not ask the Ministry of Commerce for money casually, it was not a rigid constraint after all. It is a well-known fact that Cixi once asked the Ministry of Commerce for money to build the Summer Palace for her to enjoy in her later years. Therefore, she misappropriated and occupied the military expenses of the Beiyang Navy, which became one of the reasons for her defeat in the Sino-Japanese War.

Bertain, a French thinker, thinks that finance is "the nerve of a country". If this nerve is abnormal, it will send out the wrong instructions, which will eventually lead to panic and chaos in the whole society. Numerous historical facts in Chinese and foreign history show that the defects of the financial system are the deep roots of many social chaos. To reduce social chaos, it is necessary to make finance meet the requirements of modern countries. To achieve this goal, it is first important to distinguish between "state" finance and royal "private" finance. State finance is used to provide public services, while "private" finance only represents the special interests of small groups. The two cannot be confused, and they must be clearly distinguished to prevent the interests of small groups from overriding the public interests and the state finance from becoming private finance.