Where did the money in the treasury of the ancient emperors come from? The emperor also has private money!

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

"All over the world, there is no king's land, no king's minister." Since the family and the country are integrated, the emperor should not have any private money, let alone set up a private vault. 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 the national treasury. Therefore, the emperor's treasury is not short of money, but private.

Take the Western Han Dynasty as an example.

At that time, the land tax stipulated by the state, the poll tax for adults over 14, the income from the sale of titles 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 belongs to the royal family. Interestingly,/kloc-the poll tax for minors under 0/4, called oral money, is 23 per year, of which 20 belongs to the royal family and 3 to the state. In other words, many profligate expenses of the couple and their children come from the poll tax for children aged 3 to 14. So, how much influence does the child poll tax have on ordinary people?

According to historical records, Minister Gong Yu told the emperor that some families were strangled at birth because they could not pay for their mouths. It stands to reason that a child's 23 pence a year doesn't seem to be much. As for strangling the 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 in one year. In addition, there are various local surcharges, which are 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 it is levied below, it is often that children 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 evil and bloody the encirclement and suppression of Emperor Xian of Han Dynasty was.

Even at this stage, the infamous Emperor Han Ling in history is still not satisfied. He always tried his best to generate income, so he opened a big store, specializing in wholesale of official hats, and unceremoniously transferred the income from selling titles and titles to his own small treasury. In order to make his official hat wholesale business prosperous, he set up an official exchange in Xiyuan to bargain with some people who are keen on buying officials. Cui Lie, a famous family, bought a Stuart for 5 million yuan and asked his son what he thought of the official purchase. His son told the truth, "the critics think it stinks." Selling officials stinks, but it seems that it is not the worst compared with collecting money to force the poor to kill babies.

Take the Song Dynasty as an example.

This was basically the case in subsequent dynasties. Since Zhao Kuangyin, the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty, a special library named "Zhu Fengku" has been established, and the national finance saved every year is hidden in this library. The original intention was also to serve as a financial reserve to deal with national emergencies, but later it changed its nature and became the emperor's treasury.

Of course, once the country encounters major events such as war and famine, ministers will always keep thinking, hoping that the emperor will break some money and take some private money from the small vault 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 is reluctant, he still wants to lend money to the government. Although the government is clean, it 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 Third Division every year, and at the same time, the imperial edict that "the Third Division is cut off and no fake loans are allowed" was promulgated, and at the same time, it was ruthlessly stipulated that "the amount of money and silks kept in the national treasury should not be reported to others, and offenders would be beheaded". Because of this family style, no one knows how many private treasures there are in Song Emperor's coffers. During Song Gaozong's time, it was rumored that his small coffers accounted for half of the national fiscal revenue every year. Although the emperor of the Song Dynasty was reluctant, he sometimes took out the money from the small treasury to support the government.

After the Ming dynasty

Ming Taizu did the opposite. Instead of taking money from his own pocket, he tried every means to blackmail the government and put the money from the state treasury into his own pocket. It is the most common thing for the government to move hundreds of thousands of silver from the national treasury to the internal treasury. At most, he actually took 24 million taels of silver.

Faced with domestic troubles and foreign invasion, the government had no money to pay for the army, but the emperor "instructed his officials to take the long-term policy of the country, not domestic capital." It means that ministers should come up with long-term solutions and don't always think about the emperor's coffers. The emperor must live!

Ministers have no choice but to raise taxes and have to pay three additional rates to the people: Liao rate, suppression rate and training rate. The so-called "three rates" refers to the military expenditure for training the army, conquering the Northeast and suppressing Li Zicheng. Apart from the "three rates", "reimbursement" is also shared with ministers. The "three rates" and "reimbursement" aroused widespread indignation and resentment, intensified various social contradictions, and the Ming Dynasty collapsed in this financial dilemma. After Li Zicheng entered Beijing, he found that the treasures of Emperor Chongzhen's treasury were piled up in Baoshan, amounting to more than 37 million, so he organized thousands of mules and horses and tens of thousands of cavalry to escort these treasures back to their hometown in Shaanxi. Emperor Chongzhen worked hard, but only accumulated possession for others.

The Qing Dynasty distinguished between the "state" finance and the "private" finance of the royal family, that is to say, the emperor's "small treasury" was confiscated, ending the history that the royal family finance and the state finance were not divided in China before and after the Ming Dynasty. The emperor's "small treasury" was confiscated. Of course, this did not affect the daily expenses of the emperor. If the emperor wants to spend money, he can always take it back from the fact-as long as the fact can afford it. In this way, the Ministry not only managed the national finance, but also became the emperor's private treasury. When an emperor spends money like water, or there are too many extravagant members of the royal family, the national finance will be under great pressure, and it will be deformed or even paralyzed, leading to social chaos.

In the history of China, there are countless phenomena that emperors spend money indiscriminately, leading to national financial crisis. However, a person's luxury is limited after all. The whole royal family is a huge group, and their interests must be protected. Their expenditure has had a particularly terrible impact on the national finance. Those officials who are concerned about the country and the people can do nothing about it. After all, even the whole world belongs to others. Didn't you get more pocket money? But sometimes this allowance is 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 expansion of the royal family population became the biggest burden of national finance and the most serious social problem in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. As early as the Jiajing period of Wanli, some people had regarded Hokuriku, Yellow River and imperial clan as three social evils.

According to the regulations of the early Ming Dynasty, the Milu and the Prince were paid one year's salary, but later the national finance was overwhelmed and the payment standard had to be lowered. But even so, in the Jiajing era, the royal Milu still reached 8.53 million stones, more than one third.

However, the clan milu deer actually exceeded the ration, which seriously undermined the financial security. Even raising the royal family has become a problem What is the world like? Its important performance is that military wages cannot be paid normally and local disasters cannot be remedied. 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 intensity of tax collection, which led to farmers' resistance. Financial problems lead to social instability, social development falls into a vicious circle, and finally it is terminally ill, reaching the point where there is no cure. How did the Ming Dynasty survive from internal troubles and foreign invasion?

Based on the lessons of the Ming Dynasty, how to make imperial finance independent of national finance and avoid its damage to national financial security is a major issue for the rulers of the Qing Dynasty to consider. The solution to this problem in the Qing Dynasty was to set up the internal affairs office, which was responsible for managing the royal family's finances and having dinner with the households in charge of the state's public finances, maintaining relative independence and non-interference. This department usually only needs to allocate 100,000 taels of 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, loves the people and is frugal, the emperor generally does not make such a request to the inpatient department.

The practice of the Qing emperor

The official kitchen catering system played an important role in the normal operation of finance in Qing Dynasty. Until the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing government's finance remained relatively stable, and all revenue and expenditure operations were relatively normal. However, this does not mean that the financial relationship has been completely straightened out. In fact, there are still many problems. One of the outstanding problems was caused by the emperor himself, because it was inconvenient for the emperor to reach home and his personal expenses were limited, so he had to find another way to make up for it.

In the Qing Dynasty, the emperor thought of many tricks, one of which was to make local governors pay "fines". With a few exceptions, all proceeds are "confiscated by the internal affairs bureau" and turned over to the finance of the internal affairs bureau. Fines range from1.2000 to 32000. The most common one was that in the fifty-ninth year of Qianlong, Huaihe River and Quande Salt Administration Bureau fined the bank, amounting to 384,200 yuan.

Another way is to appoint officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to take charge of salt management and tax clearance, 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, we can't casually increase the burden on farmers, but it doesn't matter much if we reach out to businessmen. Therefore, most of the places where salt taxes and tariffs were levied in the Qing Dynasty were managed by the emperor himself, and the emperor appointed the coating of the internal affairs office. For example, Cao Yin, Cao Xueqin's grandfather, once held this position, and Cao Jia was the coating. In terms of tariffs, Guangdong Customs has the largest number, so after the rapid growth of foreign trade during the Qianlong period, Guangdong Customs has been supervised by officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In the Qing dynasty, the emperor appointed officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to hold important positions in order to collect more business tax. One of the purposes is to replenish the blood of the internal affairs office through informal financial channels. While making money for the office, the minions in the office certainly don't forget to make money for themselves, which leads to the increased burden on businessmen, chaotic business order and conflicts between businessmen and officials. In particular, Guangdong Customs' practice of making money has repeatedly caused conflicts between China and Britain, with obvious influence.

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, we must first 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 a clear distinction must be made to prevent the interests of small groups from overriding the public interests and the state finances from becoming private.