Chapter 8 6 Reasons for becoming a corrupt official

Which official is not a person who loves money?The official position was originally obtained by money, how could it be repaid without spending money?This silver will not fall from the sky, nor will it emerge from the ground. If you want the county guards and magistrates to be clean, can you do it? 【Han Yiliang Shangshu】 "History of Ming Dynasty" records a story of you attack and I defend between the emperor and the supervisory officials. In the first year of Chongzhen (1628), Zhu Youjian had just become emperor.At that time, he was a young man of seventeen or eighteen years old, and he wanted to govern the country well.Zhu Youjian often summoned officials to discuss state affairs, and issued a call for civil officials not to love money.Civil officials don't love money, and military officials don't hesitate to die. This is a famous saying passed down from the Song Dynasty, and it was also mentioned before the collapse of the Kuomintang.It is said that this will ensure peace in the world.

Han Yiliang, who was in charge of Huke, didn't take this kind of call seriously, so he wrote a letter to the emperor and asked: "Where is the place where money is not used now?"Which official is not a person who loves money?The official position was originally obtained by money, how could it be repaid without spending money?It is often said that the county magistrate is the leader of bribery, and the king of bribery in the matter.Now people are accusing the county magistrates of being dishonest, but how can these local officials be clean?The few salaries need to be taken care of by the boss, the guests who come and go must be entertained, and the fees for the promotion assessment and the pilgrimage to Beijing will always cost thousands of taels of silver.This silver will not fall from the sky, nor will it emerge from the ground. If you want the county guards and magistrates to be clean, can you do it?In the past two months, I have resigned the five hundred taels of silver that was given to me as a book handkerchief. I have few contacts, and the rest can be inferred.I beg Your Majesty to punish severely and arrest and punish those who have done too much.

The household department is a very small official, probably equivalent to the current stock level or deputy department level.But the position is very prominent, similar to the secretary in the president's office who is looking at the Ministry of Finance to find faults, and there are some fawning people below.The book handkerchief that Han Yiliang mentioned is probably similar to the people from the central government going back to Beijing on a business trip, writing something like an inspection trip and publishing it at their own expense, and the people below flattered them with the printing fee.The five hundred taels of silver, according to the conventional price of precious metals in the international market today, is roughly equivalent to more than 170,000 NT dollars.If estimated according to the purchasing power of silver on grain at that time, it would be about NT$800,000 in today’s money.At that time, the monthly salary of the county-level cadres was roughly equivalent to more than 4,000 NT dollars today, and 170,000 or 800,000 were considered astonishingly large sums.

Chongzhen read Han Yiliang's Shangshu and was overjoyed. He immediately summoned his officials and asked Han Yiliang to read this article written by him in public.After reading it, Chongzhen showed Han Yiliang's Shangshu to the cabinet ministers and said: Yiliang is loyal and upright, and he can be the censor of the capital.The imperial envoy of Qiandu is roughly equivalent to the assistant minister of the Ministry of Supervision, which is lower than the deputy ministerial level and higher than the director general level.Han Yiliang is expected to reach the sky in one step. At this time, Wang Yongguang, Minister of the Ministry of Officials (similar to the head of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China), asked the emperor to ask Han Yiliang to name specific people who had done too much and who would give him money.Han Yiliang grumbled, showing that he was unwilling to report on others.So Chongzhen asked him to play in secret.After waiting for five days, Han Yiliang did not report anyone, but only cited two old incidents as examples, and stabbed Wang Yongguang a few words inside and outside the words.

Chongzhen summoned Han Yiliang, Wang Yongguang and some courtiers again.The young emperor read Han Yiliang's Shangshu back and forth with his voice loud and clear.Thinking of these two sentences that gold does not fall from the sky and does not come from the ground, I can't help but sigh.Chongzhen asked Han Yiliang again: Who gave you the five hundred taels of silver?Han Yiliang sticks to the line of defense, but refuses to call names.Chongzhen insisted on him answering, so he just talked about old things.Chongzhen asked Han Yiliang to name the names, and originally wanted to punish him severely as he had asked, but Han Yiliang finally said that it was rumored that someone was going to send him off, which made the emperor's boss unhappy. Can the black hat of the Minister of Supervision be granted lightly?Chongzhen reprimanded Han Yiliang for being inconsistent and dismissed him from his post②.

Han Yiliang would rather ask the emperor to remove his official position, ruin his future as a minister, and even face the risk of the emperor getting angry and punishing him, but insists on refusing to report on those who gave him gifts and bribes. He must have a strong supporting force behind him.What kind of power is this?Is it just for fear of offending people?It is just like the current prosecutor, prosecuting and offending people is his job, and it is also the source of his reputation.For fear of offending people, this explanation is not strong enough. 【Make unjust life accounts】 If we read Han Yiliang's Shangshu carefully, we will find a contradiction.Throughout Han Yiliang's article, he justifies loving money, proving that it is impossible for officials not to love money, and they have to love money.Han Yiliang was right, the official salaries of officials in the Ming Dynasty were indeed not enough.However, when he prescribes medicine, he severely punishes those who seek income other than salary.This is probably not so prescriptive.

The official wages of officials in the Ming Dynasty were the lowest in history.The top leaders at the provincial level have a nominal annual salary of 576 shi rice, converted into the current NT dollar, and a monthly salary of about 47,120 yuan③.The annual nominal salary of the director general level is 192 shi of rice, which is roughly equivalent to NT$15,720 per month.In Qipin County, the nominal salary per year is ninety shi of rice, or NT$7,360 per month.Han Yiliang, a stock-level or sub-section-level cadre, has a nominal salary of sixty-six shi rice per year, which is equivalent to a monthly salary of NT$5,400.

I have repeatedly emphasized the term nominal salary because the actual salary that officials receive from the court is not so much.At that time, wages in kind were paid, and the officials took home rice, cloth, pepper and sumac, as well as silver and banknotes.No matter what you get, everything must be folded into rice.So this conversion rate has become a big problem. The fifteenth volume of "Allusion Jiwen" once described in detail how the Ministry of Households (Ministry of Finance) folded cloth into rice in the 16th year of Chenghua (1481).The imperial court forcibly folded a piece of coarse cloth, which was worth three or four renminbi, into thirty shi of rice.And how much is thirty shi rice worth in the market?At least twenty taels of silver!If according to this conversion rate, the wages are entirely based on cloth, the county magistrate can only receive three bolts of coarse cloth every year, which can only be exchanged for one tael of silver in the market, and cannot buy two shi (nearly two hundred kilograms) of rice.That is to say, the imperial court deducted the salaries of officials dozens or even hundreds of times.Not to mention the banknotes that depreciated hundreds of times in the Ming Dynasty and forced officials to accept them.

In short, the actual value of the monthly salary that the county magistrates received in the Ming Dynasty was only NT$4,520⑤. Please put yourself in the shoes of the county magistrates.There was no family planning at that time, and each family had at least five or six people, or a dozen or so more.At that time, there was no women's liberation movement, and there was no double-employment. On average, a family of six or seven people relied on the county magistrate's monthly salary of 4,520 yuan, and each person lived on an average of more than 680 yuan. , the life of the county magistrate is not much better than today's laid-off workers.To be more precise, this county grandpa lives on the same level as the poorest peasant class today.In 1997, the year before I wrote this article, the per capita annual income of Chinese farmers was more than 8,360 yuan.

Another terrible thing is that there is no social welfare.Not to mention public medical care, before the fifteenth year of Chenghua (1480), even pensions were not given.In the 15th year of Chenghua, Yang Ding, Minister of the Household Department, retired, and the emperor gave him special grace, and still gave Mi Ershi every month.The value of these two stones of rice is only NT$2,000, which is a precedent for a minister to retire rice.The Minister of the Household Department is equivalent to the current Minister of Finance, and the pension is only 500 yuan. Others can imagine it⑥. If we look at the life and family property of famous upright officials at that time, we may have a more pessimistic estimate of the actual income of Ming Dynasty officials.

Hai Rui is an upright official who definitely does not take bribes, nor does he accept any gray income.When this upright official was a county magistrate in Chun'an, Zhejiang, he was so poor that he had to grow vegetables for himself, and of course he was even more reluctant to eat meat.Once, for Hai Rui's mother's birthday, Hai Rui bought two catties of meat, and the news actually reached Governor Hu Zongxian.The next day, the governor issued a news release saying: Yesterday I heard that the county magistrate of Hai bought two catties of meat for my mother's birthday! ⑦ Hai Rui finally became the Minister of the Ministry of Officials, which is equivalent to the current Deputy Minister of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.After the deputy minister died, he couldn't even make up the funeral expenses.Wang Yongji, Assistant Minister of the Ministry of Supervision, went to see the shabby cloth clothes, and the Ge Wei (cloth woven from kudzu leather, which is worse than linen) was still torn. He was so moved that he burst into tears, so he raised money to bury him.At that time, a man named Zhu Liang went to visit Hai Rui's house, and when he came back, he wrote a poem, in which four lines can be used as circumstantial evidence of Hai Rui's poverty: There is nothing left in the coffin of a depressed person, but there are roots in front of a desolate soul.Said that he didn't believe it with others, and the mountain people burst into tears when they saw it. Is this what a clean and honest official who has worked hard and frugal all his life deserves? Hai Rui was an upright official in the Jiajing and Wanli years of the late Ming Dynasty.One hundred years earlier than him, during the Chenghua period in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, there was an upright official named Qin Hong.Qin Hong is resolute and brave to eliminate harm, never worrying about himself.No matter whether the scholar-officials know him or not, they all call him a great man.Just because he is honest and upright, he insists on principles and does not take anything extra, so his wife and children are often not full of vegetables, soup, wheat and rice, and the family follows him to starve. In the thirteenth year of Chenghua, Qin Hong inspected Shanxi and found that there was something wrong with the general of the town, Qijian, so he reported to the emperor.Qijian's father, King Qingcheng, defended his son Shangzuo and framed Qin Hong at the same time.Of course, the emperor paid more attention to the opinion of the prince, so he arrested Qin Hong and sent him to prison for examination.As a result, no charges were brought to trial.The eunuch Shang Heng was ordered to ransack the house, but only a few rags were found.The eunuch reported to the emperor, and the emperor sighed: How could he be so poor?So he ordered to release people ⑧. The family circumstances of these two honest officials are probably enough to prove that the official salary is not enough. Please note that compared with ordinary officials, honest officials also have one less big expense: they don't give bribes and gifts, they don't curry favor with their superiors, and they don't use the back door to make connections.Han Yiliang said that the expenses of several thousand taels of silver for managing the boss, entertaining the guests, promotion assessment, and going to Beijing for pilgrimage, etc., even if it is two thousand taels of silver, that is, the expenses of 800,000 to 3 million NT dollars, most of them can be avoided. up.For example, Hai Rui's pilgrimage to Beijing cost only forty-eight taels of silver.Because they are really poor, they really have no excuses, and they really dare to turn their faces and denounce others, and because they have a big reputation, they can be exempted if they are exempted, and most people don't take the risk of blackmailing them.However, petty officials with less strong waists will not only be blackmailed, but also blackmailed.In order to prove that this type of expenditure is rigid and not optional, let me tell another story. When Hai Rui was the county magistrate in Chun'an, Governor Hu Zongxian's son passed by Chun'an, and it was not enough for the postman to entertain him.The post official is equivalent to the current director of the county guest house and the director of the post and telecommunications bureau, and the governor is a large cadre at the provincial and ministerial level.I guess, it can't be blamed that the post officials don't know how to flatter them, it must be forced by Hai Rui.When Hai Rui arrived in Chun'an, he was determined to reform, rectify the work style of cadres, prohibit arbitrary fees, and tidy up the small officials below him. He may not be able to provide decent things for entertaining.Mr. Hu got angry when he was left out, and asked someone to tie up the postman and hang him upside down. This is the end of saving money. Hai Rui received the report, saying: In the past, Governor Hu had instructed that his people should not go out and entertain extravagantly.Today, Mr. Hu has so much luggage, it must be fake.So Mr. Hu was detained, thousands of taels of silver were found from his luggage, and none of them were put into the treasury.These thousands of taels of silver should also be counted as two thousand taels as before. According to different calculations of precious metal prices and purchasing power parity, its value is between 800,000 and 3 million NT dollars.The young master travels for a trip, with such a large income, he must have a big appetite, and his expectations have also been cultivated very strong. When he arrives in poor Chun'an, everything is not going his way, and it is only natural that he loses his temper.Unfortunately, he ran into Hai Qingtian, who is rare in Chinese history.Hai Rui detained Mr. Hu, confiscated his money, and then sent someone to report to Governor Hu, saying that someone pretended to be his son, and asked for instructions on how to pay him.It made Hu Zongxian dumb to eat Coptis chinensis, and he couldn't tell the pain.However, this matter can be used for joking, but not for imitation.Just imagine, how many Hai Ruis there are in the world, if Hai Rui hadn't risked his life behind him, what would have happened to that postman?After learning from the pain, how should he sum up the experience and lessons? Post officials belonged to the subordinate staff class, which was lower than the rank-and-file official cadres, and was equivalent to the employees among the cadres and workers.These people are poorer, and their average salary is only about one-tenth of that of the cadres, about one stone of rice per month, worth only NT$1,000.But in terms of numbers, workers are naturally much more than cadres. The rank is lower than the subordinate staff, and there are more people, it is the government servants under the leadership of the subordinate staff.These are some office workers who cannot become regulars.For example, the bell and drum husband, such as the three classes of yamen servants, that is, the current armed police, judicial police and criminal police.The local governments of the Ming Dynasty used miscellaneous personnel, and at first they all relied on enlisting local people to serve for free.Since they serve without pay, government servants are not counted as government employees, and the government does not pay wages, but only a small food subsidy, which is called workers' food bank.According to the words of Weilin, a person from the Qing Dynasty, the money is no more than three or two cents a day, and it is only used for a meal for the couple.He asked: If you don’t eat two meals a day, you will be hungry and panic. Are these hundreds of thousands of people willing to stand on the side of the court with empty stomachs and serve the country⑨? No matter which dynasty or generation, a person must do an equal equation in his life; the total income of a lifetime is equal to the total expenditure of a lifetime.The surplus is inheritance, and the loss is debt.Officials should work hard to equalize this equation, and it is best to make savings to benefit future generations.The wages stipulated by the Ming Dynasty are doomed to be difficult for them to make a living.Han Yiliang said that the salary is just that little.Let's forget it, the county uncle's monthly salary is NT$4,520, which is less than NT$56,000 a year, and not enough to save NT$560,000 for ten years without food or drink.As for the three items of filial piety to the boss, sending to welcome the relationship, and completing the pilgrimage, it will cost 800,000 to 3 million.Han Yiliang did not say that this huge sum of money was spent for several years.Honoring your superiors and sending them to us are continuous every year. Officials from other places go to Beijing for a pilgrimage once every three years, and it takes nine years to pass the exam.Even if it is estimated according to the standard most favorable to the spender, it will cost 200,000 yuan in nine years. This big hole needs to be filled by the county magistrate's family for 14 or 15 years without eating, drinking, or wearing clothes.I haven't calculated the necessary savings for retirement and disease prevention. With such a huge disparity in the inequality of life, how can it be balanced?If you do it reluctantly, of course you can't guarantee a relatively decent life, you can't keep your wife and children from talking about it, you can't leave a decent inheritance, and if you don't do it well, you will be in danger of being hung upside down by the leader.In addition, there is a comparison problem in terms of expenditure.People always pay attention to their relative status, and they all have the ambition to be no worse than others.And the county magistrate's annual income is not much higher than that of the owner farmers.Can the social elites who hold a lot of power willingly stand shoulder to shoulder with the owner farmers? 【Forcing officials to be robbers】 Considering the above balance of payments issue, it seemed unreasonable for Chongzhen to ask Han Yiliang about the origin of the five hundred taels of silver.The emperor who grew up in the deep palace was young after all.Logically, the first thing he should do is not to punish officials who give money, but to calculate the accounts of the entire life cycle, to settle the obviously unfair budget, and then call on civil officials not to love money.Of course, with the financial crisis at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the number of officials was so large that they could not afford to support them. It is pure nonsense to demand a substantial increase in wages.But that's another question.It cannot be said that it is a reasonable policy to create a huge gap in the income and expenditure of officials.This kind of policy is like a shepherd raising dogs, only giving two bowls of gruel to the huge herding dogs every day.Using this method of not giving enough food to raise dogs will sooner or later turn the shepherd dog into a wild dog, a wolf in dog's clothing. Now it seems understandable that the power supporting Han Yiliang against the emperor is the power of reality and reason.The entire bureaucratic group has included income other than salaries in its annual daily living budget, and included it in the budget for ten, eight, or even the entire life cycle. Life and promotion without income other than salaries is unimaginable.Han Yiliang has no strength to fight against the rules of reality, nor does he plan to fight, and he is unwilling to be such an upright official.As the highest supervisory official, Han Yiliang publicly explained to the emperor that the official court rules could not be followed.He also took gray income for granted and regarded it as an essential part of life. This is a clear signal: In the eyes of the emperor's confidantes, income outside the salary has in fact obtained a legal status.Receiving and granting property in different names and in different amounts has become an unspoken rule that is not necessarily stated but really works.This means that upright officials have completely disappeared from top to bottom.At the same time, the formal salary system has become a system that exists in name only.This formal system really does not deserve a better fate. It is just as good at driving officials into robbers as it is good at driving ordinary people to Liangshan. In short, from an economic point of view, it is very difficult to be an upright official.The formal system at that time punished and eliminated honest officials.A person who insists on being an upright official must be a loser economically.Of course, the calculations here are all economic accounts, with no emphasis on moral integrity.Ethics is a big banner waved by the bureaucracy from beginning to end, and it rolls so brightly that you simply cannot take it lightly.I fully admit that moral power is effective, as evidenced by Hai Rui's uprightness; but moral power is limited, as evidenced by Hai Rui's rarity and reputation. Notes: ①The price of silver in the international market fluctuates widely, ranging from as low as $5 per ounce to as high as $50 per ounce.This is calculated at $8 an ounce.One ounce is a little over twenty-eight grams.One tael in the Ming Dynasty is roughly equivalent to a little over thirty-seven grams today.The purchasing power of silver fluctuated greatly in different periods and regions in the Ming Dynasty. When one tael of silver bought seven shi of rice, one shi of rice sold for one tael or six taels of silver.During the reign of Chongzhen, the price of rice was generally high.On average throughout the Ming Dynasty, each stone of japonica rice seemed to be at ○.Seven or two up and down. ②See Volume 258 of "History of the Ming Dynasty", the biography of Mao Yujian attached to Han Yiliang. ③One stone in the Ming Dynasty is roughly equivalent to one stone in the present. ○ Seven three stones, that is, one hundred and seven liters.I don't know whether salary rice is generally rice or processed rice, whether it is japonica rice or brown rice, and I don't know whether the current purchase price, wholesale price or retail price of rice should be used.The salaries received by Beijing officials were often processed rice, which was called white grain at that time.According to the saying that one jin of processed white rice is 160 jin per stone, and one jin of Ming Dynasty is 590 grams, one stone of white rice is ninety-four.four kilograms.At the time of writing this article, the retail price of japonica rice per kilogram in Beijing was around 2.About six yuan (NT$10.4).The calculations in this paper are based on these assumptions. ④ See "History of the Ming Dynasty" Volume 72, Zhiguanzhi. ⑤In fact, at that time, only one stone of rice was distributed every month, and twelve stones were distributed every year.Up and down are like this.The rest are distributed in silver, banknotes, and cloth, which is called color folding.According to the usual practice, the magistrate of the seventh grade actually receives twelve shi of rice every year, twenty-seven.Four or nine taels of silver, three hundred and sixty guan notes. (See Wanli "Minghuidian" Volume 39).These three hundred and sixty pennies are nominally equivalent to thirty-six shi of rice (ten pennies are worth one shi), but in reality, due to bad banknote law and serious depreciation of the currency, this money may not be able to buy it in the market. To four stone rice.Calculated in this way, the monthly salary of the county magistrate in the Ming Dynasty was only NT$4,520.According to the rules of the Ming Dynasty, the greater the official, the greater the proportion of Zhese, and the more disadvantages. ⑥ See Volume 15 of "Allusion Jiwen". ⑦ See "History of the Ming Dynasty" Volume 226, Biography of Hai Rui. ⑧ See "History of the Ming Dynasty" Biography Sixty-six. ⑨See Volume 24 of "Huangqing Jingshiwenbian".