Chapter 5 How did the pauper emperor become

Over the past dynasties, the state's finances have always inevitably collapsed. Rather than saying that this is a curse, it is better to say that there are profound historical development laws hidden behind this phenomenon.To explain this phenomenon, we might as well look at where the emperors of the Qing Dynasty spent their money. First, the life of the emperor was not as easy as everyone imagined. In addition to paying salaries to officials, big and small, the emperor also had to spend money himself. The emperor had his own house, wife and children, complete leisure and entertainment facilities, and thousands of servants (eunuchs, maids, etc.) were on call at any time. These people All have to rely on the emperor to pay wages.

In addition, there is a large group of people who help the emperor spend money.They don't need to go to work, and they don't need to pay any labor, but the emperor has to give them a sum of money every year, and it's okay to pay less, because they are all relatives of the emperor, and they have a common name called the royal family. At the beginning of the founding of a dynasty, the population of the royal family will not be too large, and the pressure on the emperor will not be too great, but as time goes by, the population of the royal family will increase day by day, and the burden on the emperor will become heavier.In the early years of Shunzhi, there were only a few thousand members of the royal family, but in the Daoguang period there were tens of thousands of people. Therefore, Daoguang had to spend millions of taels of silver every year to settle this group of relatives.

Second, corruption. The most indispensable thing in all dynasties is corrupt officials. The greatest significance of the existence of this group of people is to dig the foot of feudalism-they keep the administrative cost of the court high, and most of the money allocated by the court goes into their stomachs and Pockets, as for how much money is left for the people, it depends on their mood. So what is the reason for them to be so presumptuous?The answer is that the cost of crime is too low. To put it simply, compared with the total number of corrupt officials, those who are found and punished are less than one percent.

The benefits of corruption are high and the risk of corruption is low, which is really the welfare of corrupt officials.And the person who gave benefits to these corrupt criminals was none other than the emperor himself! The emperor used the magical weapon of "rule of man" to protect corruption.Throughout the dynasties, the emperor's means of governing mainly relied on the rule of man, and there was no democracy and no rule of law. The supervisory system is not perfect, and there is no limit to the term of office of officials, resulting in too much power in the hands of officials, which cannot be effectively supervised and restricted.Whoever has the most power and the highest official rank has the final say, and the official's personal wishes can determine everything.The right to be void without expiration, such a good condition for corruption, whoever is not greedy is stupid!

Therefore, corruption cannot be eradicated by the emperor's several anti-corruption campaigns. For example, Emperor Jiaqing failed to stop the officials' enthusiasm for corruption even after killing the giant corrupt officials. Third, natural disasters. The level of productivity in a feudal society determined the government's resilience to disasters.For example, if the Yellow River is flooding, there is only one way to deal with it—blocking the breach. During the Jiaqing period, it cost tens of millions of taels of silver to block a breach in the Yellow River.The cost of river regulation is so high, God knows how much money is actually used for river regulation.Anyway, even the materials from the work were thrown into the Yellow River, and you have nowhere to check.

The Yellow River floods, officials are corrupt, and the bean curd project makes the Yellow River more likely to flood. This is a vicious circle. Fourth, suppress peasant uprisings. How come there have been peasant uprisings in all dynasties?Although the goals of farmers are not high - farmers (women), mountain springs, and some fields.As long as you have something to eat, you can live, and as long as you can live, you will never think of rebellion.But the reality is cruel. At the end of each dynasty, they will always have nothing to eat, because they have an almost invincible enemy: land annexation.

"Land annexation" means that with the development of the feudal economy, landlords, bureaucrats, and businessmen have mastered more and more wealth, and they use the money they earn or exploit to buy land.As a result, more and more land was concentrated in the hands of a few people (the royal family was generally the largest landowner), while farmers lost more and more land. The end result is that farmers have no land to grow, and if they don’t have land to grow, they can only farm and work for the landlord (tenant). The landlord’s land is not white, and you have to pay rent.If there is a natural or man-made disaster, you can't even pay the rent, let alone eat?

I can't even eat, so why not? Then reverse it!Only rebels can have their own land and food! After all, the peasants' uprising for two thousand years was all about a piece of land! From the last years of Qianlong to the early years of Jiaqing, the White Lotus Sect successfully united the majority of peasant friends who could not grow land and eat food, and then revolted!In order to suppress the White Lotus Rebellion, the Qing government spent nearly 200 million taels of military expenditure, which almost exhausted the wealth accumulated in the prosperous Kangxi and Qianlong periods.

That's how money is spent. A country is actually a company. If a company has no money, it will go bankrupt, and if the country has no money, it will die. Daoguang also vaguely understood this truth, but the Qing Dynasty when he took over was an agricultural society, which was not yet equipped for the implementation of capitalism, with limited financial resources and no way to make a fortune.Since there is no way to make money, we can only work hard on thrift.But Daoguang never thought that he had been diligent and thrifty all his life, but he made the country more corrupt and corrupt.

To be fair, as far as personal morality is concerned, Daoguang's behavior of taking the lead in being diligent and frugal, and starting from me to reverse the flashy and extravagant social atmosphere is worthy of understanding and praise, but for the country, the empty treasury behind the "frugal" behavior means that this The Qing Dynasty established by the Immediate Nationality, nearly two hundred years after the founding of the country, the state machinery has decayed to an unbearable level, like a lingering camel, just waiting for the last straw to end its life. Soon, the straw will arrive.

The straw is Britain, which has entered an industrialized society.