Wang Xijue's letter was slightly unexpected by Hai Rui.

Hai Rui and Wang Xijue actually know each other. Wang Xijue is the leader of Jiajing for 41 years, as one of the three tripods, of course, he stayed in Beijing for the Hanlin Academy, and Hai Rui was promoted from Xingguo Zhixian to the head of the Yunnan Department of the Ministry of Household in the 43rd year of Jiajing, and also went to Beijing.

However, Hai Rui and Wang Xijue were not familiar with each other at that time. First, Hai Jui is relatively "withdrawn" and does not often carry out routine movements between officials; Second, Wang Xijue is famous and noble, for Hai Rui, he failed in the two examinations, and as a result, he made up for the official as a person, starting from the county teaching, it took him a full ten years to get mixed with the county, and it took another six years to mix with the "scumbag" who was the head of the household department was completely unsightly, and naturally he would not take the initiative to approach Hai Rui.

The intersection of the two appeared in about half a year from the end of the third year of Longqing to the middle of the fourth year of Longqing. At that time, Wang Xijue was favored by Li Chunfang, the then first assistant, and wanted to be promoted, but unfortunately the Beijing Middle School was full of officials, so he was transferred to Nanjing Guozijian as the secretary, which was regarded as "inspection and exercise".

And Hai Rui became famous because of the relationship between "Public Security and Sparseness", and he has been promoted repeatedly in recent years, and at this time, he also happened to release the governor of Yingtian as the right imperial historian.

Yingtian is roughly the southern part of the Yangtze River in Nanzhili, and at its largest, it has jurisdiction over Yingtian, Chengtian, Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, Taiping, Chizhou, Huizhou, Ningguo, Anqing and Guangde. The range is basically equivalent to the southern part of Jiangsu and the southern part of Anhui in later generations. From the economic point of view at that time, it was almost the strongest area in the Ming Dynasty.

In the early days of the Governor of Yingtian, he was stationed in Nanjing, borrowed the Huitong Pavilion, and built another office when Chenghua was built, and moved out of the Huitong Pavilion. After Jiajing, he was stationed in Suzhou every time he encountered a flood, called Xingtai, and Hai Rui was basically stationed in Suzhou during his tenure. Note: In the second year of Wanli, in order to facilitate the central scheduling, the Fu Agency was moved from Nanjing to Jurong; Thirty-one years after Wanli in the original history, he was stationed in Suzhou.

Speaking of which, the situation is very clear - Wang Xijue is the richest man in Suzhou, and he happened to go back to Nanjing, and he happened to meet Hai Rui in the Qing Dynasty as the governor of Yingtian, and he was also directly stationed in Suzhou, how could this not be a conflict?

Hai Rui was in Yingtianqing's acres, itself in order to cooperate with the high arch and then began to continue to promote a whip method.

Here I want to explain a little bit, a whip method was proposed by Gui Cao in the tenth year of Jiajing, and at the end of the third year of Longqing, when the Supreme Gong Qifu and Hai Rui served as the governor of Yingtian, it had actually appeared for forty years.

However, although it appeared for a long time, it was not fully rolled out in the Ming Dynasty, because the main feature of the tax law is that the land endowment, forced labor and other miscellaneous taxes of various states and counties are combined into one article, and the silver taels are collected together, and they are converted and paid according to the mu.

In this way, although the tax system has been greatly simplified, making it easier to collect taxes, and at the same time making it difficult for local officials to cheat, thereby increasing fiscal revenue, but because of the fact that only silver taels are collected, it has led to serious "unadaptability" in areas where the commodity economy, especially money circulation, is underdeveloped.

There are pros and cons, and according to the bureaucratic habits at this time, only a few people are willing to try to promote it, and more officials tend to oppose it, "inaction is useless, but at least it will not be blamed for it."

Of course, there were still reformers in the upper echelons of the imperial court, such as Gao Gong, Zhang Juzheng and other important ministers who advocated the promotion of a whip law. However, although Gao Gong was the core figure of the reformists at this time, he did advocate promotion, but his promotion was different from Zhang Juzheng's direct one-size-fits-all "nationwide forced promotion" in the ninth year of Wanli in the original history.

Gao Gong advocates the implementation of ꓹ one place at a time, and its idea is that the rich provinces go first, the middle provinces gradually follow, and the poor provinces are suspended. So it is obvious that the richest Jiangnan region in the world, that is, the jurisdiction of the governor of Yingtian, must "dare to be the first in the world".

The benefits of simplifying administration are of course clear to future generations, but the "ancients" may not have understood it, so why did such a simple thing not become famous forty years after a whip law was proposed?

The reason is simple: although I understand the truth of this, the more complicated the administration, the more opportunities I have as an official to get on and down. Now you suddenly say that you want to simplify, I have a stake, how can I easily agree?

Resistance, that's how it came.

Since the resistance is large, then the knife must be sharp, so Gao Gong sacrificed Hai Rui's dragon slaying knife.

Of course, the Dragon Slayer Knife is worthy of its reputation, but it is unrealistic to expect Hai Rui to "clean up the demonic atmosphere" single-handedly, so Hai Rui's move is still very targeted - that's right, he aimed the main spearhead at Xu Jie, the former cabinet chief assistant who had just returned to his hometown.

There is no need to go into detail about this past, only to talk about the collateral effects. Wang Xijue, as the richest man in Suzhou, although most of his family property was inherited, but the source of these properties was naturally indispensable to the unified style of the official and business groups at that time.

However, Wang Xijue has always been a smart person, and he knew that with his reputation and status in the officialdom at that time, it was not enough to compete with Hai Rui, so he had always deliberately kept a low profile and refused to get involved in this "fairy fight", so as not to become the mortal who suffered.

And Hai Rui's side did only take Xu Jie as the primary target, although he also received some complaints from the people about some things in Wang Xijue's family: because Hai Rui encouraged the people to redress their grievances, there were an astonishing number of similar complaints, not only against Wang Xijue, but did not directly use the national law, but wrote to Wang Xijue, and copied all those complaints and sent them.

This set, Hai Rui also used Xu Jie, which can be regarded as a kind of "salute before soldier". Xu Jie also "gave face" at the beginning and returned some fields, but unfortunately Hai Rui thought that he had retreated too little and too little, and this "return" was purely a face-saving project, so Hai Rui wrote to Xu Jie again and asked him to return half of the fields, but of course Xu Jie refused, so the contradiction intensified.

As for Wang Xijue, Hai Rui took the same means, but the results achieved were far better than Xu Jie's. Without saying a word, Wang Xijue returned the fields pointed out in the letter according to Hai Rui's request, and even replied in the letter that he had rarely taken care of the situation at home because of his busy studies and official duties, and he did not know that there were still these things. He himself was shocked and ashamed of this, and said that when he was busy with this time, he would definitely investigate it thoroughly, and live up to the kindness of Haigong's reminder.

As a role model, he said that he was busy with his studies in the past is also a reason, even if others don't believe it, they don't dare to say anything, but at this time, he is a southern supervisor, what is there to be busy, then it is up to everyone.

But Hai Rui didn't have time to pay attention to him, and since he was willing to retire from the field, Hai Rui temporarily stopped.

If things only go so far, the relationship between Hai Rui and Wang Xijue will not be very bad, because at least neither side has torn their faces.

Although Wang Xijue lost some land, his family was not simply a "landlord and a strong landlord", but a more typical kind of Jiangnan chaebol who "got rich because of business, and then bought land". To some extent, land is just an "investment in real estate", which is used to "preserve the value of spare money" when there is no good direction or opportunity for commercial expansion.

Therefore, the loss is of course a loss, but it does not hurt the muscles or move the bones, and the greatness is only a temporary pain, and the patience is over.

Who knows that people are not as good as heaven, although Wang Xijue avoided the knife with the tightest wind, he was hit by a stray bullet when he left office.

This thing is really unlucky for Mr. Wang, Hai Rui offended the Jiangnan officialdom after the big battle in Yingtian, although Xu Jie was unlucky, but after giving a sum of silver to his protégé Zhang Juzheng, Zhang Juzheng found Gao Gong and went to make peace on behalf of his teacher.

Although Gao Gong heard that Zhang Juzheng had accepted the money, considering that Zhang Juzheng himself advocated reform after all, and that Xu Jie's peace might just be due to the relationship between teachers and students, he decided to stop - there is a premise here, that is, Xu Jie's submission to softness also means that the gentry and officials in Jiangnan have pinched their noses and recognized the implementation of a whip law. Since the purpose of the high arch has been achieved, for the sake of reputation, it is not intended to kill people.

It's just that this time, Hai Rui was trapped.

Gao Gong only cares whether the policy implementation is smooth, now that things are done, and the rumors have been released from Zhang Juzheng's side, Jiangnan officials breathed a sigh of relief at the same time, and they remembered revenge - of course, not to Gao Gong, Gao Gong Sheng's family Tailong, they can't figure it out, their revenge is for Hai Rui.

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So immediately after Hai Rui was impeached, not one letter or two, but a snowflake of bullets from Jiangnan to the General Administration, entered the celebrant supervisor, and presented it to Mu Zong's desk.

The next plot is a familiar routine: Hai Rui defends himself, but as a foreign official, he can't close his door like Gao Pragmatic's slander case, and he still has to do his job.

This time, Hai Rui's self-defense happened to be very coincidental in time, and it happened to be during the Jingcha period. So Hai Rui didn't bother the two masters, and went to a "Being Criticized for Ignoring His Duties", and wrote thousands of words to defend himself.

Originally, there was nothing to do with Wang Xijue, because Wang Xijue was quite low-key during this period of time, and he would never work against Hai Rui. Who knew that people were sitting at home, and the pot came from the sky, and Hai Rui was impeached for many inexplicable "trivial matters", and the bull temper came up, and he gave a more detailed explanation and evidence for a large number of trivial matters in his self-defense.

Here accidentally mentioned a sentence: "Wang Xijue saw that he turned to the north of the division, carried the sedan chair straight into the second division, and the middle way caused harm to the soap was punished for thirty." ”

It stands to reason that Hai Rui's self-defense and resignation wrote thousands of words, and he answered at least dozens of false accusations, while Wang Xijue only had a total of 24 words here, which was really nothing.

But what kind of person is Wang Xijue? He attaches more importance to his reputation than to Gao Pragmatism, so he is naturally furious.

What is this thing talking about? said that when Wang Xijue was promoted from Nanjing Guozijian to Beijing Guozijian, he probably felt that he was going back to Beijing again, and the reuse of the matter of being promoted to Beijing was the meaning of high arches, so he was a little inflated, "lifting the sedan chair straight into the second division" - the shelf was a little bigger.

It's actually nothing if the shelf is bigger, but the trouble is that there was an accident halfway, "harm caused by the middle way" - Hai Rui didn't specify what harm was caused, but it should probably have hurt someone. So, Hai Rui grabbed the sedan chair man and beat him for thirty boards.

In the eyes of ordinary people, this matter is naturally a trivial matter, after all, it was only the sedan chair man who was beaten, and Wang Xijue himself was not injured at all.

But that's not how the account is calculated, although this board is slapped on the buttocks of the sedan chair man, but in Wang Xijue's opinion, it is tantamount to hitting himself in the face!

What's more, if you hit it, you will fight, and this great thing will be spread locally for a while, and after a while, everyone will forget about it. But you shouldn't have written this thing into the song!

Written into the song, this Nima has been archived in the imperial court, and my Wang Xijue's face has been slapped into the annals of history by you!

It's tolerable, it's unbearable! The beam was so magically knotted.

It is common for Hai Rui to offend people, and he didn't care about it at the time, and only learned about it from others afterwards, but he didn't take it seriously - anyway, he didn't itch if he had lice too much, he didn't worry about debts too much, and he didn't miss Wang Xijue.

Since then, Wang Xijue has never had any contact with Hai Rui, whether public or private. Therefore, when he suddenly received a letter from Wang Xijue today, Hai Rui naturally smelled the peculiar smell at once.

Hai Rui looked at the letter, but found that the letter was more subtle than Gao Pragmatic's letter, not only did he not mention the past grievances, but he didn't even mention the word "Nancha".

In Wang Xijue's letter, which hardly has any oil and salt, there is only one sentence that is quite suspicious: "Jiangnan supplies nearly half of the world with a corner of land, and the gentry and the people have been working hard for a long time, and all industries have withered, how long will it last?" ”

Although Hai Rui was upright, he was not dull, and he soon realized that what Wang Xijue wanted to express was in this ordinary sentence that seemed to be just a general talk.

Jiangnan tax is heavy, this statement is true in the whole Ming Dynasty, but the Ming Dynasty itself is a very light tax, and the fixed tax in Jiangnan is based on the agricultural level during the Hongwu period, especially the grain output.

Nowadays, the main force of Jiangnan's economy has long been not the production of grain, but has been transformed into silkworm raising, paper printing, porcelain and ship industries. At the same time, commerce developed rapidly because there was almost no taxation before, and private commerce flourished, and even the so-called "germ of capitalism" appeared in later generations.

In this case, it is purely nonsense to say that "the gentry and the people in Jiangnan have been working hard for a long time, and all industries have withered".

Destitute? What does it wither into? Ten miles out of Qinhuai?

You're bullying me blind!

However, as one of Sir Humphrey's famous words, "I am talking about the position, and it has nothing to do with the facts", Wang Xijue is naturally also talking about the position, as for the facts...... That doesn't matter.

Hai Rui figured this out and couldn't help sneering: "Yu is not afraid of death, so why should he be afraid of death." ”

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PS: Did any friend guess the true intention of Wang Xijue's letter?