The system of Tingtui was regarded by some people in later generations as a certain degree of the selection system for dish cooking, but it has been mentioned in the previous article of this book, and it can be summed up in one sentence: at least the Ming generation's court push has nothing to do with dish cooking.

However, the Ming Dynasty still liked to use the means of promotion to show the integrity of officials, so the court push together with analogy, ministry push, and edict push, constituted the most important part of the Ming Dynasty bureaucratic election.

Theoretically speaking, the objects of the court push are usually the Great Nine Secretaries and the Governors, and the participants are the ministers and the Great Nine Secretaries. The results of the votes of the officials promoted by the Senate were used as the main basis for the emperor's reference.

This is combined with analogy (the participants are the officials, and the officials below the sixth rank and the five grades below the outside are promoted), the ministry push (the participants are the officials, and the small Jiuqing, the aspects [such as Bingbeidao], the prefect, etc.), and the edict (the participants are the Jiuqing, Kedao, and the ministers are promoted, and the second department of the officials and soldiers are the Shangshu and the governor) are combined, forming a progressive expression of public opinion.

Considering that the election of the bureaucrats also referred to public opinion, the election of the Ming Dynasty also constituted a kind of cycle of expression of public will, and used it as a way to counter the emperor's simplicity - the emperor's rejection of the result of the imperial recommendation was actually an indirect negation of the results of the ministry and analogy, and may affect the rationality of the imperial recommendation.

With such an explanation, the officials may have found a problem: Shouldn't the recommendation of cabinet ministers be called "Push"?

Yes, officially speaking, it is indeed called Push, but later the two have a tendency to merge into one, and slowly they are all generalized by Ting Tui.

There are actually two fundamental reasons why this kind of election system can be formed and continued, and both of these fundamental reasons are from the emperor.

First, the election system is convenient and trouble-free. This is actually very simple, there are so many courtiers in the Manchu Dynasty, as an emperor, he may not even be able to "know everything", let alone know the roots, so some positions do not necessarily have to be carefully considered. Let the ministers draw up a few candidates, and it will be roughly the same.

It's a bit like people in later generations using computers, when they are too lazy to use their brains, or when faced with inconsequential problems, the computer will recommend a few options for people, and people just need to make a simple choice, which is quite considerate. As far as the emperor is concerned, these candidates may be similar in his impression, who is not used?

From this point of view, I can also understand another question by the way, that is, why the vast majority of cabinet ministers in the middle and late Ming Dynasty had the experience of "imperial teacher" (here refers to being a Japanese lecturer).

The answer is very simple: if you have been a Japanese lecturer, and the emperor is more impressed with you, at least he roughly knows what kind of person you are, then you have an advantage countless times greater than other officials who only have a name as a symbol in the emperor's mind.

The second fundamental reason why the election system can be formed and continue to this day is that for the emperor, this system has not weakened the emperor's power to appoint and dismiss personnel.

This is one of the most important and misunderstood aspects of the system. In fact, the Ming Dynasty's court push was actually only a recommendation process, and not the ministers who participated in the discussion and nomination had the final say. The key decision is always in the hands of the emperor.

The reason why it is easy to cause misunderstanding is that in later generations of modern society, countries with constitutional monarchies will also do this. For example, the Queen of England, not to mention the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is the Prime Minister of Australia in previous years, but it must be approved by Queen Elizabeth before it can be officially effective.

Of course, this British approach is basically just a form of law, and I have never heard of the time when Her Majesty the Queen, who is "as good as a stream", does not approve of it.

However, it is completely different in Daming, and the biggest difference is also two points:

There will not be only one candidate nominated by a court recommendation, usually two or three people, and the emperor will make the final decision. In other words, even if you are shortlisted and become the candidate to be promoted, it does not mean that the position is already yours, you still have competitors.

Compared to the United Kingdom, you must not have heard of the fact that modern society can still put forward two or three candidates for the prime minister of the United Kingdom, and then let the queen choose them, right? If this were the case, would you still think that the Queen of England was just an ornament?

Second, the candidates for court push can be rejected or even skipped. This article has been mentioned in the previous article in this book, and here is just a simple example: Zhang Xuan in Jiajing was specially simplified into the cabinet by Zhongzhi, and Yin Shidan was also in the cabinet in Longqing, which are all examples of skipping Tingtui.

As for the rejection, there are also yes, Zhu Yijun in the original history did this: At that time, Gu Xiancheng was in charge of the promotion and transfer of officials. In the twenty-second year of Wanli, the imperial court promoted cabinet scholars, and the people nominated by Gu Xiancheng were all disgusted by Zhu Yijun, so he angered the emperor, was stripped of his official status, and was dismissed and went home. And the court recommendation candidate that time was also rejected by the emperor, and the ministry was asked to reformulate.

Therefore, to sum up, as a system, Tingtui has a greater symbolic significance, and the real final decision is always in the hands of the emperor.

Of course, this is not to say that Tingtui is not important, on the contrary, the importance of Tingtui is still very high, and it can even be said to be of great significance.

The source of this meaning lies in the insistence of the Ming Dynasty gentry on public will - "the Son of Heaven cannot take away the minister's doctor, and the minister's doctor cannot take the foolish husband and foolish woman".

This kind of thinking makes the emperor's dictatorship always in a state of moral unacceptability, so it is very dangerous for even the supreme emperor in the world to rashly oppose the public will.

The political expectation of traditional China was that the emperor would work hard and make people easier, rather than be self-authoritarian and powerless. In the Ming Dynasty, where the bureaucracy was highly systematic, the emperor himself was the most important cog of the bureaucracy, so he usually had to be positive about the public will of the bureaucracy, because if he rejected the will of the other cogs, it could lead to a dysfunctional bureaucracy.

To be hostile to the bureaucracy in order to preserve imperial power, to change from a mediator to an antagonist, is an act of digging one's own grave in the long run, because it exposes the nature of a dictator. Even the short-term cost is very large, and it is easy to be resisted or even abandoned by the bureaucracy - don't forget the trend of officials in the late Wanli period to unseal themselves, and the situation of being alone in the later period of Chongzhen.

What Wanli encountered was a kind of "non-violent non-cooperation" between monarchs and ministers caused by the struggle for national capital; And Chongzhen is even more serious, that is really abandoned by the bureaucracy, not even just civilian officials, he was also abandoned by the military general group. If the emperor under the system of the Ming Dynasty reaches that level, there is no one left, and he died unjustly.

Of course, the current Wanli has not yet been obviously resisted, so this time Tingtui acted in an orderly manner under his edict.

Even if it is a cabinet minister, first of all, the officials will circle the candidates first. In the era when certain powerful officials were in power, this selection was not susceptible to other interference.

But now, it's different. After Yan Song until now, it is basically a period of strong cabinet, and the officials can only follow the instructions of the cabinet.

And specifically for the moment, there is also a difference, that is, the official department as a whole is in the state of power of the real school. Of course, there are historical reasons for this, mainly because Gao Gong was the first assistant and the head of the ministry, because he was in charge of the affairs for eight years, which led to the ministry being labeled as a high party since then.

Although today's Tianguan is Yang Wei, a seemingly neutral but actually Jin Party, anyway, after Zhang Siwei Ding Wei, the Gao Party and the Jin Party are actually unable to separate - they are all highly pragmatic, so of course the candidates launched by the Ministry will uphold the will of Gao Pragmatic.

It's just that this so-called high pragmatic will is not his will, this is just a compromise product, the only thing to talk about is that this compromise is to retreat more at the time of Shen Shi, and the high pragmatism is still slightly advantageous.

However, this election of the officials is still quite interesting, Gao Pragmatic made it clear that he would not give face, or he really implemented the meaning expressed during the dialogue between himself and Shen Shixing: I will take the face this time!

Therefore, almost all of the three candidates recommended by the Ministry of Officials are related to high pragmatism.

These three candidates are Wang Jiaping, Chen Jingbang, and Yu Shenxing.

Wang Jiaping, a native of Shanxi, no matter what he thinks, in the eyes of the outside world, Shanxi people are naturally Jin Party;

Although Chen Jingbang is a native of Fujian, he is the seventh in the second class of the gold list of Jiajing in the 44th year of Jiajing, and the chief examiner that year was Gao Gong, that is to say, Gao Gong is Chen Jingbang's teacher. It was for this reason that Chen Jingbang became the first batch of lecturers during the period of Prince Zhu Yijun. In other words, he is both a pragmatic teacher and a pragmatic brother...... In a way, there is a feeling of teaching art on behalf of a teacher.

As for Yu Shenxing, he is the grandmaster of the high-pragmatism township test, and the high-pragmatism Xie Yuan was ordered by him. In addition, they have another origin: Yu Shenxing is actually a student of Zhang Juzheng.

After the fall of Zhang Juzheng, most of the protégés were not suppressed by Gao Gong because their status was not high, and Liang Menglong, who climbed the fastest, has now become a highly pragmatic ally and directly joined the Shixue School, so Yu Shenxing's background is no problem.

This time, in addition to Wang Jiaping, who really plans to be pushed up, the latter two are Gao Shishi and Zhu Yijun's past teachers - of course, Wang Jiaping also worked as a lecturer later, but it was not the first batch.

When this recommendation was sent to the emperor, it did not mean that the emperor should make up his mind now, this was only the first time to look at it, and then if the emperor agreed, he would let the cabinet and the "Great Nine Secretaries" push it.

Zhu Yijun is basically satisfied with these three candidates, because the three of them are all people who have been his lecturers, and he knows them well.

It's just that Zhu Yijun is a little strange, because according to the general situation, even if Chen Jingbang and Yu Shenxing want to be simple now, it seems that they will stop at the level of Shangshu, and they seem to be a little short of qualifications when they are directly promoted to the elder of the pavilion.

He thought about it and felt that the actual meaning of the Ministry of Officials should be to promote Wang Jiaping, otherwise he would not be ranked first.

Zhu Yijun actually didn't know that Wang Jiaping was not a Jin Party in the real sense, he just wondered that since Wang Jiaping was from Shanxi, it would be good to add him to the cabinet, and to some extent, it was equivalent to topping the vacancy left by Zhang Siwei.

So the emperor quickly informed the cabinet and held a meeting with the work of the three ministers in the official newspaper as the recommended objects of the court to see what everyone's opinions were.

In the Ming Dynasty, there were "big nine qing" and "small nine qing". Among them, the "Great Nine Qings" is the six Shangshu plus the imperial history of the left capital, plus the Dali Temple Qing and the general political envoy; "Xiao Jiuqing" is Taichang Siqing, Taifu Siqing, Guanglu Siqing, Zhan Shi, Hanlin Bachelor, Honglu Siqing, Guozi Priest Wine, Yuanma Siqing and Shangbao Siqing.

The people who are qualified to promote the cabinet ministers are the cabinet scholars and the big nine secretaries, so Gao Shishi is not eligible to participate, he can only honestly wait for the results of the promotion - although this is basically unlikely.

Those who participated in this meeting were the four cabinet elders Shen Shixing, Xu Guo, Zhang Xueyan, and Wu Dui, plus Yang Wei, the secretary of the Ministry of Officials, Shen Li, the secretary of the Ministry of Households, Xu Xuemo, the secretary of the Ministry of Rites, Liang Menglong, the secretary of the Ministry of War, Shuhua of the Criminal Department, Yang Zhao, the secretary of the Ministry of Industry, Zhao Jin, the imperial history of Zuodu, Li Shida, the secretary of Dali Temple, and Zhang Mengnan, the envoy of the political department, a total of thirteen people.

The rest of the people have been mentioned before, but Li Shida, the secretary of Dali Temple, has not mentioned it, and here is a supplementary sentence: This brother is a native of Jingyang, Shaanxi, and Wei Xuezeng is a fellow villager...... Completion of the repetition.

Although the court push was held in the Datong room of the cabinet duty room, it was far away from the six ministries (the cabinet was in the palace, and the six ministries were outside the palace), but Gao Pragmatic always got the news very quickly, and less than half an hour after the results of the cabinet court push, Gao pragmatic knew the results.

Not surprisingly, Wang Jiaping was unanimously praised by the bigwigs attending the meeting, and was "publicly recommended" as the best candidate for the new cabinet minister.

In fact, there is really no surprise in this, just look at the factions of the congregation, you can see that it is almost either the real school or the heart school, and since the actual rulers of the two factions have reached a gentleman's agreement, what other variables can there be in this meeting?

The results of the court push were sent to the Wenhua Hall by Shen Shixing and Xu Guo to Zhu Yijun, who was waiting there early, Zhu Yijun was not surprised by this result at all, but asked Shen Shixing and Xu Guo: "I think the result of the court push is okay, but Wang Jiaping is still a bachelor in the Hanlin Academy, if you want to enter the cabinet, you have to transfer to the six departments first, how do you think the two gentlemen should be transferred?" ”

Although Zhu Yijun said that "to enter the cabinet, you must first transfer six departments", in fact, this is just a general term, in fact, before the Hanlin historian entered the cabinet, there were generally only two places to be transferred, either the Ministry of Officials or the Ministry of Rites, which was different from the route of Zhang Xueyan and Wu Dui entering the cabinet.

Shen Shixing had already prepared, and immediately replied when he heard the words: "You can first serve as the left servant of the Ministry of Officials." ”

In fact, there is no vacancy in the left servant of the Ministry of Officials now, but this additional official before entering the cabinet has particularity, and occasionally does not need to be in real office.

Zhu Yijun nodded in agreement, and said directly: "Then please ask Mr. Shen to draft the decree on my behalf, Wang Jiaping will be promoted to the left waiter of the Ministry of Officials, a scholar of the East Pavilion University, and enter the cabinet to participate in the maintenance of the aircraft." ”

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