After more than a month of research, the Great Song Dynasty finally promulgated five new laws in early March of the second year of Jianxing (1171): the Jingjie Law, the Mu Tax Law, the Exemption Law, the Shecang Law and the Farmland Water Conservancy Law. {)

The meridian law was proposed by Zhao Ruyu, but the meridian law is actually not a new law, as early as the twelfth year of Shaoxing (1142) by the then Xianmo Pavilion bachelor, the deputy envoy of the Liangzhejiang Road Transit Li Chunnian proposed.

In fact, it was aimed at the fact that the official households and powerful households at that time took advantage of the war to annex land on a large scale, and refused to pay taxes by relying on their power, and evaded taxes by means such as dividing households and lowering the household registration level. Therefore, Li Chunnian proposed to measure the acres of land, take measures to set up the meridian boundary, and find out the hidden fields and coerced households, so as to achieve the purpose of promoting taxes evenly. At the same time, the name of the landowner, the population, the quantity, quality, and tax amount of the land will be registered, and the "anvil base will be thin" in a unified manner, with one copy left by the locality, one copy by the state government, and one copy by the transshipment department.

After more than ten years of implementation, the effect is remarkable. To varying degrees, it stabilized the people's livelihood and developed production, so as to achieve the goal of increasing the income of the imperial court.

However, in the process of implementing the Jingjie Law, the interests of many officials and wealthy people who owned a large amount of land were harmed, so it was also opposed by many people, and Qin Hui, who was the ruling prime minister at the time, took advantage of Li Chunnian's worries to appoint his confidant Wang Ji to tamper with the "Jingjie Law" and change "measuring the fields" to "self-reporting"; Changing the amount of taxes from the bottom up to apportionment from the top down has secretly increased the people's taxes by 40 percent, which has on the contrary caused the people's burden to be heavier. And after Li Chunnian Ding Wei was reinstated, he was afraid that Li Chunnian would find out, so he instructed the imperial servant Cao Yun to impeach Li Chunnian and forced Zhao Gou to dismiss Li Chunnian.

After Xiaozong succeeded to the throne, he continued to implement the meridian boundary law, but due to too much resistance, the implementation was sometimes good and bad, and later the Northern Expedition and the southern invasion of the Jin army had to be interrupted again.

The situation in the Great Song Dynasty is very similar to that when the meridian law was implemented at that time, the war had just subsided, and the production in Lianghuai, Liangzhejiang, Liangjiang, Lianghu and other places had been damaged to varying degrees, and the household registration and acres of land needed to be recounted, so Zhao Ruyu proposed that the meridian boundary law should be directly implemented now, and the household registration of the acres of land should be verified and the taxes should be shared equally, so as to reduce the burden of the people on the one hand, and increase the income of the imperial court on the other hand.

The law of tax per mu is a new tax system formulated by Zhao Ruyu on the basis of the meridian law, that is, all the land taxes, forced labor, and servitude of peasant households are calculated by the mu of the land, and no longer be collected separately. And when collecting taxes, one rate is paid in copper coins, and other items are converted into copper coins at one rate.

This is because no matter how much land is verified, it is impossible to prohibit the sale of land, because when there is a natural disaster or accident, the only way for ordinary farmers is to buy the land and tide over the difficulties. However, if there is no land, taxes and forced labor will not be reduced, and eventually there will be a situation in which the tax is lost and the tax burden is uneven.

The advantage of the mu tax law is that the burden on peasant households without land and little land is relatively lightened, and the burden on the rich households who occupy a large amount of land is correspondingly increased. And no matter how the land is bought and sold, it can also ensure that the basic income of the imperial court will not be reduced.

The law of exemption from labor was proposed by Xin Qiji, also known as the law of hired labor, which was originally one of the laws of Xining in that year, and the original intention was to dismantle the conscription into taxes and pay the money, and the government would use the money to hire laborers and exempt the peasant households.

However, in the process of implementation at that time, because the tax calculation was based on the level of rural households, that is, rich households paid more, and poor households paid less. This is understandable, but it has caused some unjudicial officials to work on the hierarchy of peasant households, and it has created new inequality. It is not unreasonable for Sima Guang to call this method "inevitably make people dare not seek wealth." At the same time, the exempt money is directly collected from copper coins, and many peasant households have to exchange copper coins in kind because of the lack of copper coins, and they will inevitably be taken advantage of by merchants to lower prices, thus suffering another layer of losses.

However, the exemption law proposed by Xin Qiji is different from the previous one, whether or not to be exempted from military service, and how much each service is up to the peasant households, and the government must not force it. At the same time, at the same time, ten days, that is, one month of service time, shall be subject to a unified charging standard, and it can be converted into copper coins in kind. In this way, the exemption from military service is more flexible, and for peasant households, if conditions permit, they can pay the exemption money when the farm is busy, so as not to miss the agricultural time, and serve in the agricultural slack time, which will reduce the expenditure.

The Shecang Method was originally founded by Zhu Xi, which is essentially similar to Wang Anshi's Qingmiao Law, that is, when the green and yellow crops are not harvested, the Shecang will lend grain to the farmers to tide over the difficulties, and after the autumn harvest, the farmers will return it to the Shecang and pay a certain amount of interest accordingly.

However, the biggest difference between the Shecang Law and the Seedlings Law is that the Seedlings Law is operated under the auspices of the government, which is easy to cause the phenomenon of fraud and forced apportionment, while the grain source of the Shecang comes from the voluntary accumulation of rich households and social citizens in the harvest year, and the social democrats elect people with good conduct as the head and deputy responsibility of the society, and accept the supervision of each social citizen, and the government and officials are not allowed to meddle in the affairs of the social warehouse, which eliminates the disadvantage of "officials are traitors". At the same time, the Seedlings Law stipulates that farmers repay the borrowed grain with copper coins, and are also taken advantage of by merchants to reduce prices, while the Shecang Law uses grain to repay grain, so as to reduce losses.

The problem is that the general community warehouses are based on the village and only lend to the rural households in the village, and not all villages have the conditions to set up social warehouses. Moreover, after all, Shecang is a non-governmental organization, and it is easy to break up. Moreover, after some peasant households borrowed grain again, due to various reasons, they still could not pay it after the autumn harvest, and it was difficult for the community warehouse to deal with it.

This article was proposed by Chen Liang, and on the basis of Zhu Xi, certain amendments were made, one is that the government came forward to organize the establishment of a community warehouse with the power of one township or several townships, but the government only pays for supervision, not for operation and management. But after making a profit, it is divided into two parts, one for the social warehouse and one for the government. Second, for peasant households who have borrowed grain and really cannot afford it, the government will return it to him, and the peasant households will repay the government in the form of forced labor, so as to make up for the lack of labor after being exempted. Third, in the event of a disaster, war and other events, the government has the right to call the grain after the social warehouse for emergency, and after the disaster subsides, the government will repay and make up for it. In this way, the advantages of the Shecang Law and the Seedlings Law were also combined, and the wealthy households and the government that established the Shecang Law also benefited from it.

These articles are not too surprising to date. Because Zhao Ruyu, Xin Qiji, Chen Liang and others are all ministers who support Zhao Chen's implementation of the new law. As for the farmland water conservancy law, it was actually proposed by Shi Miyuan. This was a bit unexpected, because after Shi Hao handed in his resignation, Zhao Chen immediately approved it, and the ministers also knew what was going on, and thought that Shi Miyuan would either ask for a foreign appointment or resign, so he actually proposed a new law.

However, the Han dynasty has always been based on agriculture, so the construction of water conservancy is a major event that all dynasties have attached great importance to. Since it was the southern crossing of the Song Dynasty, there were many rivers in the south, and there were also a large number of conditions for building water conservancy. It is also a very necessary thing.

However, these five new laws are actually aimed at agriculture, and except for the mu tax law, the other four are nothing new. The main reason is that Zhao Chen listened to the advice of Yang Yan and others, and it is better to change the law in a hurry, but rather gradually. At present, the top priority of the Great Song Dynasty is to restore agricultural production in various places.

The fiscal revenue of the Great Song Dynasty was composed of about four parts, namely two taxes (i.e., agricultural tax), commercial tax, monopoly tax, and miscellaneous tax. Among them, two taxes account for about 30 percent, commercial taxes reach 2 percent and 5 points, monopoly taxes account for about 2 percent, and miscellaneous taxes account for 1 percent and 5 percent.

Although agricultural tax is still the largest part of the fiscal revenue of the Great Song Dynasty, compared with the previous dynasty, the proportion of fiscal revenue is much smaller, but agriculture is still the foundation of the Great Song Dynasty, and the southern invasion of the Jin army, although it has caused a lot of damage to the two Huai, two Zhejiang, two rivers, two lakes and other places, but also dealt a heavy blow to the local powerful forces in various places, and also made the opposition to change much smaller, so Zhao Chen, Yang Yan, Zhao Ruyu, Xin Qiji, Chen Liang and other talents chose to start with agricultural innovation.

After these five new laws were proposed, Zhao Chen immediately handed them over to the courtiers for discussion.

The Daoxian Farmland Water Conservancy Law is still the most uncontroversial one, and there is no opposition to it. And there are not many objections to the border law, because after the land is cleared and the actual household registration is checked, the work that must be done to restore production is only a question of how to implement and supervise the whole body. Although most of the ministers owned a large amount of local products, and the implementation of the Boundary Law would inevitably harm their interests, this reason was not on the table.

In fact, the Exemption Law and the Shecang Law have similar regulations before, and there have been some experience in holding the law, and the advantages and disadvantages are also very clear, and this time it has also made some additions and revisions to the previous shortcomings, which can be regarded as relatively perfect, so although there will be some controversy, there is no big problem in passing.

Only the mu tax law, which is since the middle of the Tang Dynasty, after the formulation of the two taxes, another major change in the tax system, has not been implemented before, although theoretically it is good, but it is difficult to say how effective the implementation of the whole will be. Therefore, it has also become the focus of discussion among the ministers.

After the discussion of several ruling ministers of Zhongshu, Liu Heng first asked: "If the field endowment, forced labor, and servitude are all calculated in the acres of land, but the yield per mu of land is more or less, and if it is charged according to a unified standard, wouldn't it be unfair?" ”