"This cabinet was not founded by Taizu in the first place, if it were according to the ancestral system, I should dissolve the cabinet. Since several ancestors set up a cabinet and did not abolish it, and built the cabinet scholars who consulted with the state into a cabinet elder who controlled the outer court, it can be seen that the cabinet system is adapted to the needs of our Ming Dynasty to govern the country.

Besides, I don't plan to fully reinstate the position of Prime Minister of the Ancients. The post of prime minister oversees the military and political power of a country, and it is inclusive of all affairs, big and small. To be honest, such an uncontrolled prime minister is outside the palace, and I can't sleep either. Zhu Youzhen said very frankly his views on the position of prime minister.

Huang Liji's heart, which was originally a little hot, suddenly felt a little cold. I don't know what this Chongzhen means when he wants to reinstate his appearance, and when he says that he is not restoring the prime minister, he means.

Zhu Youzhen only paused, and then continued: "I plan to reorganize the official positions of the six ministries and nine secretaries, confirm all the powers and responsibilities of the officials of each ministry, and formulate them into writing.

The Cabinet is above the six ministries and holds the executive power of the Ming Dynasty, but is not allowed to interfere in the military and the judiciary. The Cabinet adopts the Prime Minister's responsibility system, and as long as the majority of the Cabinet members agrees, the six ministers and below can be directly dismissed without asking for my consent. However, the appointment and dismissal of the members of the Six Books and the Cabinet must be approved by me.

The Ministry of Officials and the Ministry of Household Books must be admitted to the cabinet, the former is the secondary minister, and the latter is the financial minister. Among the six ministries and nine secretaries, the Criminal Department, Dali Temple, and the Metropolitan Procuratorate must redefine their powers and responsibilities. The Criminal Department manages the arrest, the Metropolitan Procuratorate is responsible for litigation, and the Dali Temple is responsible for judicial interpretation and trial. These three are directly accountable to me, and the cabinet can supervise and reprimand but cannot interfere.

As for the Ministry of War, it is integrated with the Governor's Office of the Five Armies, and the Secretary of the Ministry of War is also responsible to me, and the Cabinet has no right to intervene. As for the regulations on the number of cabinet members, the distribution of powers and the scope of duties of cabinet members, they will be drawn up by the first assistant and the officials of the DPRK and China. However, the Prime Minister must be appointed for a term of five years, and he or she may not be re-elected for more than two terms. ”

As a senior bureaucrat, Chongzhen's simplified version of the mystery of the separation of powers, Huang Liji quickly comprehended, this is the emperor's technique of balancing the power of his subordinates. However, after the powers of the cabinet were clearly fixed, it seems that not only has not been expanded, but it seems to have become smaller than before.

However, after the powers of the Cabinet were stipulated in writing, the status of the Cabinet above the six ministries was supported by legal evidence. In the past, although the cabinet claimed to be the truth, when it encountered some powerful six books, the orders issued by the cabinet would be resisted as well.

This is because the jurisprudence for the existence of the cabinet is insufficient, and according to the written interpretation of the cabinet at the time of its establishment, the power of the cabinet is only to draw up decrees and make recommendations for the emperor. If the emperor did not adopt the advice of the cabinet, the cabinet would theoretically have no power to restrain the six ministries.

Some of the older ministers, or the Shangshu who had a closer relationship with the emperor, could simply ignore the orders issued by the cabinet, because by virtue of their relationship with the emperor, they could directly reject the orders drawn up by the cabinet from the inner court. Without the approval of the celebrant and the celebrant, in other words, without the emperor's approval, the cabinet's order is just a piece of waste paper.

Now, although Chongzhen has eliminated the four departments of the Criminal Department, Dali Temple, the Metropolitan Procuratorate, and the Military Department from the Six Ministries and Nine Secretaries, he has directly placed other departments under the cabinet. In other words, the cabinet will issue orders in the future, and as long as the emperor does not object, these departments must comply with them.

From consent to opposition, it seems that there is not much difference. But there is a world of difference between the high and the low. The cabinet and the six ministries had to go through the inner court to get in touch, but now they have become subordinate units. This alone has greatly enhanced the power of the Cabinet.

As for the separation of military power and judicial power, although Huang Liji regrets it a little, he believes that this is correct, after all, the prime minister has already occupied three of the five major powers of administration, justice, finance, military and personnel. If all these powers are concentrated on the prime minister, not to mention whether he will be sprayed by the Donglin Party as a traitor who wants to usurp the throne, first of all, Chongzhen should not be able to sleep.

What Huang Liji wants is to achieve some achievements, not to be Cao Cao, who is self-reliant on behalf of the Han Dynasty, and this Emperor Chongzhen is not much like the cowardly Emperor Han Xian. Based on Huang Liji's analysis of the character of the emperors of the Zhu family, if he really wants to be a true prime minister with five powers in one, I am afraid that after the matter is completed, he will have to meet his predecessor Hu Weiyong.

Huang Li scrutinized it very carefully, and thought that the official system after such a revision was much clearer than the current vague cabinet system of six ministries and nine secretaries. Moreover, the military, administrative, and judicial powers contain each other, and the structure has become more stable.

But these are not the point, the point is how Chongzhen wants to increase the tax of merchants. If Chongzhen just wants, he will push forward the matter of increasing commercial taxes, and with Huang Liji's understanding of the low-level officials, these officials will only use this name to extort good people, instead of really looking for those industries run by powerful families to collect taxes.

At that time, the black pot was carried by Chongzhen and him, the prime minister, but the treasury revenue did not increase much, not to mention, but fattened the low-level officials.

The most worrying thing is that if this leads to a strike by merchants all over the world, for example, the people in the Jiangnan area mostly rely on silkworms and weaving cloth for their business, once they are unable to sell their own production and cannot exchange it for food to make ends meet, then there will inevitably be a civil uprising in Jiangnan.

There was a civil uprising in Shanxi, and the courtiers were shocked at most, and then they did whatever they wanted, except for a few officials from Shanxi, who were more anxious. But if there is a civil uprising in the land south of the Yangtze River, which is half rich by the Ming Dynasty, then the officials of the DPRK and China will be restless.

Not only the officials and royal families in the capital need tax rice from Jiangnan, but also the soldiers in the nine sides need taxes from Jiangnan to support their families. The changes in Shanxi and Liaodong are just the troubles of the corners of the Ming Dynasty, but if the Ming Dynasty changes in the south of the Yangtze River, it will be a sign of chaos in the world.

At that time, even if he changes the first assistant to the prime minister, he will not be able to change the fate of being removed from office and held accountable. In this way, taking such a big risk to follow Chongzhen to carry out political reforms is not a waste in the end. He is not a politician like Zhang Juzheng who does not care about his life for the country, but just an old bureaucrat who cares about his life.

After listening to Zhu Youzhen's basic ideas for political reform, Huang Liji asked firmly again: "Then, how does Your Majesty plan to increase the commercial tax, which merchants will increase the tax, and how much will the tax increase?" ”

The use of formal written law to stipulate the power of the cabinet did not make Huang Liji dizzy, and blurted out that he promised to follow him to carry out reforms, which undoubtedly made Zhu Youzhen a little frustrated. If it weren't for the current point, Zhu Youzhen would definitely not want to say the final preparatory plan.

In Zhu Youzhen's plan, if Huang Liji can take on some responsibilities and help himself bear the criticism of Shilin Qingliu, he really doesn't want to say this plan. Because there are too many variables in this plan, it really does not fit his vision of wanting to take all the changes into his own hands.

Zhu Youzhen couldn't help but take a deep breath, and then pretended to be calm and said: "How to increase the commercial tax, to which businessmen to increase the tax, and how much is the increase in tax?" No matter how small the amount we propose, it will be opposed by the merchants and hindered by the merchants. So, I'm going to give this power to the taxpayers to decide how much they should pay and how they should collect it. ”

"Leave it to the merchant to decide? Your Majesty, how could these businessmen agree to raise taxes on themselves? It's good that they don't give themselves tax cuts. Huang Liji smiled dumbly and criticized Chongzhen's whimsical ideas.

"It's not up to the businessman to decide, it's up to the tax-paying businessman to decide." Zhu Youzhen emphasized again.

Huang Liji was a little dazed and at a loss and said, "Aren't this businessman and a taxpayer the same thing?" ”

"Of course not, the tax-paying businessmen basically have nothing to do with the scholars, but are the targets of the local gentry's suppression. Those merchants who were related to the nobles either did not pay taxes or paid very little taxes.

I don't think these taxpayers will oppose the abolition of the policy of preferential exemption from commercial taxes. This is equivalent to the open competition between private salt and official salt in the market, and the taxi merchants who do not pay taxes are actually no different from the illegal salt dealers.

It is unlikely that these taxpayers will stand up against the concessionary clause for taxismen one by one, but if they were to be allowed to revoke the preferential treatment of their competitors by secret ballot, I don't think they would lack the courage to do so.

Therefore, I plan to convene a discussion meeting on the commercial tax of the Ming Dynasty, and convene merchants from various provinces to come to Beijing to discuss the reform of the commercial tax of the Ming Dynasty. The two capitals and thirteen provinces each convened 10 businessmen, and the number of people in northern Shaanxi, Shaanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong was doubled, and a total of 230 businessman representatives were gathered. Among them, one-third of those who pay more than 1,000 taels of annual tax will be taken, one-third of those who are more than 500 taels will be paid, and one-third of those who are less than 100 taels will be taken.

With the rules set by these businessmen themselves, presumably those Qingliu who talk about competing with the people every day have nothing to say now. ”

Huang Liji's first reaction was to oppose Chongzhen's dangerous idea, as a scholar, although he did not mind his relatives engaging in business, nor did he mind accepting gifts from merchants. But he was absolutely opposed to businessmen getting involved in politics, which was the subconscious that lurked in the Confucian scholars of the Great Ming Dynasty.

The collection of commercial taxes should be decided by civil officials, not by the despicable merchants. This completely undermined the feudal moral order. But Huang Liji's voice of opposition reached his throat, but he couldn't come out.

He knew that if he opposed the idea, it would mean that he would have to take responsibility for implementing the commercial tax reform. Whether the policy of increasing the commercial tax comes from itself or by the businessmen are two completely different things.

If he proposes a comprehensive tax reform plan, the businessmen whose interests have been usurped must hate him to the core, and the official Qingliu will definitely attack him for exploiting the small people. The convening of the merchant representatives to draw a resolution to increase the commercial tax was personally out of political responsibility, but this was obviously against the unspoken rule of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor and the scholars to rule the world together.

The convening of a meeting of the merchants' representatives would be of great benefit to his personal political responsibility, that is, he could blame the businessmen's representatives who had made the wrong policies on the problems that might arise in the reforms. However, it was unfavorable to the civil politics of the entire Ming Dynasty, which undoubtedly undermined the tradition of civil government in the Ming Dynasty and opened a gap for businessmen to directly interfere in politics.