Regarding Huang Liji's worries, Zhu Youzhen did not take it to heart. In the history he was familiar with, a few years after Chongzhen ascended the throne, the Shaanxi peasant rebel army broke through the Shaanxi region and rushed into Henan, Huguang, Anhui, Sichuan and other places.

On the one hand, the army in the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty is really corrupted to the extreme, and on the other hand, there is a lack of a defense command center in various places.

After the death of the Ming Dynasty, with the elimination of the center of the imperial court in Beijing, the local forces in various parts of the Ming Dynasty immediately lost their common allegiance, and the local army of the Ming Dynasty quickly embarked on the road of warlordization.

This also made the small court of the Southern Ming Dynasty established later unable to integrate local forces in various places and establish an effective ruling order, and could only become a formal co-master.

When the small court of the Southern Ming Dynasty was also destroyed, the local forces in various parts of the Southern Ming Dynasty could not even find the nominal co-master. The forces loyal to the Ming Dynasty in various places were too scattered and trivial, and the support objects were different, so they could not unite in the end, but were defeated by the Qing army one by one.

The most ridiculous thing is that the infighting between these scholars and doctors even forced some local gentry and generals to fall to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which is completely digging their own graves.

In view of this, Zhu Youzhen thought about setting up a governor's district and a local governor's office to strengthen the administrative core of the Ming Dynasty and prevent the worst outcome like the Nanming style.

He thought for a moment before saying, "What Mr. Huang is worried about is that after the governor has mastered the local military and political power, he has embarked on the road of feudal townization. I also think that this is a possibility, but this is not a reason for the imperial court to weaken local governance. After all, we can choke on a glass of water, can we?

I felt that what the imperial court really needed to do was how to prevent the tendency of local feudalization. The reason why a feudal town can become a feudal town is not that someone or a certain group has the intention of separating the locality, but that the imperial court has lost the ability to supervise the local government.

The reason why the local government was able to become an independent feudal town was nothing more than the unsupervised personnel and financial powers, and the independent army.

Although the local governors are subordinate to the governors, the personnel powers of the local governors are vested in the General Staff and the Military Department, and the field armies in the three-tier armed forces system are directly under the leadership of the General Staff. As long as the field army obeys the orders of the imperial court, I do not think that there will be a situation of division of feudal towns in the local area.

In addition, I plan to reform the cabinet system. The first assistant of the cabinet is still a scholar of the Nakgokuden University, while the other cabinet ministers have all been renamed as the Scholars of the Kengokuden University, the six central ministries and the local governors of the Kamu Yingden University, and the six or so ministers and the local governor Kabun Wongaku University Fellows.

The appointment of these persons must be discussed by the Cabinet and submitted to the Cabinet for approval. In addition, officials including the Metropolitan Prosecutor's Office are not allowed to publicly impeach any of the above persons without conclusive evidence. If there is conclusive evidence, it must be reported to the Cabinet and I in secret, and only with the consent of the Cabinet and I will the investigation of the facts of the crime be granted.

In addition, governors, governors, and local governors shall not serve more than two ten-year terms in the same office. The local commanders and envoys were merged into the local governors' offices; According to the management power of the Prosecutor's Department, the administrative power of the Prosecutor's Office was transferred from the Metropolitan Procuratorate to the name of the Criminal Department; It is announced that the status of the political envoy will remain unchanged, but a special agency should be set up to connect with the four departments of households, officials, workers, and rituals.

In addition to its original duties, the Department of Probation and Prosecution has increased its powers to manage local patrol police departments and has expanded its organization to the county level. ”

Zhu Youzhen put forward a number of institutional reform measures in one breath, although most of the measures have been implemented in a small area near Gyeonggi, but such a comprehensive development to the whole country also made Huang Liji and Guo Yunhou's hearts beat violently several times.

Huang Liji thought about it for a while, and had to advise Chongzhen: "Your Majesty, this is the establishment of a local governor's office, and the establishment of a governor's district, and a comprehensive reform of the local three-division system, will the pace be too fast?"

The reform measures you mentioned may all be good, but we must always give those local officials a process of understanding, otherwise once they can't understand it, they will read the good scriptures crookedly, won't it give those officials and gentry who oppose the reform an opportunity to attack the reform of the imperial court?

The minister thought that it was better to follow this year's practice, change a few provinces a year, and spend seven or eight years of effort, and then implement the reform measures of the Ming provinces. Isn't it a very safe way for us to do things smoothly with less resistance below? ”

Regarding Huang Liji's statement, Guo Yunhou also nodded in agreement. Although Zhu Youzhen's face remained unchanged, he didn't think so.

Of course, it is good to have a safe road, if he is not from the soul of the next generation, of course he will adopt the step-by-step tentative way of crossing the river as Huang Liji said. No, if he didn't know that he was going to hang on that crooked neck tree, he wouldn't bother to carry out any reforms, as long as he could ensure that he could live comfortably through the life of the emperor he picked up, even if the flood was monstrous after my death.

Although he sympathized with the people of the Ming Dynasty who were cannibalistic because of natural disasters, he could not hear or see such a tragedy when he sat in the palace.

No one will feel guilty for the tragedy they don't know, just like when he sits at home drinking beer and watching a movie on the Internet in the future, will he feel that he has a responsibility to save the refugees in Syria, Ukraine, Africa and other places because of the wars in these places? Obviously impossible.

Zhu Youzhen thought for a while before he said: "Other reform measures can be slowed down, but the framework of the local governor's office, the governor's district, the three-level armed forces system, and the local patrol police department, these institutions must be established within next year."

With these frameworks in place, we can slowly reform the local system, even if we first release the provinces with the greatest resistance. But without these frameworks, the administrative system from the central to the local government would not be able to be connected, and the imperial court's control over the local areas would be weak.

For example, the officials sent by the imperial court to the Jiangnan region not only could not control the local gentry, but in some areas, because the local gentry were powerful, they could go to the county government to humiliate the county order. The dignity of the imperial court can be said to be gone in Jiangnan.

I also heard that the gentry and wealthy families in the Su and Song areas also colluded with what to fight and what was fighting, and the people of Suzhou said: The brave man who is good at boxing is the head, and the young scoundrel belongs to his subordinates.

During the Jiajing period, the governor of the heavens, Weng Dali, ordered the prefectures and counties to be arrested, and the result was that he himself was beaten when he traveled, and later these beatings were also blood alliances, wiping their foreheads with white scarves, each holding a long knife and a giant axe, attacking Wu County, Changzhou and Suzhou Guards at night, robbing prisoners with them, and attacking the Metropolitan Procuratorate. Weng Dali led his wife to escape over the wall and almost lost his life. Subsequently, he set fire to the public office and the golden flags and other objects that were enshrined, which was really lawless.

After these hooligans and evil forces combined with the local squire, they have become the biggest cancer in the south of the Yangtze River, and they rely on the support of the squires to escape the arrest of the government, and the squires rely on their own generation to threaten the local government.

Today's matter is no longer just the appointment of a few capable officials to sort out the local chaos. Without a strong force to deter local underworld and evil forces, and without a perfect administrative organization to carry out thorough rectification of the localities, the Ming Dynasty will not be able to restore a basic social order.

If the imperial court is not able to maintain local social order, then is the imperial court still the imperial court? ”

Huang Liji finally gave up the last hesitation in his heart, although under Chongzhen's continuous persuasion, he had already leaned towards the position that the Ming Dynasty must carry out reforms. However, as an old-style bureaucrat, he still hoped that the reform process would not be too drastic, and that it would end up being an enemy of the whole world.

However, he also knows very well that now his net worth and life have been tied to the reform, and if the reform is successful, he will naturally be a famous minister to save the situation. But if the reform fails, he will not be able to escape from a traitorous hat that bewitches the emperor. At this time, he can't help but fight.

Seeing that Huang Liji and Guo Yunhou were silent, Zhu Youzhen asked Lu Qi to take a volume of maps, and after letting the two eunuchs unfold them in front of the two cabinet ministers, he walked to the map and said to the two.

"Of course, in addition to controlling the military and local personnel and financial power, I also developed a plan for the development of an industrial center city. At present, except for Nanjing, Suzhou, Songjiang, Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Yangzhou, Chengdu and other cities with a population of more than 200,000, the rest of the population is mainly scattered with agricultural population.

For the current Ming Dynasty, if the resources and population of a city can be utilized, it can completely control the surrounding agricultural areas. Therefore, as long as the imperial court masters the cities with a population of more than 200,000 in the Ming Dynasty, then the local secession is unlikely to become a reality, and even if it appears temporarily, it will be quickly exterminated.

Of course, with the exception of Beijing and Suzhou, these big cities are not productive cities, they are pure consumption cities, and although such cities have wealth, they have little power.

Although Suzhou has a developed handicraft industry, it is not in the hands of the imperial court, but in the hands of the local gentry.

Today, there is only one huge city that can be effectively controlled by the imperial court, Beijing. According to the latest statistics, Beijing's permanent population has exceeded 780,000, of which 250,000 are industrial, accounting for one-third of the city's population. That's more than three times the number of craftsmen last year.

This year's fiscal revenue of Shuntianfu is 1.75 million yuan, and last year's revenue, including commercial taxes, is equivalent to about 150,000 taels, about one-tenth of this year's fiscal revenue. Of course, we must also be clear that seven-tenths of this year's fiscal revenue comes from the income from the government's various infrastructure investments in Suncheonfu, which is not a normal situation.

But even so, a large city with a third of the industrial population can provide more fiscal revenue than Gansu, Ningxia, and northern Shaanxi combined.

Therefore, if we can master more than 10 industrial cities like Beijing, then we can not only absorb more than 2.5 million agricultural people, but also greatly alleviate the financial pressure of the imperial court. It can even deter centrifugal molecules in the local area. ”