After Zhu Youzhen finished writing this article, he called Lu Qi and said: "Copy one copy of this article, one to the cabinet for deliberation, and one to the Ming Times for publication." ”

Lu Qi took the article in Chongzhen's hand, and carefully reported: "Zhang Xingsheng, the governor of the capital, has been waiting outside for a while, and His Majesty will summon him." ”

Zhu Youzhen rubbed his somewhat sour eyes, and said without hesitation: "Let him come in, I have something for him to do." ”

In just over a month, Zhang Xingsheng has changed a lot, and the cowering image of groveling when he met people in the past is gone, and he has revealed a demeanor that is neither humble nor arrogant between walking, sitting and lying.

Although there are not many opportunities to meet Chongzhen, Zhang Xingsheng thinks that even Wang Chengen, who is the most trusted by Chongzhen, is not as good as him for understanding this young son of heaven.

Chongzhen is different from other emperors in that he believes that the laws in the palace are not only used to bind the eunuchs and palace maids in the palace, but also include himself.

Any law in the palace that Chongzhen cannot abide by, His Majesty will definitely abolish it without hesitation, regardless of whether this law seems to be beneficial to him or not.

And the laws in the palace that Chongzhen thinks must be observed, even if he brings the eunuchs and palace maids into the palace from the Xinwang Mansion, they will not be exempted from punishment for violating the laws because of the emperor's closeness.

It is precisely because of Chongzhen's example and the newly established new capital governor that it can be rectified so quickly, and the 24 yamen in the palace used to be chaotic and unclear in their powers and responsibilities.

Wang Dehua, the palace supervisor whose status is second only to Wang Chengen, once thought that he could use the power of the governor to wantonly attack his opponents in the palace.

But soon Wang Dehua was disappointed, and the reorganized Xindu Governor did have great powers, which could audit the financial expenditures of each yamen and investigate the eunuchs in charge of each yamen.

However, the final punishment power and the personnel appointment power of each yamen were assigned by Chongzhen to the celebrant supervisor, and the governor could only propose candidates for the lack of personnel in each yamen.

In other words, Wang Dehua not only did not have the power to install people in the palace, but even if he wanted to promote a person in the metropolitan prison, he had to obtain the consent of the celebrant and the celebrant supervisor.

In the same way, the celebrant has also lost the power that he used to arbitrarily appoint the chief eunuchs of the yamen and below the official positions. Without the recommendation of the Metropolitan Governor, the Celebrant Supervisor would not be able to bypass the Metropolitan Governor to appoint and remove the official position on his own.

In this way, unless the celebrant and the governor are united, no one will want to hide from Chongzhen to carry out personnel operations in the palace. With the seemingly detached relationship between Wang Chengen and Wang Dehua, this is obviously impossible.

As a result, the relationship between father and son, which was originally the most important in the palace, is gradually disintegrating. Formulated by the Metropolitan Governor, the "Forbidden Laws of the Palace" has become a rule that everyone in the palace must be familiar with.

This regulation not only clearly stipulates the punishments in the palace, but also stipulates the conditions for promotion and rewards, and the low-level eunuchs in the palace now do not have to think about clinging to the chief eunuchs all day long, they can be promoted step by step, and the atmosphere in the palace has gradually improved.

It was from these changes in the palace that Zhang Xingsheng felt that Chongzhen was an emperor who admired the doctrine of Legalism.

For such an emperor, instead of thinking about how to appear in front of His Majesty all day long and win his favor, it is better to meticulously abide by the laws he has formulated, so that His Majesty can have a good impression of himself.

Zhang Xingsheng's approach did win Chongzhen's attention, so he got a small task. He is here today to report on the completion of this task. He also knew that this task was related to whether he could become one of Chongzhen's cronies and eunuchs.

“… Chen Yuqi and others were willing to inject the final payment of 780,000 taels of the three major halls into the two companies proposed by His Majesty, of which 380,000 taels were used as the share capital of the Northern Foreign Trade Company.

As for the Sihai Commercial Bank, which was rebuilt on the basis of the imperial store, in addition to injecting 400,000 taels of share capital, they are also willing to inject an additional 100,000 taels of share capital, but they hope that His Majesty can agree to one thing. Zhang Xingsheng's attitude was a little hesitant.

Being able to rely on nearly 800,000 taels of silver made Zhu Youzhen finally a little happier, and he asked indifferently: "What do they want me to promise?" ”

Zhang Xingsheng said cautiously: "They heard that the Sihai Commercial Bank set up by His Majesty will be merged into the Changlu Salt Farm and abolish the salt introduction system in Changlu, so they hope that Your Majesty can agree to prohibit Shanxi salt merchants from participating in the preparation of the Sihai Commercial Bank." ”

The actual assets of the Sihai Commercial Bank, which was rebuilt on the basis of Huangdian, were about 2 or 300,000 taels, but Zhu You's inspection was 500,000 taels. Although he promised to give the Four Seas Merchant Houses exclusive rights over trade outside the customs, it was clear that the merchants did not care about this.

The imperial merchants who were able to participate in the three major palace projects were either friendly with the eunuchs in the palace or had kinship with the officials of the foreign courts. The information they collected was not much worse than Chongzhen's.

The monopoly of trade outside the customs seems to be beautiful, but the customs outside the customs are now a place of war, a place where sabers and artillery have the final say.

If there is an incident of the slaughter of the soldiers and civilians on Juehua Island, no matter how hard the backstage of the court is, it will not be able to defeat the broadsword of the Jiannu.

What's more, who in Beijing doesn't know that the goods such as leather goods, ginseng, and pearls in Liaodong are all in the hands of the generals of Liaoxi, and the merchants who dare to get involved in these businesses are about the same risk as taking food from the tiger's mouth.

Even if the Four Seas Commercial Bank has a background in the palace, those Liaoxi generals don't dare to move the trading houses, don't they dare to move the people who trade with the trading houses?

Therefore, at the beginning, these businessmen were reluctant to convert their debts into the equity capital of the Four Seas Commercial Bank, and would rather give a 20% discount to cash.

After thinking about it for a long time, Zhu Youzhen decided to merge the Changlu Salt Farm into the Sihai Commercial Bank at a price of 1.5 million taels, so that the Sihai Commercial Bank could expand its share capital to 2 million taels, and then negotiate with these merchants.

Changlu Salt Field belonged to the Beiping Hejian Salt Transportation Division, and was later renamed Hejian Changlu. The second sub-division under the jurisdiction of the Salt Transportation Division is Cangzhou and Qingzhou; The second inspection institute is called Changlu, and it is said to be small and straight. It has 24 salt farms under its jurisdiction, and one salt division of each department.

More than 188,000 small salt introductions are issued every year. Yanxing North Zhili, Henan's Zhangde, Weihui two mansions. The lost side, Xuanfu, Datong, Jizhou. It is offered to the suburban temple for the sacrifice of the hundred gods, the inner house is ashamed of the meal and the hundred officials have a division. The surplus salt and silver in Taicang are 120,000 taels.

Compared with the annual income of 600,000 taels of Lianghuai Salt Farm, the annual income of Changlu Salt Farm is only one-fifth of it. However, in later generations, Changlu Salt Farm was one of the largest producing areas of sea salt.

However, in this era, because the method of drying salt has not been carried out on a large scale in the Changlu salt field, coupled with the strong power of the two Huai salt merchants, the Changlu salt basically cannot come out of the Hebei region, so it seems to be relatively insignificant.

However, compared with the ethereal monopoly of foreign trade in Chongzhen's mouth, the annual income of 120,000 taels of this Changlu salt farm is more real.

And this 120,000 taels is the annual income of the imperial court, if they can let these businessmen operate, it is normal to increase it by 3-5 times. In this way, in just 10-20 years, their debts will be fully absorbed, and after that, it will be a net profit.

Therefore, when the merchants obtained this new condition, they finally said that they could consider converting the debt into the equity capital of the Four Seas Commercial Bank. But these merchants believed that the current Changlu Salt Works were controlled by Shanxi salt merchants, who had deep capital and deep ties between the DPRK and China, so they could only get the most out of their profits by excluding them from the shareholders of the Four Seas Merchant Company.

Of the 2 million taels of share capital, the palace accounts for 25%, these merchants account for 25%, and the remaining 50% is from the Changlu Salt Farm.

Unlike these businessmen, Zhu Youzhen did not think about selling the remaining shares. For a company in this kind of monopoly industry, if it weren't for the fact that he didn't want to pay the balance of the three major halls, it would not be the turn of these businessmen to intervene.

Zhu Youzhen was silent for a while and then said: "You find a house near the left side of the imperial city, allocate a few eunuchs who are better at arithmetic, and set up a trading room for equity trading in the Four Seas Commercial Bank."

Then tell them that the shares of the Four Seas Commercial Bank can be bought and sold freely there. Any future equity transactions that are not made here will be deemed null and void. In the event of a violation, the shares sold will be auctioned publicly, and the person has no right to object. ”

Although Chongzhen's answer did not directly agree to the request of these merchants, it also provided these merchants with a way to recover their capital as soon as possible, so Zhang Xingsheng thought for a while and felt that these merchants should agree.

After seeing that Zhang Xingsheng did not object to his suggestion, Zhu Youzhen continued: "Next, before the Sihai Commercial Bank has not officially offered its shares, I want you to go and negotiate with Guo Yunhou, the head of the household department, to sell the Changlu Salt Farm to the palace, and then dismiss the officials of the Changlu Salt Transportation Division in Hejian. ”

Zhang Xingsheng was a little confused, so he repeated: "Buy Changlu Salt Farm? In his mind, isn't this the emperor's next edict directly ordering the household department to allocate the Changlu Salt Farm to the palace?

Zhu Youzhen nodded and said, "Yes, in the name of the palace, I will buy the Changlu Salt Farm from the Ministry of Households." The price is 500,000 taels, and the maximum cannot exceed 700,000 taels. The scope of salt in the Changlu Salt Farm remains unchanged, and a fixed tax of 120,000 taels of silver will be paid to the household every year in the future. ”

Zhang Xingsheng said with some concern: "Your Majesty, is this condition too high, what if the Four Seas Commercial Bank loses money by then?" ”

Zhu Youzhen smiled and said: "This salt industry has always been an industry that businessmen have been eager for, how can it be that it will lose money when it is my turn?" Besides, aren't these inner treasury and treasury my pockets?

Go from the left pocket to the right pocket and talk about what to lose. Even if I don't pay for it, in two days, the household department will ask me to allocate the silver from the inner treasury to make up for the shortfall. Now it's better to take this opportunity to get the Changlu Salt Farm in your hands, and by the way, also cut some officials who have corpse food and lodging places. ”

Listening to Chongzhen's explanation, Zhang Xingsheng suddenly realized that this was His Majesty's desire to avoid the household department from making excuses to ask for money from the inner treasury.