As soon as the Huaiyuan Liu family incident came out, Zhu Youzhen, who had been watching the gentry conference make a fuss and only guided the direction in public opinion, finally couldn't sit still.

As far as Zhu Youzhen is concerned, the reason why he has not interfered in the gentry congress on the surface is not because he respects democratic ideas.

Rather, he didn't want to leave any tongue behind, and be thought by the people of the world that the gentry meeting was just a scam made up by the imperial court to fool them.

The worst thing in the world is not to make people lose hope, but to give others hope and take it away. Zhu Youzhen remembered such an incident: In the past, due to the situation of internal and external pressure in the late Qing Dynasty, it was necessary to set up a parliament, establish a cabinet, and implement a constitutional monarchy. However, the five ministers traveled around Europe to study politics, and after returning to China, they established a royal cabinet that made the hearts of the people of the world lose everything.

This perverse behavior of the Qing royal family finally made the Han gentry lose the last bit of hope for the Manchu Qing Dynasty. So the Xinhai Revolution began, and the Republic of China was formed.

The old rut of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Zhu Youzhen obviously didn't want to step on it again. Although in this time and space, the story of the Manchu Qing Dynasty has not yet begun, Chongzhen does not want to become a person who digs a pit and buries himself.

And for more than a month, the close observation of the representatives of the gentry from all over the country has also made Chongzhen finally understand what these local gentry are thinking in their hearts and what they think.

Originally, Chongzhen wanted to take another look at the hearts of these gentry representatives, but as soon as the incident in Henan came out, he finally couldn't stand it. Now it is the best policy to speed up the process of the gentry congress and end the meeting before the fermentation and spread of the Henan affair.

Zhu Youzhen quickly sent several suggestions to the gentry meeting and asked the gentry representatives to discuss and vote on them. The main content of these proposals was to set up a county gentry council in each county of the world, and according to the household registration of the county, there would be one representative for every 1,000 households in the small county; 1 representative for every 2,500 households in Central County; Large counties are represented by 1 person from 5,000 households.

The minimum number of delegates to the county gentry representative council shall not be less than nine, and the upper limit shall not be more than 39. The prefecture, province and country each have representatives in proportion to the population.

The Gentry Representative Conference is held twice a year in spring and autumn, and each session lasts for one month. The Council of Delegates will have the following powers, to examine whether the annual local surcharge exceeds the standard, and to decide on the right to use one-half of the annual local surcharge.

In addition, the gentry assembly would have the power to supervise the administration of local officials. In the spring of each year, the local officials shall submit their policy addresses for the year to the Council of Gentry Representatives for the record. During the autumn congress, the gentry made a check and comparison on behalf of the big households on the completion of the year's administration.

Officials who fail to complete the annual plan during their term of office must not be promoted. In order to complete the plan, if the standard is deliberately set low, it will be downgraded. The gentry council had the right to ask the local officials to organize water conservancy and road repairs, and the local officials were to reply to the unanimous decisions made by the gentry council. If it doesn't work, explain the reason, and if it works, set a plan.

In addition, in the future, only representatives of the gentry council will be allowed to mediate local civil disputes, and the gentry who have not become representatives will not have the right to mediate. From now on, the local clan power and the gentry's power are all vested in the gentry council, and those who dare to exercise the clan power and the gentry's power in private will be punished for violating the law.

These powers handed over by Chongzhen immediately caused an uproar at the gentry conference. Although as gentry, they have a lot of power in the local area, but there are also big and small gentry among them. It is only the gentry who are born in the people, and the gentry who are born in the jinshi, the gentry who have the children of current officials, and the gentry who are retired officials, and the power between them is completely different.

Especially in the feudal society of the official position, only when there are constantly people in the family who are promoted to the imperial examination can they maintain their local gentry power. And a family of gentry who had no children for several generations would soon decline.

Without the support of officialdom, the declining gentry will soon be annexed by other gentry families. This is also why, although the people of the time criticized the obsolescence of the imperial examination Baguwen, which is not beneficial to the country, everyone flocks to it and regards the Baguwen as the first priority of learning.

Because only by learning Bagu Wen can you participate in the imperial examination, become an official, and benefit your family. However, the county gentry meeting that the emperor is throwing out now has given those gentry whose families are weak or declining another way, as long as they can get the place of this gentry representative, they don't have to squeeze the single-plank bridge of the imperial examination.

The quota of more than 300 jinshi every three years is as good as the number of representatives of more than a dozen or dozens of people in each county. Driven by this interest, the representatives of the gentry, who were still hesitant, finally got rid of the influence of their fellow villagers and nobles and began to actively move closer to the emperor.

Now, as long as he is not blind, he can already see that the emperor threw these benefits to the local gentry, and naturally needed their support for the new policy.

Whether it is the general principles of the "General Principles of Civil Affairs", whether it is the case of the civil rebellion that some gentry in Henan resisted the imperial court's requisition of grain last year, most of the gentry representatives in Beijing expressed their support for the current way of handling the imperial court.

The representatives of the gentry in Jiangnan suddenly realized that their original idea of restricting the imperial court from implementing a grain requisition policy had apparently lost the support of the majority.

What made these gentry representatives even more chilling was that several wealthy families in the south of the Yangtze River, who were supposed to be in the same breath as them, actually took advantage of the fact that the Henan gentry were suppressed and relocated by the imperial court to buy the land confiscated by the imperial court.

These things were soon published in the Daming Times, and the Henan gentry were resentful and fearful of the fall of the wealthy families in Jiangnan.

The Henan gentry did not know that these gentry and wealthy families were only a small part of the Jiangnan gentry. In their opinion, once the gentry and wealthy families in Jiangnan joined forces with the imperial court and took away their land, then in the future, the people of Henan could only rely on others.

The Henan gentry, who were already preparing to bow to the emperor, suddenly accelerated the pace of surrendering to the emperor, hoping to end the chaos in Henan as soon as possible and invite Xu Xianchun and other traitors who were ravaging Henan out of Henan.

The gentry of Henan soon realized that the land purchased by these gentry of Jiangnan happened to be on the section of the road through which the two railways that Henan was planning to build.

With the continuous extension of the railway, the price of land along the way also began to rise rapidly. The higher the land price rises, the deeper the resentment of the Henan gentry against the Jiangnan gentry.

The submission of the Henan gentry allowed the imperial court to finally carry out a comprehensive adjustment and reform of the land and military system in Henan. The gentry, who had firmly controlled the local power in Henan, finally opened a hole to the imperial court.

In mid-May, Zhu Youzhen, who was sitting in the upper study, was very satisfied with the conclusion of the gentry congress on Henan affairs. He finally put down a stone in his heart, and after nearly a year, Henan's affairs were finally formalized.

He instructed Wang Chengen: "Zhang Guoji did a good job this time, he rushed back to Yangzhou all the way, and said that these Jiangnan wang families bought land in Henan."

not only destroyed the tacit understanding between the gentry in various places, but also found a wronged leader for the imperial court to bear resentment.

I had promised him that if he showed me what he was capable of, I would hire him as I saw fit. You go and discuss with Guo Shangshu and ask the household department to arrange a place for him in the financial management office.

After three months of training in the household department, he was arranged to go to Shanxi Bank as a director of the official committee to monitor the capital business of Shanxi Bank. Tell him to do a good job, and the directors of Shanxi Bank are just the beginning. ”

Wang Chengen immediately smiled and agreed. Yes, Zhang Guoji has found a few real wronged leaders for the inner government.

Less than two-thirds of the land along the two railways in Henan was purchased by the Jiangnan wang clan, and two-thirds fell into the hands of Xungui and several vassal kings. The rest of the big heads were quietly transferred to the hands of the inner government.

Although the number of people in the inner court is decreasing, most of these reduced personnel are placed in various industries under the name of the inner court.

In the past, these eunuchs in the palace held back their strength every day to form gangs, didn't they just want to get a task of going out to do things and save some pension money for themselves.

For the sake of this pension money, the local people's resentment is boiling, and they will not hesitate to put their lives on the line. In fact, the fate of the palace attendants who are old and have no money is too bleak. They would rather fight once when they have the opportunity than live in old age and have no one to rely on.

Now that His Majesty has personally arranged a place for them to retire, they don't have to risk the infamy of being pointed out by thousands of people. The remaining personnel of the inner court finally began to rein in their deeds, and they were no longer so eager for quick success.

Zhu Youzhen had a troublesome matter, but he also knew that at tomorrow's cabinet meeting, he would soon usher in a new wave of courtier anger.

Without it, the main thing is that the suggestions he threw out at the gentry congress are all a big trumpet for the cabinet ministers and the court officials.

The county official is the Marquis of Baili, and he is also the magistrate of the local parents. Now that a council of gentry representatives has been created to contain them, these officials who have come from the imperial examination will naturally have the same hatred.

They have studied hard for ten years, but not to let a group of squires be above them. They could tolerate the gentry of the eunuch family, but they could not tolerate it, and a group of rich landowners in the countryside told them how to govern the place.

In the past few days, there have been dozens of speeches against the establishment of local gentry councils. Even Huang Liji and other cabinet ministers mentioned this matter to him several times, and Zhu Youzhen finally promised that there would be a clear answer at tomorrow's cabinet meeting.

He shook his head, no longer thinking about tomorrow. First of all, let's look at the report on the ongoing marching exercises.

Although the performance of each battalion was not satisfactory during the military exercise on the school ground, the marching drill and the unannounced cavalry raid suddenly made each battalion turn on his back.

So far, not a single battalion leader has been able to form a formation to protect himself from a cavalry raid. Long marches were originally a difficult exercise, and when an infantry army encountered a cavalry surprise attack during the march, the scattered troops could not be assembled to resist the onslaught of cavalry.

The loss of the dense queue, the winning tactic of the infantry to restrain the cavalry, the defeat of the infantry, was a matter of time.

Several battalion commanders who regarded this marching exercise as a speed race suffered a big loss by surprise, and the leader of a certain battalion simply broke up within half an hour because the team was too scattered.

After reading the daily drill report, Zhu Youzhen was really disappointed. To be honest, after watching the martial arts exercises on the school field at the beginning of the year, he still has some expectations for those soldiers who are full of morale.

However, there were constant problems during the marching exercise, which made Zhu Youzhen very happy, fortunately this was only an exercise, not a real war. Otherwise, the price that the new army will have to pay will be unbearable for him.