"fart!"

Zhao Liben sneered and said disdainfully: "Do you kid have a penny to Zhujie?"

"Grandpa, has anyone said that about his grandson?" Zhao Hao was immediately aggrieved: "I am still a child in all senses."

"That's a matter of time." Zhao Liben snorted: "Don't just think about hugging your thighs. The soft rice in the Tian family is not as delicious as you think."

"Oh?" Zhao Hao immediately showed a humble expression. After all, grandpa was the real king in this matter.

"Oh, I used to think you were still young and couldn't get in touch with that level, so I never mentioned it to you. I didn't expect that you can do so much trouble. If you don't explain it to you, you may cause a huge disaster."

Zhao Liben picked up the teacup, took a sip and said, "Let's chat with you today."

"Yes, grandpa." Zhao Hao immediately sat upright and listened to the teachings.

"The Ming Dynasty was not the Ming Dynasty in the era of the Second Patriarch. The imperial power of the Second Patriarch who was supreme and murderous indefinitely had long been wrapped in layers of cocoons."

Then Zhao Libin said expressionlessly: "That is, in these provinces in the north, because you have to rely on the court to resist border troubles, you can still feel the existence of imperial power. Back to our south, who will take the person sitting on the dragon throne seriously? In the southeast, let alone the eldest princess, even the imperial edict is sometimes no different from straw paper."

‘If you wipe your butt, it will definitely be more comfortable to have the imperial edict.’ Zhao Hao complained in his heart and recorded this matter on his bucket list in this life.

However, this statement was indeed creepy when it came to the two Jinshis and former Nanjing Minister of Revenue.

"Is it really that exaggerated?" Zhao Hao's voice was a little astringent. He always thought that this was the Longqing Dynasty and the situation should be better...

"Haha..." Zhao Liben smiled coldly and said, "What is imperial power? Is it the big car book in the Forbidden City? Or is the king's call for the minister to die, and the minister has to die? That's all the things that make the emperor happy and deceive the people into obedient."

Zhao Hao was frightened when he heard this and thought to himself that his grandfather was indeed drunk.

"Don't worry, your grandma's people outside have already looked forward to it."

Zhao Liben saw his concern at a glance and said teasingly: "You dare to slap Mr. Xu in the face in public, are you still afraid of listening to a few gossips?"

"The grandson is really not brave." Zhao Hao said embarrassedly: "I was careful enough that time in Lingji Palace. I didn't expect that he was really angry."

"Do you think that if Mr. Xu wrote the 'Hundred Schools of Controversy', he would allow different voices to speak loudly on the stage?" Zhao Liben sneered:

"The so-called Lingji Palace lecture was a temple where he used the Wang Xue and became a sanctified body. As long as the scholars in the world abandoned Neo-Confucianism and believed in Wang Xue, it doesn't matter whether he, the spiritual leader of Wang Xue, is the prime minister. Anyway, he is following the Dharma and no one dares to disobey it. It is even better than the imperial edict."

As he said that, he kicked Zhao Hao's left butt and said, "You're okay, run to someone else's place. He speaks loudly in front of the boss, saying that he can learn to manage himself well, and leave the rest to science."

"Oh, with the study of the heart, you can only cultivate yourself and manage your family. You have to rely on your science to govern the country and pacify the world?" Zhao Liben gave a thumbs up to his grandson and said, "It's my Zhao Liben's species. It's fierce enough and crazy enough!"

"One word, one word." Zhao Hao has basically figured out the old man's temper now. He just likes to play big things and is more enjoyable from the cross-country road. He is so respectful and honest all day long, but he doesn't like the old man.

Could it be that I was depressed and unsuccessful all my life and I always felt that I had stepped down and rested before I could even use my fists and kicks?

Zhao Hao made a random guess, then smiled and said, "Grandpa, why are we talking about imperial power?"

"Don't interrupt in the future. I don't know my grandfather's age. Did you say the previous sentence and the next sentence?" Zhao Liben laughed and then continued:

"Imperial power is actually just two words: soldiers and taxes. If there is no soldier, it won't be loud. If there is no money, you can't raise soldiers. But taxation requires officials, and transporting grain, building roads and promoting water conservancy requires strengthening men. Therefore, to firmly sit down, you have to add two more words: officials and men."

"Soldiers, taxes, official, official." Zhao Hao nodded silently. In this era, it can still be said bluntly that taxes are grain, and grain is tax. If you have soldiers and grain, you can conquer the world, and if you have officials and tribes, you can conquer the world. The old man is worthy of being a former deputy ministerial-level cadre, and he has a good attitude to look at problems.

"So the imperial power is not just what you think. You have to see these four words, whether you can play with it." Zhao Liben took a sip of tea and sighed:

"Taxes cannot be collected; soldiers cannot be dispatched; dens cannot be recruited; officials cannot be recruited. Such imperial power is nothing, and no one will take it seriously."

Zhao Hao then used the old man's set on Daming, and immediately sweated all over his head.

Tax.

It is obvious that the southeast is rich and smuggled every year, and the silver flowing from overseas is probably hundreds of millions of taels of taels, but Taicang is empty and the country is in a serious fiscal crisis.

Soldier.

The troops in the garrison camp were extremely decayed, making the Tartars feel like they were in a no-man state. They were killed by the Japanese pirates so much that they cried to their parents. At that time, more than 100 Japanese pirates rushed to the city of Jinling, but 200,000 to 300,000 defenders could not retreat. They had to rely on Qi Jiguang to recruit miners again to deal with the Japanese pirates.

Man.

In order to escape the heavy labor service, the people either devoted themselves to powerful families as slaves or left their hometowns to become refugees. Officials at all levels basically no longer could catch strong men.

official.

Not to mention. The officials of the Ming Dynasty did not take the emperor seriously at all.

This point has never been better than that in all dynasties.

The reason is largely caused by the imperial examinations.

But it is not as later generations said that the imperial examination system is too failed.

On the contrary, it is because it was too successful.

Although relatively objective examinations, layer-by-layer selection mechanisms, and strict invigilance and paper review system cannot completely eliminate fraud, they are enough to ensure that most of the selected officials are the best.

But this has brought two serious consequences. One is the harsh and long selection, which makes candidates have to make absolute efforts over the years. They experience failures again and again and again, so they will only thank their own personal struggles and the examiner who selected them.

Although they said that the emperor's grace was so great, they did not recognize their success at all, which came from the emperor's gift.

Second, the overall quality is getting higher and higher, so that civil servants have the conditions to refine, legalize and complicate the governance of the country. The threshold for government decision-making is getting higher and higher, to the point where emperors, eunuchs, and military officers are intimidated.

That is, the so-called "professional knowledge leads to industry monopoly". Nowadays, the Ming Dynasty could only rely on civil servant groups to govern the country. These "technical bureaucrats" formed a strict system, responsible for maintaining the operation of the state machinery.

Without foreign invasion, the emperor became redundant.

In fact, there is another consequence, which is caused by Zhu Neo-School, a designated textbook for the imperial examination. This is a theory that seems to protect the imperial power everywhere, but actually isolate the emperor from specific government affairs.

It is actually a defense, compromise and constraint on the reasons for the existence of imperial power by the gentry group in the fight against imperial power, but without intention to replace it.

After all, Emperor Taizu studied too little, so he could abolish the visible prime minister, but he was still ambushed by scholars and chose Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism to designate textbooks for scholars.

We all know that textbooks are things that shape the three views of educated groups.

Therefore, the superficial respect for the imperial power and the insidious restriction of the disintegration of the imperial power became the collective unconscious of generations of civil servants.

Many officials even restricted the emperor's life, but they still firmly believed that this was a manifestation of their loyalty to the emperor and patriotism...

Of course, there are also those who have learned and seen through it thoroughly, and will naturally be like the old man and have no fear of imperial power.
Chapter completed!