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Text Chapter 498 Breaking the Barriers of Officials

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    The word "official" is generally used together, but in fact it refers to two types of people. The first is officials, and the second is petty officials. Although these two types of people may not be the same in the eyes of ordinary people.  There is not much difference, but in fact there is a huge gap between them.  Officials are appointed by the imperial court and have formal official status in the Ministry of Personnel, while minor officials are people hired by officials to help them handle some official affairs. In the words of later generations, officials are formal employees of the court, and minor officials are  They are temporary workers, and the wages of these temporary workers must be paid privately by the officials who hire them. This is one of the reasons why officials usually have such high expenses. After all, they not only have to support their own family, but also those of their subordinates.  If the approval of minor officials is coupled with the usual entertainment and courtesy exchanges, the cost will be even greater.  There are two main types of officials in the Ming Dynasty. The first type is those who entered the officialdom through the imperial examination. This kind of officials can be said to be upright and have a lot of room for promotion in the future. The second type is the students provided by the Imperial College.  You can also become an official after graduation, but your future is not as bright as that of imperial examination officials.  In addition to the above two, there are other ways, such as the influence of ancestors, special gifts from the emperor, and even some minor officials will be promoted to officials because of their outstanding work, but this situation is extremely rare.  After working for a long time, temporary workers in later generations may still be converted into regular workers if they find connections and give some gifts. However, these temporary workers in the Ming Dynasty are quite miserable. Generally speaking, petty officials are rarely promoted to officials.  , most people work for their entire lives, even after they die.  Their children and grandchildren will also take over their work.  In some yamen, there are even cases where three generations of descendants serve as officials at the same time.  Moreover, even if petty officials become officials, they can only be low-level officials. They are also very discriminated against in the officialdom and cannot be compared with officials from a legitimate background.  Although petty officials are inferior to officials in terms of status, you cannot underestimate them. You must know that the number of officials and petty officials in the Ming Dynasty is disproportionate. For example, in a county, there are only three real officials.  They are the magistrate, the chief minister and the county magistrate. Except for these three people, everyone else in the yamen is a minor official. It can be said that these minor officials are the real principals in the yamen. In addition, some minor officials have been in the yamen for generations.  Working here, I have accumulated a huge network of contacts and rich experience. Sometimes even the newly transferred officials have to curry favor with these junior officials, otherwise they will not be able to stay there at all, which affects the energy of these junior officials.  "However, it is these petty officials who have no hope of promotion and can only stay in their original positions for the rest of their lives.  As a result, the petty officials no longer have the pursuit of a future.  The only thing left is the pursuit of money. This has also formed the phenomenon that people in the Ming Dynasty's yamen are not allowed to come in without money. No matter what you do, you need to spend money to manage the yamen. As long as you use money to open up the joints, then it is  Unreasonable things will become reasonable.  These petty officials were not part of the official establishment of the Ming Dynasty, and their salaries were provided privately by the officials who hired them. In the past, the salaries of officials in the Ming Dynasty were extremely low, so the salary they could get was naturally not much, and it was not even enough to support their families.  As a result, these petty officials could only use their positions to make money for themselves. It can be said that the corruption of the Ming Dynasty officialdom began with these petty officials. Later, those officials were also actively or passively dragged into the water, thus forming  This created the spectacle that no one in the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty was not greedy, and even this phenomenon continued for hundreds of years and still exists in later generations.  Because of this, when Zhou Zhong wanted to rectify the administration of officials, he naturally could not just focus on the officials. The most important thing was to reform the lower-level officials. And if he wanted to make these officials less greedy, the most important thing was to make them  They saw the hope of promotion, instead of the previous situation where only a few extremely outstanding petty officials could be promoted to officials. So in this case, Zhou Zhong proposed to break the barriers between officials and officials.  As long as they reach a certain score in the assessment and pass the assessment of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, they can be promoted to officials according to law.  In addition, Zhou Zhong also completely abolished the symbiotic relationship between petty officials and officials. After all, the salaries of petty officials were provided by officials privately. In this way, these petty officials were like domestic servants of officials.  They may even be fired at will by officials. In this way, the restraint of minor officials by officials will be too great. Therefore, in order to relieve the situation of minor officials being dependent on officials, Zhou Chong once again stipulated that the salary of minor officials should also be provided by the imperial court.  Each position has a corresponding salary, and like officials, it is paid by local banks.  The junior officials have hope of promotion, and if they want to be promoted, they must perform well enough. This will improve the enthusiasm of the junior officials for work, and also allow them to restrain themselves and no longer make money as unscrupulously as before.  After all, the Metropolitan Procuratorate is not a decoration. If you want to pass the Metropolitan Procuratorate's assessment, it is impossible to just rely on fraud.  In addition, the salaries of minor officials were also uniformly distributed by the court, which allowed them to get rid of the control of officials and become a new force in the officialdom. In addition, in order to improve the performance of minor officialsZhou Zhong also stipulated that students who came out of the imperial examination or the Imperial College must start as minor officials in the local area. In this way, the overall quality of minor officials can be improved, and the official experience of these people can also be increased.  , will not be like before and will not know how to govern at all.  Zhou Chong's reforms regarding minor officials naturally received support from all minor officials. After all, everyone has the desire to make progress, especially minor officials in the officialdom, who understand how important an official status is.  , it was just out of reach before, but now Zhou Chong's reforms have given them all hope, so these petty officials naturally raised their hands to support it.  However, compared with the support of petty officials, there is also great resistance in the officialdom. These resistances mainly come from two aspects. The first is the die-hards in the officialdom. They believe that officials are officials and officials are officials.  There is a huge gap between them, and they must not be lumped together. In the past, only a handful of petty officials were promoted to officials, but that was only a reward for some extremely outstanding petty officials. Now if petty officials are promoted to officials on a large scale, then in the future they officials will  How to deal with yourself?  In addition to the stubborn officials above, there are also those scholars. These scholars are either candidates preparing to take the imperial examination or students in the Imperial College. Originally, they could get official positions as long as they passed the imperial examination or graduated from the Imperial College.  However, now that Zhou Chong's reforms have come out, they can only work as petty officials. Although the time is not long, they are still very dissatisfied and think that it loses the dignity of scholars.  Officials and scholars have the greatest say in this era, so no one can ignore their opinions.  Although the number of petty officials was greater, they had little say and no ability to express their demands, so they could only place all their hopes on Zhou Chong and the cabinet.  Zhou Zhong didn't take it seriously to those stubborn officials who opposed the integration of officials and officials. After all, most of these officials were pedantic people who didn't even have a clear head, because no official with any brains would so blatantly oppose this.  After all, they usually rely on petty officials to do things. If they object to this matter, they will be enemies of the entire petty official class. Let alone other things, even the petty officials under them will regard them as enemies.  .  But compared to those stubborn officials, the other class of scholars is too troublesome. First of all, they are huge in number. Not to mention, there are tens of thousands of students in the Imperial College alone. As for the scholars in the world, it is estimated that at least  At about one million, such a huge group almost controlled the direction of public opinion in the entire Ming Dynasty, so Zhou Chong did not dare to offend easily.  To deal with these scholars, it is still up to the scholars to take action. Zhou Chong, a pseudo-scholar, is obviously not good at it, so he summoned Jiao Fang, Wang Qiong and others to discuss it. In the end, Wang Qiong smiled and came up with a solution, and  He was immediately praised by Jiao Fang and others, which also made Zhou Zhong appreciate Wang Qiong's talents even more.  The method proposed by Wang Qiong is actually very simple. In the future, scholars in the Ming Dynasty only need to pass the examination to become a scholar, and they can be arranged to serve as minor officials in the government. Students from the Imperial College also do not need to complete all their studies, as long as they can  If the Imperial College students have passed two or more subjects, then these students can also serve as minor officials.  As for those who have passed the imperial examination and can officially graduate from the Imperial College, their starting point is higher and they can work as officials in some key departments of the capital, such as the Sixth Ministry, the Metropolitan Procuratorate, and even the cabinet. You must know that in these core institutions  If you work as a junior official, your promotion speed and opportunities will be much greater in the future.  Wang Qiong's method seems to have no change. It just lowers the requirements for scholars to serve as minor officials, and then gives preferential treatment to those high-end scholars. However, it is this small change that makes most scholars  They were all very satisfied, especially since the requirement for scholars to serve as officials was lowered to that of scholars, which attracted most of the scholars over.  In fact, it is not surprising to say that although there were many scholars in the Ming Dynasty, only a few could actually pass the imperial examination. As for the Imperial College, it is not that easy to get into. Those who have no connections or money should not even think about it, and the number of graduates every year  There are not many, so for most scholars, they can only stop at the stage of scholar and scholar, especially the scholar class, which accounts for the vast majority of scholars.  It is also under this circumstance that Wang Qiong stipulated that as long as he is a scholar, he can enter the government as an official. Moreover, as long as the junior officials do well, they will have the opportunity to become officials in the future. This naturally makes those scholars who have no confidence in their official career very interested.  Welcome, after all, even if you fail the exam, you will have a way out in the future.  (To be continued)
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