Chapter 554: Want to Eat? Give Us the Right to Deliberate Governance!

"A clear path for beggars?" Wang Fuzhi lightly stroked his beard, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. This Ji Kun was himself a ruthless official who offended people, yet he dared to spout such nonsense — was he not afraid someone would accuse him of slandering the sovereign?

Ji Kun, who had slandered the sovereign without realizing his error, thought for a moment and said, "This dynasty has always had the practice of selling offices through contributions, but what those contributions bring in could never make up a shortfall of twenty million shi. Moreover, the Crown Prince is now implementing a policy of officials, gentry, merchants, and commoners all paying grain and taxes alike, so an empty official title is of little use. As for substantive posts, there are not that many to sell!"

Huang Zongxi said, "We could exchange the right to participate in governance for rice! Did the Crown Prince not also issue an order that each locality recommend deliberative officials based on the amount of commercial tax they remit?"

"That is a method, but —" Ji Kun shook his head. "How could the right to participate in governance alone be exchanged for twenty million shi of rice? At current market prices in Nanjing, Suzhou, Yangzhou, and other places, that would be sixty million taels of silver!"

"Sixty million," Wang Fuzhi said. "What about borrowing grain? Offset it against future land taxes. Borrow twenty million, offset forty million!"

A great Confucian scholar after all — his arithmetic was not bad! That rice sitting at home would only grow mold; lending it to Crown Prince Zhu would offset double the land tax, and the rate of return was not bad!

Huang Zongxi added, "We must also establish a place for deliberative governance, to govern the realm together!"

Gu Jiang added further, "Not only deliberative governance, but also deliberative taxation! Only by uniting the private interests of all under heaven can the public good of all under heaven be achieved — this is the argument for kingly governance!"

This Gu Jiang's thinking was very backward. In his Record of Daily Knowledge he had once said: Since the world became the possession of families, each cherishes his own kin, each treats his own children as children, and the selfishness of man is an inescapable part of human nature. This was openly affirming selfishness!

As for great impartiality and selflessness, the great scholar Gu did not believe in it!

Therefore he advocated "uniting private interests into the public good" — that is, jointly deliberating a set of methods that conformed to "the private interests of the many," which would then be "the public good," and the realm would be well governed.

Ji Kun, for his part, said, "We should still restore feudalism and clarify laws and institutions!"

This Censor Ji came from a semi-feudal guard-station background, and he understood well the abuses of semi-feudalism. At the same time, he felt that with the realm now shattered as it was, completely restoring the commandery-county system and immediately rebuilding centralized authority was unrealistic, so the only option was "what belongs to the government, let the government govern; what belongs to the feudatories, let the feudatories hold."

"No, no," Gu Jiang shook his head and said, "The failing of the commandery-county system is that autocracy lies above. The failing of feudalism is that autocracy lies below."

Huang Zongxi interjected with a smile, "Brother Ningren, did you not just say that only by uniting the private interests of all under heaven can the public good of all under heaven be achieved? The modest property in our own households is private — are the armies and territories held by those local strongmen who carve out regions not also private?"

Huang Zongxi's position on the feudal question was similar to Ji Kun's: both believed that completely restoring centralized authority was impossible, and he opposed returning the capital to Beijing, holding that the northern lands were barren, poor, bitter, and cold, and simply could not support such an enormous capital. The population within Beijing city alone exceeded all the soldiers and officers of the nine border garrisons combined. To supply them, several million shi of tribute grain had to be shipped north every year, to say nothing of all the other consumer goods transported from the southeast.

And the transport capacity of the grain transport was limited. Once several million shi were shipped to Beijing, the supplies for the nine border garrisons were reduced by several million shi! Over the years, how could the nine border garrisons not become exhausted and debilitated?

Therefore, rather than maintaining the nine border garrisons, it would be better to enfeoff the nine passes. The only question was how to make the enfeoffed lords of the nine passes each rest content in their station and guard the frontier for the state.

Huang Zongxi said, "If the court wishes to take back those men's armies and territories, it will have to resort to arms. Right now the Tartar caitiffs occupy the Central Plain, and the roving bandits are entrenched in the northwest and ravaging Sichuan. If we fight among ourselves as well, would that not be grieving our own kin and delighting our enemies?

Moreover, the northern Central Plain has now also implemented land distribution by headcount, and the policies carried out there differ from those of the southeast. If we forcibly impose the laws of the southeast upon the northern lands, I fear we will turn the ten-odd million people of the north into enemies!"

At present, most of China's population was concentrated in the southeast, while the Central Plain, the northwest, and the northeast had relatively sparse populations, which was why equal-field distribution by headcount could be carried out — in Zhu Cilang's eyes this was practically a "golden finger," but in Chinese history it had actually been done many times.

The great Qing dynasty of history had played this game, for example the famous "Huguang filling Sichuan," which was in fact a land equalization: troops were sent directly to cordon off some densely populated villages in Huguang, and everyone was escorted to Sichuan to be allotted farmland.

The northeast now had almost no people, so that was not worth mentioning, but equal-field distribution by headcount in the Central Plain and the northwest was already underway. By the time the Great Ming recovered those lands, entrenched interest groups would long since have formed — this was different from Hubei, where Li Zicheng had only been at it for a few months; even so, Zhu Cilang had to acknowledge the reality of Hubei's land equalization.

Therefore, in the future there must be a system different from the southeast's to protect the interests of the equal-field farming households. Otherwise, if more than ten million people all fought the Great Ming to the death, the trouble would be enormous.

"Exactly so!" Ji Kun weighed his words. "At present we can only let the government govern what is the government's, and let the feudatories hold what is the feudatories'. But there absolutely must be laws and regulations, so that the private interests of the enfeoffed lords can also be merged into the public good of all under heaven!"

Gu Jiang nodded. "That is true. Then let us discuss further and together write a memorial of proposals for the Crown Prince!"

"In ancient times, Tang of Shang campaigned against Jie for ten sexagenary cycles, and Wu of Zhou punished Zhou for eight hundred years. They began in humble obscurity, drove carts through brambles and brush, civilized the various barbarians, unified all within the seas, shepherded the living people of the realm, and thus formed China. In recent ages, the Qin, Han, Jin, Sui, Tang, and Song each lasted no more than three hundred years, and flourished for no more than a few decades. Why is this?

The first reason is feudalism; the second is deliberative governance. By feudalism I do not mean enfeoffing lords and enfeoffing states, but enfeoffing institutions.

The feudalism of the Three Dynasties enfeoffed and established vassals to screen against the barbarians and the Chinese. Beneath the various lords there were the ducal houses, the ministers, the grand officers, and the knights — layer upon layer, cherishing kin and honoring the worthy, building defenses at every level, each bearing its own responsibilities.

Although the Quanrong and the Eastern Hu became threats, there were Duke Huan of Qi and Duke Wen of Jin to honor the king and repel the barbarians, averting disaster. The ducal houses, ministers, grand officers, and knights were either the lords and ministers of a state, or bound to one another by covenant as master and retainer. Their states were established by royal decree; the lord stood at the center, the various ranks checked and balanced one another, each station was defined, each fulfilled its rights and duties, and all rested secure in their appointed lot. The king, the lords, the ducal houses, ministers, grand officers, and knights all esteemed martial virtue and upheld ritual; letters served only for sacrifice and prayer. They rejoiced at news of war and sang praises when setting out on campaign.

In that age, the lord controlled his ministers, and the ministers also controlled the lord. Once their states were established, they civilized the Li and Miao peoples, expanded their lands among the barbarians, and the countless Xia people became the beginnings of the people of Jin, Chu, Qi, Lu, Song, Yan, Qin, and the rest. How many refugees were there in that age? How much expansion was achieved in the two thousand years that followed?

But what of the Seven States and Eight Kings? This was because the Han and Jin lacked the beginnings of deliberative governance. Deliberative governance is not the deliberation of the civil examinations, but the deliberation of kings and dukes, the deliberation of the noble, the deliberation of the aristocracy — above all, the deliberation of the citizens and the Three Elders. The ducal houses, ministers, and grand officers were the noble. The knights were the sons of nobles, the aristocracy. The citizens were the king's people, who served the state in arms and were the foundation of the sovereign's mandate. The Three Elders were village worthies, leaders of the Li and Miao, auxiliaries in military affairs.

In ancient times, King Wu and King Mu had the Three Elders and the citizens participating in deliberative governance, checking and balancing the nobles within while sweeping the east without. The citizens vied to obey the king's commands and took military service as an honor. The Three Elders levied taxes in the royal domain, and supplies were sufficient; all under heaven rejoiced. Even Kunlun and Sushen did not dare fail to pay court at Hao. By the time of King Li of Zhou, this governance declined; Kings Xuan and You regarded the citizens and Three Elders as enemies, and thus came the calamity of the move to Luo.

Thereafter, this governance declined further. Through the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, from time to time Confucius and Mencius arose and sought to restore this system, but in the end it perished, and never again was there heard of a dynasty in the Divine Land lasting four hundred years.

Once deliberative governance was gone, feudalism could hardly survive; if it survived, it brought disaster upon the king. In our own dynasty, the founding emperor established the lords of the passes, with far-sighted vision, wishing to emulate the Shang and Zhou. But the lords of the passes had no feudalism and no deliberative governance to restrain them; the king and the lords of the passes came to regard each other with hostility, and thus great chaos ensued. After the Xuande reign, this governance perished. Why was this so? Truly it was because Liu Ji and Li Shanchang were mediocre men who grasped only the surface and did not understand the principle; Xie, Hu, and the Three Yangs were mere clerks of the brush, who threw away the food for fear of choking, flattered their sovereign to advance themselves, whose talents did not match their positions, and none of them were worthy to be called knights. Down to the present day, tens of thousands of Jurchen barbarians have met with no stout warriors able to withstand them, and the northern lands have been lost. We weep, we lament."

Within the Hall of Literary Splendor, Zhu Cilang sat in a chair with his arms folded, his eyes half-closed, listening as Hanlin Academician Bi Jiucheng recited word by word the Memorial Admonishing on Feudalism and Deliberative Governance jointly submitted by Ji Kun, Huang Zongxi, Gu Yanwu, and Wang Fuzhi.

Ji Kun, Huang Zongxi, Gu Yanwu, Wang Fuzhi, and the others had submitted two proposals in all this time. One proposal was for Zhu Cilang to solve the grain problem, putting forward the method of "borrowing grain against future tax offsets" to raise rice from the landlords of the southeast and Hunan to meet the urgent crisis. This Memorial Admonishing on Feudalism and Deliberative Governance, in name, was meant to accompany the "grain borrowing" — using the rights of "deliberative governance" and "deliberative taxation" (deliberating land taxes) as the guarantee for the "grain borrowing."

At the same time, Ji Kun, Huang Zongxi, and the others also hoped to use the method of "feudal deliberative governance" to deliberate a set of feudal laws and institutions — those eligible to participate in deliberative governance would include not only the landlords of the southeast and Huguang, but also other people, including those warlords who held armies and occupied territories. Everyone would discuss together how to properly develop Great Ming feudalism.

(End of Chapter)