Chapter 791: Abolishing the Salt Silver

Two million eight hundred thirty thousand able-bodied males.

Our Liu the Lion's Marshal Manor is finally looking up.

"Every locality reports to the Household Office only the able-bodied male count — no total population figures?"

"Marshal, Hanzhong Prefect Jiang initially reported only the male count, and every prefecture, department, and county has likewise reported only the male count."

After explaining, Chengyun chuckled softly. "Heh, the male count is useful to them — they can levy the male tax."

The male tax.

Liu Chengzong nodded slowly.

This was, in truth, a blind spot in his knowledge.

The male tax was a popular term; it was actually the collective name for miscellaneous levies imposed on adult males, a large portion of which was called the commuted labor silver — silver paid in lieu of corvée labor.

The Ming dynasty had exemptions for the gentry, or what were called official household exemptions, and what was exempted was precisely the commuted labor silver within the male tax.

Gentry and official households were not required to perform corvée; Provincial Graduates and Licentiates were exempt from labor service for two men and from two piculs of male grain levy.

The male grain levy was in fact the male tax. Although the Single Whip Law stipulated that authorities collect silver, in practice, for the people's convenience, tax collection usually still took the form of goods in kind. Once enough goods were collected, they were uniformly exchanged for silver and cast into official ingots.

Because of these exemptions, Liu the Lion had never paid commuted labor silver to the Great Ming.

Of course, this was also because he rebelled early. In the fourth year of Chongzhen, the Emperor kicked Licentiates out of the gentry system; had he not rebelled, he and his elder brother would have had to pay the commuted labor silver.

So much so that Liu Chengzong simply had no idea how much the male tax amounted to.

"The male tax mainly consists of the household salt silver and the commuted labor silver. The salt silver is three hundredths of a tael per mu per year. The commuted labor silver varies by household registration — for example, the artisan rotation commuted labor silver for artisan households is four mace and five candareens per year. Similar levies exist for post stations, gatekeepers, sedan-chair bearers, night watchmen, and the like."

Chengyun explained to Liu Chengzong, "After the Single Whip Law, all these were commuted into silver and folded into the land tax per mu, collected and transported by officials. Without an imperial decree, the silver remained in the local yamen. As for exactly how it was collected... Director Zhang should know more about that."

Zhang Xianzhong had been standing ramrod straight for quite a while. Now, suddenly hearing his name mentioned in a tax discussion, he froze for a moment.

What the hell did he know about the workings of local yamens?

But since he'd been called on, Old Zhang wasn't about to get stage fright. He gestured with his hands in front of him as he spoke. "Minister Zhang established the Single Whip Law, but the crafty common folk, though not as crafty as us, are still plenty crafty. Who cares whether you demand silver or not? Silver doesn't grow out of my damn fields."

"So the local authorities still had no choice but to collect in kind — grain and cloth. The officials then negotiated exchanges with merchants and powerful gentry, converting the goods into silver, melting it down into fifty-tael tax ingots — big as this, a real pain in the ass. When you had to split it among the brothers, one chop from the official full-weight ingot and it became broken silver worth nine hundred eighty cash per tael."

He'd clearly done his share of looting — a real professional.

Chengyun was dumbfounded. Who asked you to share your robbery experience? I meant you used to be a yamen runner!

But as he swept his gaze across the hall, he realized that every officer and clerk in the Marshal Manor itself more or less had looting as a side hustle.

Although there were now also the lords of the outer vassals present, men like Baatur Khong Tayiji, Bayan Tayiji, and General Chokur were all likewise professionals well-versed in plunder — every last one a crow just as black. There was really nothing to be ashamed of.

Only a scant few proper officials — Grand Canal Governor Chen Qiyu, Salt Inspection Censor Sun Zhensheng, and Tea Inspection Censor Liang Xing — looked as though they had heard nothing at all.

Relieved, Chengyun cupped his fists and said, "Marshal, now that the localities have compiled household registers and male counts, a male tax rate must be set. Without this silver to supply daily expenditures, the local yamens cannot function."

At that moment, Salt Inspection Censor Sun Zhensheng stepped forward, bowed, and said, "Grand Marshal, the collection of the household salt silver requires further consideration."

Liu Chengzong gestured for him to elaborate, and only then understood that this tax was, in truth, levied without justification.

The household salt silver originated in the early Ming.

At that time, the realm was newly settled, the north lay in ruins with barely one in ten of the population surviving, and a large number of garrisons were stationed there. To supplement military farming, the Hongwu Emperor instituted a strict salt rationing system.

He ordered the people of the realm to transport grain to aid the army. Anyone who delivered grain to the border defenses could become a salt merchant. The salt, once transported back to various localities, passed through prefecture, department, county, township, urban ward, and village levels, where officials distributed it by household headcount. Those fifteen and older were counted as large mouths, receiving one catty of salt per month; those younger were small mouths, receiving half a catty per month.

At this stage, the distribution was free of charge.

During the Yongle reign, due to the inflation and devaluation of the treasure note paper currency, in order to forcibly withdraw notes from circulation, the free in-kind distribution was changed to a levy paid in treasure notes. The ration remained twelve catties per year for large mouths and six catties for small mouths, but for each catty, the people had to pay one string of treasure notes.

At the time, the official fixed value of one string of treasure notes was twelve cash coins. At this rate, a family of three would pay three hundred sixty cash in salt tax per year.

But by the Zhengtong reign, things became unreasonable. The salt rationing was halted nationwide, yet that one string of treasure notes continued to be collected, becoming a de facto head tax.

By the first year of the Hongzhi reign, the salt note silver was folded into the land tax, levied at three thousandths of a tael per mu. These three thousandths continued to be called the salt silver.

The head tax was merged into the land.

With this, the Ming dynasty's head tax, which had briefly appeared between the Zhengtong and Hongzhi reigns, subsequently vanished into the long river of history.

But that added three-thousandths of a tael in land tax persisted to this day, still under the name of salt silver.

Sun Zhensheng, appointed by Liu Chengzong as Salt Inspection Censor overseeing salt administration, had to ask Liu Chengzong's view on this matter. Should the government carry out salt rationing? If so, there needed to be specific regulations for distribution and transport. If not, then the salt trade would be left to merchants — but should that three-thousandths-per-mu salt silver still be collected?

Liu Chengzong immediately shook his head. "Don't collect it. Since the salt rationing stopped back in the Zhengtong reign, what's the point of still collecting this?"

Sun Zhensheng was just about to bow and praise Liu Chengzong for his magnanimity and benevolence, but before the words left his mouth, he heard Liu the Lion add, "Chengyun, have the Household Office fold these three thousandths into the land tax. Don't use the name salt silver anymore."

Liu the Lion saw Sun Zhensheng's expression of wanting to speak but holding back, and merely smiled, saying nothing.

The Ming dynasty's harsh and miscellaneous taxes like this one stemmed mainly from the Hongwu Emperor's benevolent policies of never increasing taxes on old fields and never registering newly reclaimed land for taxation, which froze the total land tax revenue.

In itself, this wasn't a problem. What policy remains unchanged for all eternity? Later emperors simply needed to work diligently, like the Jiajing Emperor, to properly conduct land surveys and set things right.

That way, even if the taxable land base did not increase, it could still be considered storing wealth among the people.

What truly doomed everything was the madness of the Wanli Emperor, who enfeoffed vast tracts as princely estates and stipend fields. The court's tax base was already small, and he let his children devour even that.

This so-called salt silver was a word game — it had long since become a land tax.

Liu the Lion was not bound by the notion that the laws of the ancestors could not be changed, so he naturally would not coyly perpetuate this name. He dared to openly and boldly raise taxes.

Our Marshal Manor's land tax is simply high.

This, however, was somewhat hard for Chengyun to accept, and he cautioned, "Marshal, that would make the land tax one mace and eight candareens per mu."

"One mace and eight candareens."

Liu the Lion murmured the figure, flipping through the newly compiled Marshal Manor Gazetteer on his desk, weighing the matter in his mind.

This land tax rate was not high in itself, and compared to the present-day Great Ming with all its surcharges piled on, it was far lower.

But it was disadvantageous given the Marshal Manor's current situation.

The Marshal Manor Gazetteer recorded not only over two million eight hundred thirty thousand able-bodied adult males, but also the specific acreage of farmland.

The three provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai contained a total of four hundred seventy-three thousand seven hundred fifty-six qing of farmland, equivalent to over forty million mu.

In reality, however, of those four hundred seventy-three thousand qing, only two hundred twenty thousand qing were cultivated land. The remaining over two hundred fifty thousand qing were uncultivated raw land that had been abandoned.

Looking at the whole picture, Liu Chengzong realized that the much-maligned Fengxiang Prefect Li Jiayan had actually been somewhat wronged — his administrative performance had not, in fact, fallen below the Marshal Manor bureaucracy's average.

In fact, taken alone, Fengxiang Prefecture's four-cultivated-to-six-raw land ratio was still quite excellent.

After all, the Marshal Manor's overall twenty-two-to-twenty-five cultivated-to-raw land ratio was being propped up entirely by Xi'an Prefecture.

Xi'an Prefecture alone had over 98,800 qing of farmland, of which the abandoned raw land amounted to only 400 qing — and even that was due to delays caused by the war.

If you added the several directly administered prefectures along the Wei River's banks, like Hua Prefecture and Tong Prefecture, eighty percent of the Marshal Manor's farmland lay along the Wei River's banks in Guanzhong.

It was starkly clear.

It showed both the Wei River Plain's importance to the entire northwest, and the Marshal Manor's land, scarred and ravaged under natural disasters.

Of 310,000 qing of farmland, 250,000 qing lay abandoned.

In the end, Liu Chengzong shook his head and said, "This won't do. It's too high — not conducive to recruiting refugees for land reclamation and restoring production."

Admittedly, most prefectures and counties in Shaanxi currently lacked the very foundation for restoring production.

But for Liu the Lion, rather than setting a high land tax that the localities would ultimately fail to collect in full, it was better to keep the land tax slightly lower — recovering a little was better than nothing.

At least capable officials like Ju Sirang could, in the localities, withstand the toxic surrounding waters, recruit refugees to reclaim farmland in Qingyang Prefecture, and over a few years get the place running fairly well.

"Set it at one fen and five li, no higher. Each county shall levy taxes according to the cultivated land amounts reported in the prefectural gazetteers. Raw land shall be tax-exempt for three years to attract commoners to reclaim it. The effectiveness of clerks and yamen runners in turning raw land into cultivated land shall be incorporated into the performance evaluations of the presiding officials."

"The salt tax, silver levies, and all other miscellaneous taxes shall be consolidated into the corvée commutation silver. The Revenue Office shall deliberate on the regulations and order each county to levy an additional one qian per tael of silver, based on the total land tax amount, apportioned among wealthy households possessing over one hundred mu of land, divided into three grades and nine tiers for the apportioned amounts."

After Liu Chengzong finished speaking, he tapped the table lightly with the knuckle of his index finger and stressed to Chengzu, "Each year, every county shall transport the corvée commutation silver and the following year's budget along with the land tax grain to the prefectural office. After the prefectural magistrate audits the accounts, the funds shall then be allocated back to the localities."

These tax requirements were nothing new; they were basically just the Single Whip Law.

Zhang Xianzhong said, puzzled, "Commander, having the counties transport the corvée commutation silver to the prefectural office, only for the prefectural office to allocate it back to the counties — isn't that taking off your pants just to... an unnecessary extra step!"

"Then what does the Minister of the Rites Office think we should do?"

Zhang Xianzhong offered his advice with a deadpan expression, but his words were exceptionally blunt and crude: "In my humble opinion, it would be better to dispatch troops to patrol and inspect. Any turtle-spawn county magistrate who overtaxes or squanders money — follow the example of the Hongwu Emperor and flay him and stuff his skin with straw."

"You..."

Liu Chengzong was momentarily speechless. 'Humble opinion' was a polite self-deprecation, but this was a bit too damn humble.

Zhang Xianzhong wasn't speaking nonsense. For one, he genuinely thought this way — the military was more reliable than officials.

Secondly, his long study of Liu Chengzong hadn't been for nothing.

Liu Chengzong never failed to invoke the Hongwu Emperor, adopting the entire attitude of Zhu Yuanzhang's most steadfast political-ideological successor. Citing the Hongwu Emperor's old precedents, even the most outrageous suggestion wouldn't anger Liu Chengzong.

He had guessed dead right.

Liu Chengzong indeed wasn't angry — he merely doubted Zhang's intelligence.

He secretly resolved in his heart that when a suitable opportunity arose, he would transfer Old Zhang to the Punishment Office.

There really wasn't anything to get angry about. The Marshal Manor was full of grunts who only knew how to brandish blades, wield spears, kill people, and set fires. This was the average quality — looking vaguely human was already their best effort.

From the Ob River to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, every kind of fiend and demon had gathered in one hall, along with homegrown butchers represented by the likes of Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng, and Zuo Liangyu — each with a rampage radius exceeding a thousand kilometers.

That they could stand here obediently playing pretend court like a children's game was already unprecedented, monumental progress.

Did you really expect them to spit out ivory, or what?

"Brothers, in this great hall, we must speak with prudence. The matters we decide here determine the livelihoods and deaths of millions."

"Inadequate tax collection, insufficient military supplies — Liu Chengzong and Wang Jiayin mutinied and deserted. Cutting costs and streamlining, abolishing postal stations — Wei Qian'er and Li Zicheng lost their jobs and rebelled. Exorbitant levies and miscellaneous taxes, apportioned extortion — Wang Ziyong and Zhang Xianzhong raised troops and turned bandit... I, and all of you, are living examples."

Liu the Lion spoke with earnest gravity, looking pointedly at Zhang Xianzhong: "So policies can be complex. Even if they waste manpower and resources, it doesn't matter — mistakes can be corrected. The one thing they absolutely cannot be is crude and vague."

"If we don't control the measure, the soldiers, bureaucrats, and yamen runners below will control it for you. But how it ends then is anyone's guess."

Liu the Lion spoke with heartfelt sincerity: "Especially when it comes to punishment and killing. If a man runs a few extra trips, he eats something, sleeps, and his strength returns. If wealth and resources are wasted, you can manufacture, buy, or even rob more — there's always a way. But a severed head can't be reattached, and a lost heart can never be found again."

"How would patrolling soldiers distinguish between high and low taxes, or right and wrong expenditures? And if they start killing indiscriminately, who do I send to oversee my soldiers?"

Liu Chengzong didn't elaborate further. He spread his hands and said, "It must be an unnecessary extra step."

He said this as if it were the most natural thing in the world: "I'd be happy if the counties didn't just send the corvée commutation silver straight to me along with the land tax. Transporting it to the prefectural office lets the prefectural magistrate know the amount of tax revenue retained by each county and their expenditure budgets, ensuring the people's blood and sweat is put to practical use. Secondly, within a single prefecture, the rich and poor can aid each other, preventing the poorest places from being unable to accomplish anything."

At this point, Liu the Lion shook his head.

The northwest in these times — aside from the soldiers and weapons needed for war, it truly lacked everything else.

"Commander, this is truly a law of supreme benevolence and supreme clarity."

The voice came from behind a pillar near the entrance of the great hall. A man then stepped out, bowed, and declared loudly, "After the court session, this humble officer will return to the Provincial Administration Commission to draft the regulations and issue the official documents to the thirteen prefectures."

Liu the Lion found the man familiar but couldn't help feeling puzzled. The great hall had a set number of tables and chairs on all four sides — how was there someone hiding behind a pillar?

This was a Marshal Manor council. Who were you, and how did you sneak in?

Hearing the office 'Provincial Administration Commission' and looking more closely, Liu the Lion remembered — it was the Administrative Clerk of the Shaanxi Provincial Administration Commission, Zhang Jinyan.

Judging by how he was mixing up terms like 'court session' and whatnot, he'd probably been driven half-mad by the mental strain in the Provincial Administration Commission over the past six months... another one gone crazy.

After all, the Marshal Manor's bureaucratic structure was shaped like a flagpole.

At the top, the ministries, commandants, supreme commanders, and brigade commanders — one radish, one hole — were basically fully staffed.

At the bottom, the numerous prefectures, subprefectures, and counties — the decent places all had their presiding officials, and some officials in key strategic areas were even highly reliable.

It was only the flagpole connecting top and bottom that was missing. For instance, the Shaanxi Provincial Administration Commission had only Zhang Jinyan, this one proper Rank-6 Administrative Clerk, and four gatekeepers.

As the acting head of one of the Marshal Manor's rare provincial-level offices, he indeed had the right to attend council in the hall.

If he hadn't seen him, Liu Chengzong wouldn't have even remembered that he had a department called the Shaanxi Provincial Administration Commission. He said, "Zhang Jinyan, how have you been doing in the Provincial Administration Commission?"

"Replying to the Commander, this humble officer has been doing splendidly. Over the past six months, I have assisted Minister Liu in compiling and calculating the various prefectural gazetteers, and I also have a petition to make regarding the taxation and military affairs the Commander just mentioned!"

Zhang Jinyan had indeed been driven mad. Day after day, playing by himself in the yamen, his heart in a state of constant anxiety — it was bearable for a month or two, but after half a year, he was nearly a nervous wreck.

Truly, he was now desperately trying to make Liu Chengzong recognize his value. Either make the Provincial Administration Commission a real yamen, fill the official posts, and do some actual work, or dismantle the Commission and send him to the Military Office, the Revenue Office, the Punishment Office — anywhere.

Even if he were thrown to Taimeng Guard.

Otherwise, he simply had no idea what his standing in the Marshal Manor actually was.

Liu Chengzong, seeing that he wanted to offer advice, found it rather novel and said, "Speak freely."

"This humble officer believes that for cultivated land, the Marshal Manor's tax should be high, not low. But for raw land, it should be exempted as much as possible. At the same time, for the land tax levied by counties, subprefectures, and prefectures, the ratio of in-kind to commuted silver payments should be set according to the wealth or poverty of the locality."

"In places with few people and little land, levy entirely in-kind. In places with many people and vast lands, at least thirty percent should still be retained as in-kind payment. It is inadvisable to levy entirely in commuted silver."

The "original form" means taxes in kind, while the "converted form" means silver.

"Because I have troops stationed in every prefecture, the government holds grain in hand — buying low and selling high is the only way to stabilize local grain prices and supply military needs."

As Zhang Jinyan spoke, he suddenly grew hesitant, glancing around at the commanders in the hall before looking at Liu Chengzong. Only then, with lowered eyes and a deferential air, did he say quietly, "However, this humble officer believes that now the northwest is pacified, having the army live off the land is ultimately improper. The Marshal's headquarters should still issue full pay and provisions to all the troops."

Good evening!