The raindrops fell down the eaves, and Zhu Yijun stood under the eaves with expressionless face. Queen Wang stood not far from Zhu Yijun, quietly looking at her husband, the emperor of the Ming Empire.

After a while, Zhu Yijun breathed a sigh of relief, turned his head to look at Queen Wang, and said with a smile: "When did you come?"

"Just come here!" Queen Wang said with a smile: "Seeing that Your Majesty can see that it is amazing, it has not disturbed Your Majesty. It's so heavy rain outside, Your Majesty should not stay outside for too long to avoid the wind and cold."

Zhu Yijun smiled, reached out to hold Queen Wang's hand and said, "Okay, I'll listen to the Queen."

Queen Wang smiled and said with a hint of joy on her face: "Your Majesty seems a little depressed. There are ministers in the court, the empress dowager and concubines in the harem. Your Majesty can care about it."

He waved his hand with a smile, and Zhu Yijun said in a deep voice: "I don't have so many ideas. I'm just thinking about where to start."

Speaking of reform, Zhu Yijun can't understand what the Ming Dynasty looked like. It is more appropriate to say that reform is full of problems than to say that it is full of holes. The whole Ming Dynasty is like a big colander, and Zhu Yijun feels like a dog biting a hedgehog and having nowhere to sip.

After thinking for a long time, Zhu Yijun felt that he had to start with money. He couldn't play anything without money!

Although he was thinking about it, Zhu Yijun knew that what he wanted to do now was to stabilize the court, rather than do other things.

After chatting with Queen Wang for a while, having lunch together, Zhu Yijun ran to read the memorials. A large part of these memorials were nonsense, and Zhu Yijun was too lazy to read them.

However, today's memorials are interesting. They are all impeachment memorials. It is not someone else who impeaches it, but it is Pan Sheng, the Minister of Rites who is about to succeed.

Speaking of which, Pan Sheng is not familiar with Zhu Yijun. After Ma Ziqiang died, the Minister of Rites was Pan Sheng.

However, Pan Sheng did not serve as the Minister of Rites for too long. After about two years, Pan Sheng retired again. After Pan Sheng retired, the Minister of Rites was Xu Xuemo, and this person was about to be a scholar.

After Zhang Juzheng became a scholar, he recommended Pan Sheng, and he also hoped that Pan Sheng would enter the cabinet as the Minister of Rites.

Zhu Yijun really dislikes the Ming officials playing the trick of Zhishu every time. When encountering something unpleasant, or if the emperor didn't listen to him, he would play Zhishu for you and slapped his butt and went home.

This kind of atmosphere is unsatisfactory, and the responsibility system must be implemented!

After reading several memorials in a row, Zhu Yijun found that they were all impeached Pan Sheng. It was obvious that Pan Sheng was targeted!

There is no need to think about this matter carefully. Zhu Yijun knew that someone didn't want Pan Sheng to enter the cabinet. Obviously, Zhang Juzheng was dead, and many people couldn't sit still and wanted to move into the cabinet. He sneered and threw the memorial aside. Zhu Yijun didn't want to touch Zhang Juzheng's people now.

Even if you want to move in the future, this is definitely not the way to move.

After looking through several memorials, Zhu Yijun suddenly saw a memorial, and the expression on his face suddenly became interesting. This memorial was written by Cao Yikui, the censor of the Censorate of the Censorate, and the content on it also made Zhu Yijun very interested.

Cao Yikui's memorial only involves one thing, that is: salt!

In this era, salt and iron are always the most profitable. Cao Yikui described in detail the shortcomings of the Ming Dynasty's salt law and the corruption and abuse of power by local personnel, but exploited them layer by layer, and countless people used salt to make themselves rich.

Especially some salt merchants were unscrupulous and turned a blind eye to the court's laws and regulations.

After the memorial, Cao Yikui put forward nine suggestions for salt making.

One is to clear the stove, two is to remove the heavy difference, three is to prohibit private salt, four is to avoid old debts, five is to decompose privately, six is ​​to replenish salt, seven is to replenish salt, eight is to cut silver, pay the diary, and nine officials to buy remaining salt.

Among these nine items, what attracted Zhu Yijun's attention the most was the official purchase of the rest of salt.

To put it bluntly, the official purchase of salt in the field is to buy additional salt for rice, so that the abundant salt can also benefit.

At the beginning of Hongzhi, whenever a merchant had no salt, he allowed him to buy the remaining salt to correct the situation. After the ban on private purchase of remaining salt was opened, the unscrupulous merchant borrowed the official to bring the private salt, which caused the palace to be trapped, and the system of official collection was blocked from then on.

Zhu Yijun hit Cao Yikui's memorial and pondered for a moment. It seemed that his first knife needed to be cut at the Salt Administration.

After looking at Zhang Jing, Zhu Yijun said, "Go and find this Cao Yikui for me!"

Salt and iron are definitely the most important income of the feudal dynasty. If you want to increase your income, you can definitely start with salt. But what to do specifically, you have to listen to what Cao Yikui said.

Cao Yikui was a Jinshi in the second year of Wanli. He was not very old, about thirty years old, and was at the age of a young age.

"See the Emperor!" Cao Yikui walked into the imperial study room of Qianqing Palace and knelt on the ground to salute Zhu Yijun.

"Get up!" Zhu Yijun said lightly: "I am very interested in your salt administration memorial. Tell me, how did you think about submitting this memorial? I know that this salt administration is a whole body!"

Cao Yikui was stunned. For the sake of the Salt Administration, Cao Yikui became excited in an instant.

"When I visited Cang County, Hebei, I saw some local officials using their power to manage salt taxes to buy and sell salt and fishery profits." Cao Yikui said in a deep voice: "If local officials even resell private salt, how rampant should salt merchants behave?"

"I think salt is the lifeblood of the court. Since the merchants allowed to buy excess salt, the court's salt money has been declining and its income has decreased significantly."

"I think it's time for the salt administration to be reformed. It's urgent to determine the salt farm, investigate officials, and severely punish salt merchants who resell private salt." Cao Yikui said here, and said excitedly: "What's the contribution of those salt merchants to the country? But they have invested extensive land and their family wealth is rich?"

When Zhu Yijun heard Cao Yikui say this, he suddenly laughed: "Then tell me, how rich are those salt merchants?"

"I don't know when I go back to the emperor." Cao Yikui pondered for a moment and said in a deep voice.

Zhu Yijun nodded. Although Cao Yikui said he didn't know, the court knew that the salt merchants were rich. But this matter cannot be mentioned. Once you mention it, some ministers will definitely come out to state the salt merchants' contributions, etc.

Zhu Yijun has conducted detailed research on the salt method of the Ming Dynasty, and it can be said that he was ruined by the salt merchants.

The salt law in the early Ming Dynasty was a system that encouraged merchants to transport grain to the border for salt in exchange for salt turbulence, also known as Kaizhong. The Kaizhong system followed the Song and Yuan systems, but in the Ming Dynasty it was more than Kaizhong in the border areas, in order to attract merchants to transport grain to border defense and enrich border military ration reserves.
Chapter completed!