The Silent Reforms of Eldridge Chapter 47

Rectify the administration of officials

There was an investigation case in Gansu that was not verified clearly last year, but was manipulated by an aide with evil intentions named Sun Jieqing. There are several versions of the matter. The dismissed official Chen Changyan sued former governor Buyantai, which involved an unfair investigation. Mr. Qi Jianzao, the Minister of Rites of the Imperial Envoy, and Prime Minister Qi jointly submitted a petition to ask for another time limit for the reward and to verify the audited accounts again. In the folder, the imperial envoy requested that an honest and capable official be appointed as the chief envoy to Gansu. This is the reason why I came to Gansu. . According to Mr. Qi Lizao, when Prime Minister Qi asked for instructions, he did not mention my name. This shows that the Holy Master already understood it in his heart.

I am not good at money and food matters, but since the late Emperor ordered me to verify and clean up, I should be more careful. According to investigations, most of the reasons for Gansu's deficit are caused by interest income and contributions. The so-called interest-earning means using the grain in the Taoist government's inventory as the price, or using the silver in the inventory, or selling the grain at a reduced price on the grounds that the grain in the grain depot has become moldy, and then converting it into silver and lending it to merchants to earn interest to make up for the shortfall in the warehouse and share it. States and counties have shortfalls in general and miscellaneous treasury funds and cannot hand over the amount when handing over. This can be roughly divided into the following situations: one is because they have inherited the predecessor's loopholes and are not willing to pay for it themselves; the second is because the family has a heavy burden. It cannot be returned after misappropriation; the third reason is that when money and grain are collected, the people are only willing to pay copper coins. However, in recent years, the price of silver has risen sharply. The original amount of copper coins collected was converted into silver and handed over to the feudal government office, which resulted in a lot of compensation. When he was in office, he was able to barely support him by moving here and there, but once he resigned, his old roots were exposed. So he asked the Taoist government to file a case, and repay the loan on a monthly basis regardless of whether he was a formal official or an acting official. If it can be implemented, then the funds in the Treasury will always be settled. However, state and county officials did not pay a penny of the money allocated to their names when they were in office, and when they left office, they merged their losses into the money that their predecessors had already lost. Regarding the matter of stalls, we once again asked the Taoist government for instructions to consolidate the stalls; even the originally scheduled split of three to five years was extended to ten to eight years, and it went through many times without end. In the past, when Hu Song'e and Ente Heng'e were governors of Shaanxi and Gansu, they also conducted investigations, but they failed to put an end to this trend. So as of now, the number of losses is getting bigger and bigger.

I think since we need to clean up, if we don’t eliminate the two shortcomings of interest generation and amortization first, and find out how much the deficit is and what is the reason for the deficit, otherwise the investigation will be in vain. So I ordered all the local governments to conduct inspections nearby and not hide anything. If new debts occur after the inventory, then it will be a case of cheating by all the governments, and there is no way to refuse to pursue the case. So I detailed the reasons for the termination to the Ministry of Accounts first, and the Ministry of Accounts also agreed to my plan.

The method of this inventory is: if the interest is accrued up to this year, the insufficient interest will be recovered by the official who issued the loan; if it is still not enough after apportionment, the remaining gap will be made up by deducting 20%   of the official's Yanglianyin every month; If the grain money turned over, or if the official suffered losses during his term of office, a time limit will be set and the money will be recovered in installments. If a person both suffered losses during his tenure and is seeking compensation from his predecessor, he should first compensate for the actual losses during his tenure, and then implement the compensation. If an actual loss occurs, the employee will first be demoted or dismissed based on the amount of the shortfall. If the shortfall is not made up, he will not be promoted.