The Qing Dynasty officialdom is known as "three years of Qing prefect, 100,000 snowflake silver", but this is only a metaphor, does not mean that a clean prefect, a term down can be fished for 100,000 taels of silver. And spending aside income alone doesn't really give an idea of an official's real belongings. So, under normal circumstances in the Qing Dynasty, how much did an official's family property have?
Normally, it means that he is an official for a term, taking only the money and raising the incorruptible money, as well as all gray income permitted by law, excluding corruption, bribery, and extralegal economic resources. During the Qing Dynasty, officials did not declare their assets, so the most truly reflective of their economic situation was to raid their homes. Here we take Tao Yi, the political envoy of Jiangning during the Qianlong period, as an example.
Since the Yongzheng Dynasty established the system of raising honest silver for local officials, the envoys from Jiangning cloth in Erpin can get an annual salary of 155 taels, plus 8,000 to 10,000 taels of incorruptible silver, in addition to some bad rules, adding up to a total of about 30,000 taels a year. As for personal consumption expenses, it is impossible to calculate, but with the extravagance of the Qing Dynasty officialdom, there should not be much left.
In the historical records, Tao Yi did not leave much information, and he said in his recital to Qianlong: "The subject was a poor man, admired the emperor's heavenly grace, and was promoted to the rank of a clan by the prefecture and county capital Dao, and his grandfather was glorified." It seems that Tao Yi was born in a family that was not very wealthy, and it was not easy to get admitted to the meritorious name of a person, and he became a political envoy of Jiangning province step by step from Zhi County.
Tao Yi's reason for the crime of raiding his family was not corruption and bribery, and his official reputation has always been good, but his luck has been back, involving a major literary prison in the Qianlong Dynasty- the "One Pillar Building Poem" case. The case of "One Pillar Lou Poem" occurred in the forty-third year of Qianlong, and the author was Xu Shukui, in which he wrote "Zhen Fei during the Ming Dynasty, once went to the Qing capital", which is considered to denigrate the Qing Dynasty's shaving system. Xu Shukui was a native of Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, who had died at the time, and his family property had been confiscated.
In August of the 43rd year of Qianlong, Liu Yong, who was then a scholar and politician in Jiangsu, played Qianlong and said that he had received a report from a local citizen, Tong Zhixuan, saying that Xu Shukui's poem "One Pillar Building Poem" was full of indignation, and Qianlong immediately ordered a strict investigation.
In the process of investigation, Tao Yi, who was then the envoy of JiangningBu, had already received a report as early as May of that year, but he did not strictly investigate and deal with it, so Qianlong believed that he intended to protect him. On September 16, Tao Yi was dismissed from his post and dismissed from the Ministry of Punishment. On the twenty-fourth day, Qianlong once again issued a decree to strictly seal Tao Yi's shandong ancestral family property, and the assets of Jiang Ningren, where he was located, were also confiscated.
The governor of Liangjiang, Sa Zai, quickly played the results to Qianlong and attached a list, including: gold ornaments, gold ingots 95 two, silver 2358 two, large and small jade 185 pieces, old bronze ware 25 pieces, old porcelain 40 pieces; the rest there are satin leather, python robes, velvet brocade feathers and other new and old clothes, jewelry with the same dynasty beads, books, calligraphy and paintings, and scattered utensils.
Subsequently, The Inspector of Shandong Guotai Found Tao Yi's original family property, including: 74 Weihaiwei houses in Wendeng County, 24 land titles (estimated at 9870 two), 2 garden land deeds, men's and women's satin cotton sandwich clothes, cloth clothes, silver jewelry, copper tin utensils, porcelain, books, wood lacquer and other items, now more than 60 silver, 17,700 yuan.
In addition, Cathay Also found that Tao Yi's son Tao Zengheng returned to his hometown in Shandong from Jiangning in September, carrying more than 1800 taels of silver, excluding the cost of the road plate to 200 taels, leaving 1600 taels, which had been sealed and recovered in the original place of origin.
Combining the above contents, Tao Yi's family property is estimated to be about 39989 taels. This figure is certainly an astronomical number for the poor people who do not have enough to eat, but it is obviously not so huge for a person who has been a magistrate for decades. After all, Tao Yi was a member of the Erpin Dynasty, and it was the prosperous era of Qianlong, and this bit of family property was really nothing.
Tao Yi was spared death by Qianlong Jia'en, and he fell ill and died on the way to Jiejing at the age of 64. Later, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Imperial Dynasty, the Qianlong Emperor spared a number of officials whose family property had been confiscated, and Tao Yi was listed among them, and some of them were returned to his family.
If Tao Yi's example does not yet illustrate the problem, then there are several officials of the Qianlong Dynasty who have been raided. One is Qi Zhaonan, a cabinet scholar and ceremonial attendant who is also implicated in the literal prison, who when he was raided, totaled 4349 taels of silver; the other is Yin Jiaquan, the secretary of the Dali Temple, and his family property is only 8055 taels.
In addition, during the Qianlong period, some records of copying homes with meritorious names but not of official characters were also left. For example, Wang Xihou, who was raided by the government, had only 296 taels of his family property, and Zhu Tingzheng's family property was 217 taels.
It is not difficult to see that in some major cases of the Qing Dynasty, only those corrupt officials would be found to have huge family property, and ordinary officials were actually not as rich as people's phenomena, whether it was the governor, the inspector, or the Taoist or the prefect, it was rare for the family to take out more than 10,000 taels of silver.