In the feudal society, how the system of the dynasty is a very critical issue, although at that time belonged to the model of the imperial family world, the emperor's personal ability is the key, but the emperor is holy or no longer vulnerable, after all, it is a man rather than a god, so at this time the system plays a great role, a good system will often make the emperor govern the country with half the effort, on the contrary, the bad system will often lead to the disaster of national destruction.
For example, the unique system of the Ming Dynasty in which the supervisors and cabinets jointly managed the state affairs made the emperor feel lazy at ease, so since the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the emperors have been lazy and lazy, but they have not yet had great power. The negative teaching material is that during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and Li Longji, in order to facilitate the expansion of the territory, he changed the system of "emphasizing the internal and the external" since the founding of the country, gave the frontier moderation to make the local military and political power, and formed a situation in which the heavy military strength in the Guanzhong area was not as good as the frontier, which caused the Anshi rebellion and made the Tang Dynasty unable to turn from prosperity to decline.
It can be said that the quality of the system is the key to how long a dynasty exists, so today Song Anzhi will talk about the shortcomings in the judicial system of the Qing Dynasty with the phenomenon of "slaughtering white ducks" in the Qing Dynasty.
What is slaughtering a white duck?
In the notes of the Qing Dynasty, the "slaughter of white ducks" is recorded like this: In the two provinces of Zhanghe and Quan in Fujian Province, there are many cases of murder. The rich kill people, give more money to the poor, and replace them with death. Although there are honest officials, the rate is covered by them, and the so-called "slaughter of white ducks" is also. The first doctor in the bureau, tasted the news of a fight murder case, the murderer was sixteen years old, the autopsy grid was injured in more than ten places, not one person can do, and the young and weak, it seems that it is not able to do, extract the reply, then the confession is gushing, and the detailed text is not the slightest difference, and then the repetition, word for word, cover the familiarity of reading, refute it, do not move, and then open the way, and then weep and say injustice, that is, the so-called "white duck".
To put it bluntly, the rich and powerful people in ancient times had a position, and after encountering a lawsuit for human life, they spent a lot of money to bribe people who had no power and no power to replace the real murderer to confess their sins and die. Because the perpetrator has no power and no power, but also because of money and money and take the initiative to send to death, so he is wantonly toyed with, like a white duck, so it is commonly known as "slaughtering white duck".
That is to say, the phenomenon of "slaughtering a white duck" is actually a common name for the top murder.
This situation began in the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, appeared on a large scale in Fujian and Guangdong, and later over time, this situation was not uncommon in several southern provinces.
So why is this happening, there are two main reasons.
First, there are imperfections and shortcomings in the judiciary
In the Qing Dynasty, there were two laws in the trial process: "the door of claiming and the same crime" and "requesting money for something".
The relevant provisions of these two laws can be said to have been repeatedly revised and improved in the Qianlong Dynasty to the Jiaqing Dynasty, and the reason is that they have not had much effect, so they have been revised many times.
Of course, there are also drawbacks, generally speaking, the top murder cases are all death penalty cases, according to the Qing system of hanging prisoners to be released to supervision, that is, a complex review and trial system.
The original intention of this system is to avoid the occurrence of unjust cases, so it is necessary to deport the offenders up the level, but the cost of deporting the criminals is higher, but the imperial court does not have a perfect system to stipulate how to reimburse this expense, so the officials can often only push to the bottom, let the small officials below to extort the criminal's family or rich households, raise money, or increase the following apportionment.
Death penalty cases in places such as Fujian and Guangdong are often caused by large-scale armed struggles between clans, and there are not a few people who need to be deported every year, and the cost is naturally very high, so local officials often do not care to handle such cases, and even do not want to go through formal procedures.
Moreover, in general, there are large-scale casualties in armed combat, and officials will be punished, so they often take pains to divide them into multiple ordinary homicides to deal with, and they are not in the mood to care whether there is a problem of the top murder.
There is also the forty-eighth year of Qianlong, the former Hubei Province, according to the inspection, wang Xin could not find out the truth in the case of bribery and murder, and led the trial and transfer, and demoted to three levels." The punishment of the imperial court was intended to make the officials below take this as a warning and seriously try the case in the future.
As a result, many local officials have the idea of avoiding punishment, performance appraisal, and handling backlog cases, and for their own career, they either go black in one way, even if they are fierce, they will uphold the original judgment to the end. Either they try to avoid the heavy and light, do not follow the formal procedures, or split the large-scale weapon fight into ordinary homicides.
In ancient times, morality was substituted for justice and the inaction of local officials
Regarding the control of the imperial court over the empire in ancient China, there is a saying called "the imperial power does not go down to the county, but the only clan under the county", which means that the local imperial power below the county is difficult to manage.
In fact, this sentence still has a certain truth, in ancient times, the basis of the rule of the central court often lies in the local gentry, and the gentry play a role in communication and management between the local peasants and the official government, similar to the system of representing the imperial court to manage the countryside, so the imperial court also gave the gentry certain privileges.
Therefore, the imperial court often adopted the behavior of replacing the judiciary with morality for the local countryside, and generally things were solved by the gentry, and it could not be said that they did not care, but the rule in the countryside was very weak.
At that time, the situation of local clans was very common, especially in the coastal areas of Fujian and Guangdong, which generally lived in clusters, and the development of clan organizations was strict, coupled with the local folk customs, so large-scale armed struggles often occurred.
And large-scale weapon fights tend to kill people, and the clan strength is large, so they often find people to fight fiercely, and dotted the upper and lower levels of the gate. Most of the local officials do not care about the situation of the top offender, first, because they are reluctant to do much for the sake of political achievements and the like mentioned earlier. The second reason was that the officials were corrupt at that time.
But what is the reason for the clan fighting?
It was the inaction of local officials and the inaction of local contradictions, and after the contradictions between the two sides of the clan accumulated to a certain extent, a large-scale armed struggle naturally occurred.
This kind of situation that was caused by large-scale weapon fights and caused by the occurrence of top murders became a common situation at that time. When local officials reported to the imperial court, most of them pushed the problem on the clan, believing that the local people's customs were not good, and the people were mostly diao people, that is, the moral cultivation was not high, so the problem of armed fighting and fierceness occurred, and at most the inaction of officials was mentioned slightly.
From here, we can also see the inertial thinking of ancient rule, such as the countryside, where the clan forces often use morality instead of law to restrain the behavior of the clan, so after the problem arises, the local officials will only say that the moral cultivation of the clan people is not enough, and they feel that they do not have many problems.
However, the Qianlong Emperor at that time was not so foolish, and pointedly pointed out: "Although the wind of weapon fighting was caused by the fierce feelings of the people of Fujian Province, it was caused by the poor handling of local officials." This means that the lack of management of local officials is the root cause, and you have an unshirkable responsibility.
He also said: "If there is another case of armed struggle, it is necessary to find out the mastermind and the culprit, and to deal with the crime as well as the law." Its local officials, who are still hiding and concealing, are immediately and strictly investigated."
Finally, to sum up, the reason for the problem of "slaughtering white ducks" in the Qing Dynasty is very complicated, because the local clan forces are strong and the people are fierce, coupled with the inaction of officials, resulting in regular large-scale armed struggles, and after the occurrence of human life, people naturally find people to top the fierce, coupled with loopholes and deficiencies in the judicial system, so the problem of the top murder cannot be effectively suppressed in the process of operation, and finally the phenomenon of "slaughtering white ducks" is formed.
Thank you for watching Song Anzhi's exclusive original article, focusing on the history of the Ming and Qing dynasties and its great history of China, like to talk about those immutable histories from a different perspective, I think friends can remember to like and pay attention to Ha.