What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
In the second year of the Han Ling Emperor Zhongping (185), Sima Zhi, a native of Hanoi County, was appointed by the imperial court as the Taishou of Julu County, and it is reasonable to say that this matter should be a great joy of fame and fortune and glorious lintel at any time, but for Sima Zhi, it has become a hot potato that cannot be avoided. It is not that Sima Zhi does not want to be promoted, but that this official wants to do it at this time.
First, it is better to die than to take office
Before Sima Zhi was appointed Taishou, during the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the imperial court continued to invest a lot of money in military warfare. At this time of financial strain, the Nangong suffered another fire, and rebuilding the palace was a huge expense. Lack of money must find a way to get money, the palace eunuchs Zhang Rang and Zhao Zhong gave advice to the emperor, on the one hand to collect ten yuan per acre of tianxia tiantian as "palace repair money", and on the other hand, to sell the official wealth to the end. After that, whether the incoming officials bought officials or appointed by the imperial court, they had to go to the emperor's west garden to "negotiate", and the emperor would set a price according to the rank of his position, called "helping the army to repair the palace money". After taking office, officials must try their best to collect this money to give to the imperial court before they can wear this black gauze hat. It was in this context that Sima Zhi was appointed as an official.
According to the "official price" at that time, the post of Taishou of Julu County should pay 20 or 30 million yuan of "money to help the army repair the palace", and the imperial court considered that Sima Zhi was an official with a clear name, so it specially reduced him by three million yuan. At that time, many people spent money to buy officials and amass wealth, which was said to be a profitable transaction, but Sima Zhi was a person who was as named after him, preferring to bend. He resolutely refused the appointment of the imperial court, and sighed with emotion: "I was supposed to be the parent official who was the master of the people, but now I want me to exploit the people. Helplessly, the imperial court did not allow it, and insisted that he take office, so Sima Zhi wrote a letter to the imperial court when he went to Mengjin Pass, explaining the shortcomings of current affairs, and then swallowed the medicine and committed suicide. Although Emperor Ling suspended the matter of "repairing palace money" after receiving Sima Zhi's death letter, this was not helpful after all, and the huge black hole hidden behind the "palace repair money" was continuing to devour the foundation of this dynasty.
Second, behind the rule of the world
Why was it that during the time of the Han Ling Emperor, the entire government was able to collect money so brazenly? Because the imperial court at that time was really driven crazy by poverty. Throughout the Eastern Han Dynasty, the most well-known ones were "Guangwu Zhongxing" and "Mingzhang Zhizhi". Especially through the efforts and accumulations of the Guangwu period, the politics of the Ming Emperor and Emperor Zhang's reign were relatively clear, and a large amount of wealth was accumulated, and even the scene of prosperity was reproduced. But behind the Haiyan River Qing, there are often deeper hidden dangers.
From the beginning of the founding of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the entire imperial court was no longer just the "family world" of the Liu clan, but the "shared world" of the Tianzi and the door valve nobles. Throughout the Eastern Han Dynasty, foreign relatives and eunuchs constantly divided power with the emperor, and the source of foreign relatives had formed a solidified aristocratic class. Most of the foreign relatives who were the empress and the important courtiers who took over the power were from the Yin, Deng, and Yan clans of the Nanyang clan and the Ma, Dou, and Liang clans of the Northwest Warlord faction. The power of these gate valve aristocrats grew, and to a certain extent, they monopolized bureaucratic advancement and economic taxation. The two lifelines of power and financial power, which should have been controlled by the imperial court, gradually fell into their hands. The Eastern Han court, which had lost some of its political power and fiscal revenue, was like a partially operational machine, slow and stuck, and even with really effective reform measures, it was difficult to implement.
During the reigns of Emperor Ming and Emperor Zhang, the imperial court had been maintaining huge military expenditures in the war with the Xiongnu in the north, followed by a rebellion by the Qiang people. In order to cope with the financial shortage, Emperor Shun openly borrowed state rent from the prince and lowered the officials' salaries. The government's financial expenditure has been intensifying but it has not been able to increase revenue, and finally it can only temporarily accumulate wealth through the old way of "selling officials" in the Western Han Dynasty. The opening of the road of "selling officials" means that the imperial court, after losing the benign way of increasing fiscal revenue, uses the right to transfer the right to elect officials in exchange for temporary money, which is the beginning of a vicious circle, and finally even evolves into the point of "forcing incorruptibility into greed".
Third, the depression of the dynasty
In fact, from the very beginning, the Eastern Han Dynasty carried some deep-rooted stubborn diseases. After Wang Mang's brief slapstick, the Eastern Han Dynasty, led by the Guangwu Emperor Liu Xiu, resumed the great cause of the Western Han Dynasty. The various systems of the Eastern Han Dynasty basically inherited the Western Han Dynasty, and the entire Eastern Han Dynasty only had a small degree of repair, which meant that while inheriting the "play method" of the Western Han Dynasty, it also accepted the chronic diseases of the Western Han Dynasty.
In the late Western Han Dynasty, the intensification of selling officials and lords has already highlighted the serious financial problems of the dynasty, and this financial problem must be started from the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Wen Jingshi appointed the "Huang LaoZhi Technique" and adopted a policy of resting with the people, so that the private economy developed freely and accumulated a large amount of wealth. In order to fight against the Xiongnu, Emperor Wu threw a lot of money into military wars, and the wealth accumulated by previous generations of emperors was about to "bottom out". In order to achieve financial income generation, Emperor Wu appointed merchants as officials to amass wealth for the government, and implemented a series of state monopoly operation measures, such as the transfer of the right to mint coins to the state, the salt and iron official camp, and the equalization of all losses.
The struggle between the government and the people for profit is the beginning of the decline in the freedom of the social market economy. Once the market loses the benign competitive environment, a series of problems will arise, such as different soil quality, climate and other conditions in different parts of the country, agricultural production tools will generally have the characteristics of "adapting to local conditions", and after the iron organ camp, it can indeed improve the quality of iron farming tools, but it is seriously divorced from the production reality. In addition, under the premise that the government does not have enough experience to regulate, the prices of all monopoly products are set by the government rather than the market, which makes the entire country's social economy gradually lose its vitality. Although there were policy iterations after that, the overall pattern and problems did not fundamentally change, and the financial problems caused by these ills continued until the Eastern Han Dynasty.
In the end, under the dual pressure of inefficient administrative institutions and financial shortages, Emperor Ling began to set up the post of state pastor as the governor of the locality, and the state pastor integrated political power, financial power, and military power as one, originally intended to strengthen administrative efficiency and better concentrate local resources for deployment, and finally formed a local separatist force irrepressibly. Shortly after Emperor Ling's death, the general He Jin joined forces with Yuan Shao to get rid of the eunuch forces, but gave Dong Zhuo the opportunity to enter the capital, thus opening the curtain on the dispute between the three kingdoms at the end of the Han Dynasty.