During the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, there were many high-ranking officials who were corrupt, but because they were hand-pulled by Kangxi, Kangxi did not punish them, resulting in a deficit in the national treasury. During the Yongzheng period, the use of iron fists to govern the country, the corruption of officials was curbed, but by the Qianlong period, officials in the DPRK and China began to embezzle.
At that time, the Qianlong Emperor liked to go to Jiangnan to inspect, and by the way, he could go sightseeing in the mountains and rivers, because his travel front was very large, and he needed a lot of silver, and the national treasury would soon be unable to support it. At this time, He Yan appeared, and he assured Qianlong that he had a way to replenish the national treasury, so Qianlong appointed him as the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
He Yan thought of a good way to do this, that is, to collect the silver of the crime. Specifically, if officials commit crimes, then as long as they pay a certain amount of silver, they will not be punished, and the more important the crime, the more they will be paid, so the amount of silver that Qianlong can spend will increase rapidly, and Qianlong will be very happy, and the officials will also be happy and begin to wantonly amass wealth. He Yan was thus highly valued by Qianlong, and soon became the most powerful minister in the dynasty, and once he embezzled a treasure of great value, and when Qianlong found out, he did not punish him, so why did the Qianlong Emperor allow He Yan to make a mess of the court and not manage it? After Qianlong's death, Jiaqing became emperor, and only then did he find the answer. It turned out that Qianlong had long known that He yan had embezzled a lot of money, but in his old age he had no energy to rectify it, and leaving it to Jiaqing to deal with could also improve his prestige. After Qianlong's death, Jiaqing began to overthrow Hezhen, and soon Hezhen was dismissed from his post, put to death in prison, and his property was also sealed, and finally it was found that Hezhen's property was actually the income of the entire country for more than ten years, which was very shocking.
The reason why Qianlong did not kill Hezhen was obvious, one of which was to let Jiaqing take this opportunity to rectify the country's corrupt practices and make officials jealous when they were corrupt. The second is to let the embezzled silver of Hezhen finally be confiscated into the national treasury, so that Jiaqing does not have to worry about running out of money.