#历史开讲 #
1. Selection and appointment system
Since the supervision system itself occupies an important position in a country's political system, supervision officials are the officials of management officials and the actual implementers of various supervision legislation, and the rulers of the Ming Dynasty formulated the above-mentioned supervision laws and regulations at the same time as formulating the management system applicable to supervision officials, so as to improve the overall quality of supervision activities and ensure the effective play of supervision efficiency.
(1) Selection conditions Regarding the selection conditions for local supervision officials in the Ming Dynasty, the historical record "Ming History and Election System" once recorded: "According to the results of the imperial examination, the outstanding ones are awarded the posts in the affairs, the second is awarded the imperial history posts, and the last ones are appointed to the ministries." It can be seen from this that the strict conditions for the selection of supervision officials in the Ming Dynasty were higher than those of ordinary officials, and the best talents were selected to enter the ranks of supervision officials.
This is because ombudsman has greater powers and responsibilities than other officials; The ability of supervision officials and the quality of their overall quality are closely related to the effective display of supervision effectiveness. Specifically, the selection of the Ariake generation of supervisory officials mainly examines the following three aspects.
1. Political and moral requirements
The selection of supervision officials is the first to bear the brunt of both talent and morality. Out of the need to strengthen the imperial power, as the emperor's own eyes and ears and tools, the Ming Dynasty supervision officials first put both ability and political integrity in the first place, and the most important thing is to be loyal and patriotic, honest and courageous, and have the courage to speak, which requires that as supervisory officials, on the basis of loyalty to the emperor to maintain the imperial court, dare to speak out to correct the ruler's mistakes, expose and report the noble Qi Quanmen.
Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang put forward clear requirements for supervision officials: be rigid and soft, not too radical, and not treacherous and flattering. Chengzu Zhu Di put forward more clearly: "The imperial history should use honest and prudent people, clean people have no selfishness, prudent people have no negligence, and straightforward people dare to speak out." ”
2. Cultural conditions
The selection of supervision officials requires knowledge. The scope of supervision of supervision officials ranges from matters related to the country's major plans to political life and people's livelihood, and it is necessary to require the literary and academic knowledge that supervision officials are competent for. Therefore, the selection of local supervision officials requires that they be well-educated and knowledgeable. At the beginning of the Ariake generation, the threshold for the selection of supervision officials was relatively low, and those who showed talent, raised people, and came from the rank of junior could participate in the selection.
In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the threshold for the selection of supervisory officials was gradually raised, excluding Xiucai's eligibility for selection, and only those who were from a junior background could participate in the election. In the seventh year of Yongle (1409 AD), Emperor Zhu Di issued an edict to the civil and military officials: "Imperial history is the ear and ear tool of the imperial court supervision officials, and people who are knowledgeable, reasonable, and have management skills should be selected. From then on, local inspectors were required to choose from the "right path," which was the imperial examination. Since the restoration of the imperial examination system, most of those who have been awarded the title of imperial history have been from jinshi backgrounds, and they are required to study laws and punishments.
3. Age Restrictions
Veteran and skilled personnel should be used in the selection and promotion of supervision officials. In the sixth year of the reign (1441 AD), Emperor Yingzong issued an edict saying: "The supervisory organs inside and outside the imperial court are the departments that rectify the discipline, and must carefully select those who are knowledgeable, of good character, and highly qualified." "Any young and junior official who takes office must first be appointed to a trial with a minor errand, and only those who have competently evaluated the results can be appointed as supervisory officials. Although the selection and appointment of the Ariake generation of supervision officials focuses on veterans and talents, it is not the only condition for promotion based on age. According to the Ming system, the age limit for selecting supervision officials was generally no more than 50 years old.
(2) The manner of appointment
The emperor, the supreme ruler of the Ming Dynasty, attached great importance to candidates for supervision officials who claimed to be his ears and eyes. It not only requires the conscientious selection of persons who are honest and honest, rigorous in their words and deeds, familiar with criminal laws and regulations, and mature and steady, but also require that supervision officials must have profound knowledge, outstanding talents, and certain political achievements. The fourth year of orthodoxy (1439 AD) stipulated: "It is forbidden to fill the ranks of new novices and those who know the seal, undertake errands, and be officials." ”
In the sixth year of the orthodox reign (1441 AD), it was decreed: "Each of them shall be selected and sent to the court according to the chief of the inspectorate, the rank of a scholar and a prisoner, and the officials of one examination and two exams shall be selected and sent to the hospital, and the examination shall be dismissed for half a year." "Generally speaking, the Ming Dynasty's appointment as an inspector was mainly from the supervision of the imperial history, local prefects, councilors, and middle-level officials in the central ministry and the court. Specifically, there are several ways.
1. Elected by officials and selected by the emperor
If there were vacancies in the posts of officials of the Inspectorate, the officials should first recommend several candidates to the Emperor, who would then select from among the persons recommended by the ministers. During the Hongwu and Yongle years, most officials were selected in this way, and their successors followed this method.
For example, in the fourth year of Jingtai (1453 AD), Liu Zi, the superintendent of Shandong Province, was promoted to Shandong Inspector, and Bai Zhongxian, the supervisor of Guizhou Province, was promoted to Guangdong... At this time, Shandong and Guangdong were vacant for the posts of inspectors, and four supervision officials were recommended by the ministry, so the above appointments were made.
2. Guarantee, will push
According to the regulations of the Ming Dynasty, when there is a vacancy in local officials such as political envoys and inspectors, they can be sponsored and recommended by officials of the third grade or above in the DPRK. During the Yongle period, it was further clearly stipulated that "whenever there are vacancies in the administrative secretary, the chief inspector and the prefect, it is expressly ordered that officials of the third rank or more be recommended in the Beijing dynasty." "This practice of selecting talents by high-ranking officials and selecting talents according to the opinions of many people has a certain democratic character, which can divide part of the power of the officials on the one hand, and make up for the emperor's need to centralize power on the other hand.
In the early and middle Ming dynasties, this system of selecting officials discovered and produced a large number of talents. For example, Mingchen Yu Qian, Zhou Chen, etc., were all famous in the Ming Dynasty through recommendation. Until the third year of Jingtai (1452 AD), the officials said that this was not enough, so the edict decreed that after that, only officials such as political envoys and inspectors could be jointly sponsored and recommended by officials above the third grade, and other officials were selected by the officials in order to seek justice. After Zhengde, the law of guaranteeing officials was gradually abolished.
3. Push the recommendation
After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, provincial governors and governors monopolized the power of recommending, recommending and supervising local officials. During the Jingtai period, Ji Cheng, the prefect of Chuxiong in Yunnan, was promoted to the post of inspector of Guangxi, and Qin Ming, the prefect of Shaanxi, served as the left councilor of the political secretary of Shaanxi. During the Tianshun period, Qian Bo, who was then in the criminal department, was promoted to Sichuan inspector after being recommended by the inspector and the inspector.
In general, in the early Ming Dynasty, the selection scope of the imperial history was relatively broad, and the sources of the inspection imperial history included new science scholars, juren, local prefecture and county teachings, prefectural instructors, and wild masters. By the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the number of talents selected through the imperial examination increased, and the scope of the selection and inspection was mainly recruited from the new science and technology scholars and local officials at the county level with local grassroots work experience and experience.
2. Inspection system
According to the supervision officer of the Inspectorate, he or she is in the position of magistrate, and if he wants to supervise others, he must first correct himself. In order to maintain the integrity of the supervision team, the rulers of the Ming Dynasty established a strict system of inspection and supervision officials. Officials of the inspection department must not only undergo the triennial "grand plan" assessment like other officials, but also undergo internal inspections within the system every time they return from an inspection, which specifically include:
During the sub-patrols, he recommended civil and military officials, impeached civilian and military officials, promoted school students, revolutionized the military and civilian pros and cons, tried criminal prisoners, recovered stolen money, and interrogated punishments. In addition, it is necessary to compile a record and report the number of documents, money and grain, and horse boats that should be closed by the prefecture, county, and other local government agencies every quarter, and inspect whether there are any overstaffed people, eating and drinking places in the localities. At the end of the year, the specific affairs and achievements of the local area under the jurisdiction will be reported one by one.
The officials and the Metropolitan Inspectorate formed a report on the evaluation of the officials according to the Inspectorate, and submitted it to the Emperor, who decided on the promotion or demotion of the Inspectorate Bureau. Officials who are competent can be promoted, and those with outstanding political performance can even be promoted beyond the ranks; Those who failed to perform the examination were demoted, and corrupt officials were deposed as commoners. For example, during the Jingtai period, Bai Gui, deputy envoy of Shaanxi Province, was promoted to Zuo Bu, deputy envoy of Zhejiang Bu, Luo Hu, deputy envoy of Zhejiang Inspectorate, was promoted to Inspector of his own department, and Guyong of Shandong was promoted to Inspector of Zhejiang.
During the Jiajing period, Henan's envoy Li Xianqing was promoted to the post of Right Imperial Commander. Most of the officials who were incompetent were demoted to prefectures or even prefectures. For example, during the Chenghua period, Sichuan was demoted to the prefect of Hejian Prefecture for embezzling public funds; During the Zhengde period, Kuang Yi, the envoy of Sichuan, was demoted to Zhixian of Tonglu, Zhejiang.
Most of the deposed inspectors were demoted to state judges, prefectures, and even wardens. However, in the late Ming generation, many people in the history of the Inspector Imperial Governor were falsely accused of being imprisoned and degraded for impeaching powerful people who angered Long Yan, which was not incompetent. For example, during the Wanli period, Xiong Tingbi toured Liaodong, and was falsely accused and framed by the castrated party and passed on to the nine sides. Therefore, the fate of the inspectors in the early and late Ming dynasties was also very different.
III. Avoidance system
Local inspectors, as magistrates, hold important positions and are therefore punished more severely than ordinary officials. According to the inspector, "If you find that good deeds are not praised, and if you find evil deeds and do not correct them, you will be punished with a hundred rods, and you will be issued a remote and smoky place, and those who are corrupt and violate the law shall be punished heavily." "In order to prevent supervision officials from violating the law, the Ariake generation has made a series of regulations for supervision officials and set up a strict recusal system:
First, supervision officials patrol prefectures and counties without any time limit, and must not be perfunctory, but must traverse prefectures and counties.
Second, the public funds used during the sub-patrol period are guaranteed by certain prescribed standards, and it is forbidden to order local government officials to purchase goods without authorization, extravagant and wasteful, and those who violate them will be punished.
Third, it is forbidden for relatives, friends, and others to go to the government institutions under their jurisdiction to entrust people to do business, and it is forbidden to allow officials to go out of the city to welcome and see them off, and still less to put on banquets and waste them arbitrarily.
Fourth, if the place where the inspector is assigned is his place of origin, or if there is a grudge with the parties to the case, he should recuse himself. Fifth, if a central Beijing official is transferred to a local official and has a rank of the right three products, according to the usual practice, it is not appropriate to fill the vacancy according to the inspector, and can only fill the vacancy to participate in politics, but the treatment of the fellows is compared with the positive third product, so as to prevent the local supervision and judicial power from falling to the central power minister. Officials appointed by the Ariake generation, regardless of the form they take, are generally subject to a certain system of recusal, and local inspectors are no exception.
The practice that local officials could not be held by locals had a long history in ancient mainland China, but the Ming dynasty, especially the early ones, had a stricter system of avoidance than any other dynasty. According to historical records, in the thirteenth year of Hongwu (1380 AD), he began to formulate a method for transferring officials from the north to the south.
The officials who should be avoided at this time include local officials of all grades, not just local leaders, and there is no special preferential treatment for normal selection in remote areas. This method of realignment was too strict, difficult to implement and prone to drawbacks, until its successors changed.
To sum up, the selection, appointment, supervision and management of local supervision officials in the Ming Dynasty basically achieved a legal basis, rules and regulations to follow, procedures that were quite strict, and specific measures were appropriate and appropriate, thus helping to create a contingent of local supervision officials with both cultural and political literacy and integrity, and at the same time, it was conducive to the central government rectifying the rule of local officials, correcting and impeaching illegal officials, and purging the discipline of the imperial court.
In short, after absorbing and drawing on the lessons of the corruption and destruction of the country in the feudal dynasties of previous dynasties, especially the painful lessons of dynastic change caused by the dark political rule at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang was determined to change the dark and corrupt situation since the end of the Yuan Dynasty, and dethroned a series of political systems that brought calamity to the country and the people, judicial darkness, and corruption of officials. Use cruel punishments and harsh punishments to deal with corrupt officials.
In the fourth year of Hongwu (1371 AD), a special supervision law, the Constitution Gang, was promulgated, focusing on cracking down on corrupt officials and punishing power groups throughout the court that threatened the autocratic imperial power. The Punishment Inspectorate was a permanent local supervision agency at the provincial level in the Ming Dynasty, which held the judicial power and supervision power of a province, and later, with the gradual expansion of the supervision power, it led to the continuous reduction of the functions and powers of the provincial Punishment Inspectorate.
After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the Department of Punishment Inspectors was reduced to the status of a departmental agency that assisted and cooperated with the work of patrolling imperial history. In the later period of the Hongzhi Emperor, the inspector imperial history combined supervision power, local administrative power, and military power, and the power gradually expanded, which eventually led to the decline and corruption of the inspector imperial history itself.
The creation and continuous development and improvement of the local supervision system in the Ariake generation gradually replaced some of the functions and powers of the three local departments, and at the same time changed the status of the three departments at the local supervision level, and the governors became the center of power at the provincial level, and also became the feudal officials in charge of major affairs.