Lin Zexu, who "does not take a penny in vain"
Text: Zhang Hongjie Source: "Bad Rules"
A British officer during the Opium War said: "It is only fair to Lin that although he was not liked by the emperor, he was very much loved by the people he had recently governed." His worst nemesis also had to admit that his hands had never been tainted by bribes. Among Chinese politicians, this is unheard of. ”
At the beginning of Lin Zexu's entry into the army, he vowed to be a Qing official, "but when Baojuan is clean, Fu rushes one by one", so he is the head of the official to guard against micro-development. In the tenth year of Daoguang (1830), he went to Hubei to serve as a political envoy, and issued a summons in advance, announcing the officials guarding the land along the road and refusing all reception and supply. The plaque declared: "The ships hired shall be issued at the price of the people, and they shall not be allowed to pay for water feet along the way, nor are they required to add fibers." ...... Everything for food has been bought by yourself, and there is no need to send wine and food on the next journey. The subordinate officials were only received at the local pier, and there was no need to welcome them from afar. ...... If there is an insinuation under the name of the water foot station and all suppliers, the magistrate will immediately and severely punish him, and shall not be lenient. Be sure to! ”
In the process of staying in office, Lin Zexu took a series of relatively effective corrective measures in response to the corrupt habits of officialdom at that time. He travels lightly and simply. In the nineteenth year of Daoguang (1839), he went to Guangdong as the minister of Qincha to ban opium, and his entourage "only had three horses and one ben, six with Ding, and three in the kitchen Ding Xiaofu", without bringing a single official or scrivener.
He was very strict with the official entourage under his subordinates. For those who carry with Ding Bingben, etc., "it is not allowed to leave the left and right without permission", "it is not allowed to secretly accept the slightest standing rule door bag, etc." Whenever they go to a place, they will post a notice to inform the people that they "buy everything for their own food, and do not accept local supply; The purchased items shall be paid to the discovery according to the current price of the people, and it is not allowed to suppress the slightest amount of credit. ...... Occasionally sending family members out and riding in a sedan car is also hired at any time, and there is no need to send a service in advance. If there is any insinuation of a person who is disturbed, the person who is disturbed is allowed to make a complaint, and it will be strictly punished." Statement: "If there is a false claim to be related to the relatives and friends of the company, you can say on behalf of Guan, as well as the Ding Xu people, etc., to the outside world, mixed with the person who takes care of the situation, regardless of the size of the matter, the offender will be punished." Whoever can refer to the head to the official, the first is real, and the reward will be increased."
In order to prevent corruption and fraud, Lin Zexu also paid attention to plugging loopholes in the system. During his tenure as Hubei Bu's political envoy, he formulated preventive measures against such maladies as donating officials and false pinching of silver, and "the donated prison tools were submitted for redemption, and they were all audited by the internal signatures according to their names and names. In addition to the issuance of the actual receipt and the replacement of the photograph as usual, after the receipt, fill in the list to show the information." If there is a false pinch, under layers of audit, it is easy to fall into the water.
Lin Zexu's requirements in terms of human etiquette are also very strict. In the fourth year of Daoguang (1824), Lin's mother died, and his best friend Liang Zhangju was in Huaihai Province, Jiangsu at the time, knowing that Lin Zexu's family was not rich, he planned to lead his colleagues to send Houzhao, and Lin Zexu immediately wrote a letter to refuse. In the 27th year of Daoguang (1847), Lin Zexu was promoted to the governor of Yungui, and Zhang Jixin recorded that "the gifts of the same people are all resigned".
Therefore, wherever Lin Zexu went, he was recognized as a good official in the township. When recounting the nostalgia of the people of Jiangsu for Lin Zexu, Feng Guifen said: "Although the women and children of the countryside are not angry about the events of the day, they are all rumors, and the hearts of everyone who believes in Deze are deep. "Decades away from the public, the heart sings like when the public is there."
However, Lin Zexu is not a "clean official in the standard sense" who is "as clear as water", and he also accepts "bad rules". In the twenty-sixth year of Daoguang (1846), a major famine occurred in Shaanxi, and local taxes were greatly reduced, resulting in the suspension of the country's military grain, but Zhang Jixin, who was the grain governor of Shaanxi at the time, said in his memoir "Daoxian Palace Sea Sights" that this year "the superintendent general's bad rules were sent as usual", of which the "fu" was Lin Zexu, the governor of Shaanxi. So how much "bad rules" did Lin Zexu earn this year? Zhang Jixin said that silver is "1,300 taels per quarter", and there are also "three festivals and two birthdays" gifts, water gifts, door bags and miscellaneous expenses, which exceed 10,000 taels a year.
No matter how big the natural and man-made disasters, Lin Zexu's "bad rules" will ensure drought and flood. It is hard to imagine that Lin Zexu did not care about the lives of the people for his own selfishness, but because of the actual situation of the financial system, he also had to follow the practice of officialdom in various places, and to a certain extent, he accepted "bad rules" for office purposes. It is precisely because of this that his Yanglian silver can be sent home, leaving a certain scale of inheritance behind him.
Regarding Lin Zexu's inheritance, Zeng Guofan has a saying, he wrote in a family letter to Zeng Guoquan: "Today, the three sons of Lin Wenzhong (Lin Zexu) are divided into families, and each gets 6,000 strings (including the house price of each pillar field, 10,000 silver deposited in the public, for the worship of the field, and the fee for the engraving is outside). Twenty years of supervision, really unattainable. "In the twenty-sixth year of Daoguang, Bao Shichen said in the "Letter to the Former Great Sima Xu Taichang", "The southern silver is based on two thousand, and the northern news is even more than this", so according to Zeng Guofan, roughly calculated by exchanging two thousand characters for one or two, the total number of Lin Zexu's inheritance is 19,000 taels. Among the provincial officials at that time, this amount of inheritance was very small.
In the 27th year of Daoguang, when Lin Zexu was serving as the governor of Shaanxi, he wrote a letter of division of property, dividing the property of his hometown's Tian House to his three sons. The book of division of property says: "The property before and after the total, either broken or inherited, the land is not more than ten deeds, and there are only twenty-three shops and houses,...... Except for the first house in Wenzao Mountain and the one connected to the west, which must still be left as a reinhabited area, there is no need to analyze, the rest of the field house properties are divided into three shares according to the original value, each worth 10,000 taels of silver,...... At present, there is no cash silver to divide, and if there is a time in the future, it will be evenly distributed according to the three strands, and books and clothing will be allowed to do so. "Judging from this family separation document, Lin Zexu's family property at this time, in addition to the two houses and cash silver reserved for returning to the field for retirement, there are more than 30,000 taels, so the total Lin Zexu's inheritance should be about 40,000 taels, which is double the amount Zeng Guofan said. However, this kind of inheritance was still among the superintendents at that time, and it was still among the particularly clean and honest officials, so the thinness of his inheritance could become news for a while, and it was widely spread, and when it reached Zeng Guofan's ears, it was falsely rumored to be less than 20,000 taels.
Therefore, Lin Zexu is also a typical representative of traditional Chinese officials, representing a class of officials who are clean but also prudently collect "due" gray income within the scope of "custom" approval. There are many examples of such officials in the late Qing Dynasty, such as Guo Songtao, a friend of Zeng Guofan. Guo Songtao was an official in his early years, and his ambition was quite high. In the ninth year of Xianfeng (1859), he was ordered to go to Yantai and other places in Haikou to investigate and conceal the embezzlement of customs duties, and everywhere he went, officials of all sizes received grand receptions, but Guo Songtao "did not live in a mansion, was not allowed to eat or drink", let alone be courteous, and for a time he was a side-eyed official place. However, from the second year of Tongzhi to the fifth year of Tongzhi (1863-1866), he served as the acting governor of Guangdong for three years, and when he returned home, he brought as many as 60 ships with luggage, which shows that the harvest was abundant. He was not ashamed of this, but was very frank, "As a superintendent, the years are not weak, why should you be suspicious and afraid of others?" Wearing food and living, and having more scruples", as a superintendent, as long as he can accumulate rich family wealth by raising cheap money, there is nothing to hide. As for Shen Baozhen, another governor who was close to Zeng Guofan, according to Guo Songtao, he also brought 40,000 taels of silver with him when he returned to his hometown: "Shen Youdanjiang Fu returned 40,000 gold, and he made a living selling words. ”
In the context of the greed of late Qing officialdom, those capable members who were determined to apply to the world and tried to make a difference, such as many figures in the Xiang family, adopted this kind of "contentment and stop" posture of being an official.
Of course, in the world's gushing, there will always be a few incorruptible people who become the object of people's talk. The local official with the strictest self-requirements in the late Qing Dynasty should be Luo Zundian. In the ninth year of Xianfeng, he served as the governor of Zhejiang, "when he went to the official, he bitterly practiced the floating competition, but he was strictly impeached, and the camp was inspected", and later he was "the city fell, died on medicine, and his wife and daughter were martyred." Hu Linyi said that he "served for 26 years, with 40 acres of thin fields and more than 10 earthen houses behind him, and his incorruptibility is the crown of Xinjiang officials for decades." The "Qing History Manuscript: The Biography of Luo Zundian" also contains: "Zundian served as a foreign official for twenty years, Lianjie was extremely vulgar, his family only had a few rafters in earthen houses, Hu Lin Yi collected Zhao, and Naike was mourned. Zeng Guofan called him the first Qing official in the world: "Luotan Village Zhongcheng, with Yiwei Jin Shili Guan, Hubei, Zhejiang and other provinces, in 25 years, the family has no money, the old house has a number of rafters, and it is extremely narrow." After hearing this, he only sent 300 taels of silver to his home, and his wife did not wear a leather coat for the rest of her life, and she was really the first official in the world, which was respectable. "The respectability of this is that there are very few people who can achieve this level.