From "knocking" to "Jingkong": the tradition of "suing the emperor".
Dr. Li Dianrong's monograph "Research on the Control System of Beijing in the Qing Dynasty" is based on the archives of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, systematically studying the control system of Beijing in the Qing Dynasty, and she tells us history, but there is not much "grievance and snow" and "see the light of day" The atmosphere of reunion, the truth is only in the cycle of "the central government does not trust local officials, the people do not trust local officials, and local officials do not trust the people, and the people have to believe in the emperor" such a story full of helplessness and uninteresting.
The so-called "entering Beijing to sue the imperial court" has a long tradition. "Zhou Li" has the saying of "lungstone listening" and "road drum system". "Road Drum" later evolved into "Laos Dengwen Drum", "Drum of Grievances", "Submit a Letter on the Table", "Invite a Car to Drive", etc., with different tolerances or forms, and there are still channels for small people to appeal in various dynasties from the Qin and Han dynasties. In the first year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty, "put the Dengwen drum outside the noon gate, and ordered the supervision of the imperial history to be supervised by one person, and all the civil lawsuits were from the bottom up, or the government, state, county and provincial officials and according to the inspection envoy did not justify, and there were wrongs and serious matters that could not be reached, Xu hit the drum, and the supervision of the imperial history was immediately introduced, and the person who dared to frustrate died." In the Qing Dynasty, the Dengwen drum was set up outside the right Chang'an Gate, and then moved into the General Administration Department, and the drum hall was not placed. In the movie "Let the Bullets Fly", the huge drum in front of the Yamen of Echeng County is full of vine branches after years of unused, but once it is knocked, it may be the prelude to "Grievance White", and this is already in the "republic" Republic of China. It can be imagined that in the era of emperors, for the people who had grievances and had nowhere to complain, what kind of hope and demagogy it was to knock on the drum in person, let the grievances go straight to heaven, and win the fair verdict of the superior......
The form of "suing the emperor" that has changed in the past dynasties is customarily referred to as "knocking", which means directly kneeling to the palace gate or knocking on the emperor. As a systematic trial system, "Beijing Control" was developed on the basis of the former and gradually normalized. For these two ancient legal terms, the "Qing Historical Manuscript Criminal Law Chronicle" defines them as follows:
At the trial level, the province shall take the state and county seal officials as the first trial. If you are not satisfied, the government, the government, the government, the department, and the court, and those who overstep the lawsuit will be flogged. Those who have been wronged and went to the Metropolitan Procuratorate, the Department of General Affairs, or the Yamen of the Infantry Army to file a complaint are called Jingkong...... He threw himself into the hall to beat the drum, or when he went out to the suburbs to meet the complainant, he was called knocking.
To put it simply, the place where the small people "beat the drum" or invite the car to drive is "knocking" can occur in the capital or on the way to the emperor's tour; when they go to the Beijing Metropolitan Procuratorate, the General Administration Department, or the Yamen, the commander of the infantry army, etc., to submit a submission, it is called "Beijing Control". Li Dianrong found that in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the term "Beijing control" had not yet appeared widely. "The secluded palace gate is a little deeper", and it is still very difficult for the small people in the countryside to see the officials, but how easy is it to enter Beijing to pay homage to the Ninth Five-Year Plan? Therefore, when the holy car is leaving the deep palace and touring the people, "inviting the car to drive," commonly known as stopping the car and filing a complaint, has become a reckless move for those who are bold and arrogant. But it's not an easy task:
Whoever is unjustly imprisoned shall not be directed directly to the governor of this province, and shall be controlled by the ministry, and shall not be straightened, but shall be knocked on the throne. However, it is extremely difficult to knock, and his person must lie in the ditch, and his body will be filthy, and after driving, he will be in the shape of a hand, and he will raise his voice and say that he is wronged. If the guards heard this, they were immediately arrested, and the complaint was submitted, and the person was handed over to the criminal department and sent back to the original province.
If calculated from the success rate of "knocking", the people living in the Kangxi Dynasty may be relatively lucky. As we all know, Kangxi once went to the south of the Yangtze River six times, and often went north to Rehe Qiuqiu, and there were many opportunities for the people to knock. And Kangxi has always been diligent in government, and has a good memory, once he visited Wutai Mountain, there was a person who knocked on the bell, and the emperor stopped the guards who were about to be expelled, recalled that he had seen this person, and said his name and the content of the last accusation. The subordinate asked, and it was in line with what the emperor said. Kangxi is still tolerant of knocking and diligent in criticism, but such emperors are rare. As Li Dianrong pointed out, "this is not generated by the system, but depends on the emperor's own ability", which is really unsustainable. Even though Qianlong, who was diligent and did not lose to his grandfather, went on patrol many times in his life, he lacked patience with those who knocked along the way, and mostly regarded the plaintiff as a mentally ill person suffering from "madness" and "phlegm", and dismissed the matter. The emperors after Jiadao, the literary and martial arts were greatly inferior to those of Zhukang and Qian, and no matter how Qiu Qiu went south, the number of times decreased sharply, and the probability of Xiaomin approaching the emperor was almost zero.
The Qing Dynasty stipulated a strict system of step-by-step complaints, and all lawsuits had to be filed from the bottom up, first judged by the state and county yamen, and then sued by the superior yamen (government, province, division, and court) step by step. Jingkong is placed in the "Yue Litigation" item in the litigation door of the "Daqing Huidian Criminal Law", and even if it is true, it must be punished with "50 flogging". The biggest difference from Beijing control is that it is a "conflict guard of honor" to ask for the crime, and the sentence is "100 rods, and it will be sent to the border to fill the army". Beaten on the buttocks, plus exile, is really not a small crime. After the middle of the Qianlong period, the sentencing of those who were punished became stricter, and even if they were charged, they were guilty; on the contrary, if they were actually prosecuted, they could be "exempted," and even if there were false accusations, sometimes the conviction was not serious. Moreover, the fixed-point announcement of Beijing Control has given the small people who can't even figure out where the gate of the capital is opening, and knocking will inevitably be random, temporary, and insecure. Litigants who are fully "rational" are increasingly inclined to Jingkong rather than knock on the court when choosing the avenue of appeal.
According to Li Dianrong's collection of Qing Dynasty knocking cases, the Shunkang Dynasty accounted for half, and the Jiaqing Dynasty gradually decreased, and basically during this period, Beijing control became a regular operating system. The Metropolitan Procuratorate and the Yamen, under the command of the infantry army, are the organs that accept the case, and there are three ways to deal with the Beijing prosecution case: handing it over, consulting it, and rejecting it. Once accepted, according to the severity of the case, it is divided into a case of submission or consultation, the former must be submitted to the emperor for performance, and then sent to the governor and the yamen for trial, and the latter is directly sent back to the original province to be handed over to the governor for handling. The local governor shall handle the case within a time limit, settle it once every six months, and present the results of the trial. The Criminal Department is responsible for reviewing the Beijing prosecution cases tried by the local authorities and asking the emperor for final ruling.
Who is responsible for Jingkong: the emperor, the Qincha, the governor, or the bureau?
In Li Dianrong's view, the reason why the ruler allowed the existence of the Knock and the Jingkong was "on the one hand, the rule of virtue in the ancient people, and on the other hand, to prevent officials from doing wrong, and to use the people's complaints to achieve the role of supervising officials." Therefore, the cases that the emperor usually pays attention to involve officials or serious cases of murder and theft. However, the Metropolitan Procuratorate, which was in charge of accepting the case, played all the things they thought were important and worthy of performance, and the situation was like a mountain of mountains, and no matter how diligent and intelligent the emperor was, he could not cope with it. In his later years, Qianlong found that he was facing more and more cases, and he couldn't help but complain. The American scholar Ou Zhongtan analyzed the reason, because Qianlong favored He Shen, so that the political opponents could not impeach him in the song, so the Metropolitan Procuratorate expressed the problems of national politics to the emperor through the Beijing prosecution case, and deliberately did not screen the emperor. This reminds us of what Confucius profoundly revealed in "Calling the Soul": the operation of the bureaucratic responsibility system revolves around the control of information. When he arrived at Emperor Jiaqing's pro-government, after the purge of Heshen, in order to revive the political style that had been declining for many years, he decided to "open up the way of speech and be smart", but he also found the shortcomings of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, that is, "concealing the upper and lower levels". The emperor's dispatch of the Qin to the province to try the case was regarded as a remedy, but the large number of officials went to the province in a huge way, which consumed the state's public funds and alarmed the localities, which was costly, and the ministers of the ministries and the local officials often had secret contacts, so it was not a long-term solution to deal with the increasing number of Beijing prosecution cases every year. In the end, Emperor Jiaqing could only transfer the pressure of restraining the upper control to the locality, he said:
If all of them are banned, the people will not be able to reach out, and they are afraid that the grievances of the raspberry will not be redressed. The way to settle litigation lies in the fact that local officials of all sizes are diligent in listening to judgments, and if there is no case left, and the merits are more straightforward, then the government will be peaceful and the lawsuit will be settled, and the wind of upper control will not help but subside.
As far as the central government is concerned, it is the most convenient way to send the case to the local governor for trial. Emperor Daoguang asked them: "In case of Beijing control, you must listen to it in person." Those who have been wronged will be justified, and those who are falsely accused will be severely punished, so as to hope that the prison will be peaceful, and there will be no lawsuit. For example, Shandong Province is relatively close to Beijing, and the number of Beijing control cases is more than that of other provinces, and there has been a record of more than 700 backlog cases of various types in Beijing after the arrival of Shandong Governor Ji Lun. In the long run, it will be difficult to fulfill the request of the superintendent to interrogate the prisoners in Beijing. They also often treat special cases differently and consulted cases, the former is watched by the emperor and does not dare to slack off, while the latter is mostly regarded as a general case, arbitrarily backlogged.
The governor was unable to take care of it, and the central trial was pressing, so the Issuance and Examination Bureau (also known as the Bureau) was born in response to the need. The governor has formed a team around him to try cases in the province, and most of its members are "alternate" officials, and they also have no judicial literacy. The standard of rewards and punishments for bureau members is "quantity" and "efficiency", not to seriously "settle grievances", and in order to seek a quick conclusion of the case, criminal punishment is often used to extract confessions. Zeng Guofan lamented the trial of the Beijing prosecution case:
Recently, the case of Zhili Jingkong, once it was handed over to the bureau, was filled with many ways on weekdays, and it was blindly vague when it was about to happen. If the lawsuit is true, the adjudicator will protect his colleagues, but he will not be guilty of it. If the indictment is confirmed, the judge will delete and correct the circumstances, but it is expected that the accusation is false, and the accusation is false, and he will protect the untouchables, fearing backlash, but end it with suspicion of false accusations and ignorance of the foolish people.
At the time of Qianjia, the identity of the judges of the Beijing control gradually shifted from the central government to the localities, and the central government was transferred to the local governors, and then from the local governors to the subordinate provincial governments. This kind of "decentralization" also means that the process of post-trial submission is no different from the original local judicial referral process. "The political style is declining, and the world is as black as a crow, how can we entrust the heavy task of 'clearing the clouds and seeing the fog' to the members of the issuance and examination committee"? If the people can settle the lawsuit locally through normal channels, why not leave their homes and Beijing for thousands of miles?
The logic of "officials forcing people to sue".
From the more than 400 Beijing prosecution cases collected by Li Dianrong, we can see that these cases involved a relatively large proportion of murder and theft, with an average of 58 percent, and in terms of the identity of the targets of the prosecution, the average involved the local government's errand officers, scribes, and doormen, accounting for about 27 percent, officials accounting for about 19 percent, and wealthy and land tyrants accounting for 6 percent. The data set point: "The counties and states responsible for adjudicating local justice are functioning in a problem, and they are clearly being questioned by groups from all walks of life." "The state and county were the first-level organs of judicial trials in the Qing Dynasty, but the state and county officials became the defendants who appeared the most in the Beijing prosecution case, what is going on?
"The politics of the world are in the state and county". Qing people Fang Daxiang said: "Xing to eliminate the pros and cons, not special feudal and Taoist government can not do, even the governor is only empty words, but the state and county are actually seen and acted, so the benefit is not as good as the state and county." In other words, the state and county officials (Zhizhou, Zhixian) are the real officials who "govern", that is, the officials who govern affairs, and their superiors—the prefectures, the feudal divisions, and the governors—are all the officials of the magistrates. Although the rank of state and county officials is low, they play an extremely important role in local administration, and it is this group of people who have the most problems. Anyone who has read Mr. Qu Tongzu's "Local Government in the Qing Dynasty" will probably be deeply impressed by Qu Lao's brilliant summary of the nature of state and county officials, that is, "one-man government". All the functions of the state and county governments are in charge of the state and county officials, and his four auxiliary groups (Xu officials, errand officers, chief attendants and shogunes) all advance and retreat with him, and the state and county officials are not called the "parent officials" of the common people, but should be understood as the "parents" of the aforementioned four groups, because his personal income (meager salary + indefinite bad rules) is also the financial income of a state and county government. According to Li Dianrong's statistics, the cases of accusations against state and county officials for errand duty can be roughly divided into the following categories: (1) extortion and floating collection, (2) extortion of contributions, (3) embezzlement, concealment, and extraction, (4) extortion, (5) extortion of money, (6) imprisonment of criminals, and (7) collusion to conceal injuries, arson, and murder. "What the state and the public see as deviant or corrupt may be seen by officials as following the conventions of the profession. Such "unspoken rules" provide countless rent-seeking opportunities, which is tantamount to opening a magic box of Pandora, and the people who are prosecuting the case will inevitably be harmed.
Due to the "chaotic" nature of the grassroots government, the state and county yamen were equivalent to the basic courts of the empire, and the state and county officials also served as judges. The professional direction of training officials in the Qing Dynasty and the judiciary were completely two different paths. The so-called "reading ten thousand books without reading the law" means that state and county officials cannot receive substantive training in judicial trials before they gain fame. Of course, there are not no state and county officials who are proficient in laws and regulations, but in the final Qing Dynasty, Li Dianrong can only cite Liu Heng and Fan Zengxiang (what is deeply meaningful is that Fan Zengxiang is famous for his literature). There are everywhere, but the kind of "poet-like county official" written by Huang Renyu. In other words, the Qing Dynasty law was nothing more than a tool of administration, and the state and county officials, who were also the chief executives and judicial officials, only focused on making the villagers safe and guarding themselves, and reducing the pressure on themselves to "pass the examination". For example, in the Qing Dynasty, the trial was extremely heavy on confessions, and it was almost "impossible to decide the case without confession". The reason why Beijing prosecutors often vigorously criticize the yamen for "colluding in bribery and fabricating details" and "changing confessions in detail in criminal documents" is that the prefecture and county yamen are the first to control the trial results. The adjudicator may use the confession to delay the trial, and may also reasonably use torture against the two parties on this basis in order to bring the case to a speedy conclusion. Emperor Yongzheng once complained about the "careful training" of the confession case files of the prefectures and counties, just to be responsible for the judges, according to the detailed inspection of the judges, just to deal with the governors, and the supervisors carefully revised them, and to avoid the rejection of the case by the three law divisions.
An official in the Qing Dynasty lamented the low administrative efficiency of the prefectures and counties: "The prefectures and counties are unfair in judging and not doing what they want, so the small people cannot help but be controlled." Li Dianrong also said that if the grassroots judiciary in the Qing Dynasty could operate in an orderly manner, standardize the management of administrative personnel, and have a certain level of quality of administrative personnel, then the probability of "upper control" will be greatly reduced. At that time, these requests were almost a circular and inextricable knot. The structural problems of the Qing Dynasty prefecture and county itself were a big mountain in front of the Beijing control.
The "original sin" of the Beijing controller?
The imperial court and society jointly created the predicament of the state and county as the "government of the world", forcing the small people to embark on the road of Beijing control. The official attitude towards the plaintiffs in Beijing is a repressive way. The most common provisions in the "Laws and Criminal Laws of the Qing Dynasty" are the provisions on severely cracking down on "overstepping the lawsuit", "false accusation" and "instigating lawsuits", while there is only one "recusal from hearing" to protect the rights of the complainant. No wonder some people say that this is not a litigation law, but simply a "non-sue law". The most interesting point that Li Dianrong found in the Beijing prosecution case is that the defendants are not necessarily convicted, but often the plaintiffs, and officials often use the presupposition of "the plaintiff is guilty" to try cases. In some files, the plaintiff was called the "offender" before the verdict, and if the defendant was indeed guilty, it was the plaintiff's crime first, and then the defendant's crime. Such a strange phenomenon of "punishment for injustice and injustice" has repeatedly disappointed the small people who are looking forward to the "blue sky".
The government's distrust of the plaintiffs stems mainly from a long-term vicious circle: the magistrates, ostensibly motivated by the ideals of "no litigation" and "no litigation," in fact often "suppress litigation" and refuse to accept certain "unprofitable" lawsuits or lawsuits that may implicate officials at the top and bottom of the yamen.
The bureaucrats in charge of the Beijing prosecution trial consciously excluded the plaintiffs and deliberately shifted the problem to the upper prosecutors and instigators in order to cover up their own shortcomings and inactions. In official historical sources, "lawyers" and "life prisons" are two groups that are constantly stigmatized. Li Dianrong summed up the reasons why the lawyer was so disgusted by officials: (1) causing local lawsuits, violating the ideal of "no lawsuits" and increasing the burden on the government, (2) colluding with the yamen scribes, (3) involving the innocent, (4) holding officials hostage, (5) challenging official power, (6) forming party alliances, and (7) affecting the stability and harmony of the frontiers. Advocates are independent of local and national interests, and may be more focused on economic interests, and are not under the jurisdiction of any yamen, making it difficult for the government to control, so they are regarded as a "thorn in the side" and a scapegoat for the many prosecutions. The "life prisons" are representatives of local intellectuals, who are educated and influential, and in grassroots society, they can easily become "undesirable elements" who incite the people to resist the government and arbitrarily take over local affairs. Li Dianrong noted that as a government in which ethnic minorities ran the majority, the Qing dynasty was more sensitive to collective action, especially by the local gentry, than its predecessors. The prison is often the leader of the masses, and it is also the most hated "hijacker of the government" by the government. In the nineteenth year of Daoguang, Chongyang County, Hubei Province had the "Zhong Jiu Cao Case", and the talented Zhong Renjie was taken out by the flower households who were charged for the floating fees, and finally led the flower households to capture the county seat. In official literature, Zhong Renjie is not only a litigant, but also a gangster of rebels, but in local folklore, he is actually asking for the people's lives. The seemingly opposing canonical history and folklore reflect the comments and values of the two classes on the same event.
"Shortcuts" and "Obstacles" on the Road to Redress
As the saying goes, "the road to Beijing is a long way, and the silver is a bridge". Once you go to Beijing to file a lawsuit, it means a lot of expenses, but Beijing control has become an increasingly common way of litigation, which is not only the corruption of the officials themselves, but also an important factor is to reduce the cost of litigation through Beijing control. This contains the rationality of the plaintiff: in the face of the continuous extortion of the officials, and the state and county cannot be expected to close the case quickly, they would rather directly control the case, after all, the cost of travel expenses is limited, and the yamen needs to ask for endless money. The official repression of the upper control has also affected the "strategy" of the Beijing controller or the presenter, that is, "the plan is accurate but not the review". In order to break through the dilemma of the case being delayed and not tried, the only way to win attention is to rely on excellent writing or accusations with teeth and claws, and the "fictitious pleadings" are mainly manifested in three aspects: (1) telling one's own goodness and innocence, (2) highlighting the other party's arrogance and viciousness, and (3) exaggerating the facts and circumstances of the case. After reading Taiwan's "Danxin Archives," Japanese scholar Shuzo Shiga believes that it is difficult to accurately grasp the facts of the case through the archives: "There are often exaggerations in the complaint, and there are many fabrications for the purpose of 'sensationalism.'" Under the traditional bureaucracy, the so-called policy of "making a big fuss and solving a big problem, solving a small problem and solving a small problem, and not making a fuss and not solving it" has always been the most useful method in desperation. Until the 80s of the last century, when the "big river migrants" petitioned, didn't they also use the three tricks of "talking" (narrating their own suffering), "making trouble" (forcing the government to solve the problem immediately), and "pestering" (grabbing the justifiable reason and not interceding intensive petitioning).
Beijing control is becoming more and more common, and a series of services for the people of Beijing control have been derived: villagers go to the city to file complaints, and the round-trip distance ranges from dozens of miles to hundreds of miles, if they cannot be accepted immediately, they are bound to spend the night in the city, and some people are involved in lawsuits and enter the city, and they must find a place to live and wait for the summons. In the county, there are many hotels dedicated to the complainant's complaint, which are generally called "rest homes". Huang Liuhong once suggested that the prefectures and counties should set up "convenient houses", which is different from the meaning of today's government-run guest houses, which are specially designed for litigants. The person who is not in charge of the lawsuit is the person who wants to make money from the lawsuit. They have a set of contacts of their own, which can assist people with no litigation experience to communicate with the yamen, or find lawyers and writers for them, which gradually develops into a "one-stop" service.
Beijing control has gradually become a trend of professionalism, but Xiaomin Beijing control is destined to be a rugged road. The state and county have repressed the accusers one after another, and it is very common for the plaintiff to be illegally imprisoned, or the family of the plaintiff is detained for threat, or even the plaintiff is falsely accused of being mentally disordered. In order to prevent the plaintiff from suing, some localities did not hesitate to "intercept" it halfway. There are accused local tyrants who have deployed defenses along the way, preventing the plaintiff from going on the road, and even snatching luggage and wrapping it, and these powerful forces would not be able to do whatever they want in the local area without the support of the government. In the Qing Dynasty, there were many evils, and some local officials even raised thugs to "beat up those who control Cao", which made the people in the southeast have no way to accuse, and further provoked the people's uprising. In the Beijing prosecution case with the nature of "civil prosecution official", there are also plaintiffs who have been intercepted by "trans-provincial". In the sixteenth year of Daoguang, the people surnamed Chen in Sichuan planned to control Beijing, and when they arrived in Zhuozhou near Beijing, they sued the official because things were stolen, and a piece of paper was found during the local inspection of the scene, and the Zhuozhou governor immediately reported to Qi Shan, the governor of Zhili, and sent Chen back to his hometown in Sichuan, and did not let Beijing control.
Some of the plaintiffs in the records were rehabilitated, but usually this is based on the fact that they or their families have already paid a great price. In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, the efficiency of the Beijing control system in correcting wrongful cases became less and less efficient. A Beijing control case can take as little as three or two years or as many as more than 10 or 20 years to conclude. By the Guangxu period, it was extremely common to record that "in recent years, the provinces of Beijing Control have never seen a single case rehabilitated", or "the prefectures and counties have accepted the trial of various cases of Beijing Control and the upper prosecution of Beijing Prosecution, and they are often overdue".
Li Dianrong has stressed more than once that the Ming and Qing dynasties were the "most conservative" and "most legalistic" dynasties in traditional China. The Beijing control system was a response to social problems in the Qing Dynasty, but it could not fundamentally improve the existing bureaucratic malaise and judicial problems, nor could it meet the real needs of society. On the surface, Beijing control protects the tradition of allowing the people to control it, but in local practice, it mainly protects the bureaucracy's black yarn hat and maintains the internal balance of the ruler. As a researcher of the Beijing control system, Li Dianrong said that "it seems to be the field of legal history, but in fact it may be closer to social history." If we open our eyes a little more, how can Beijing control not be a question of political history? The empirical research in this book proves that in a centralized dynasty where the administration and the judiciary cannot be separated, relying on the Beijing control to remedy justice is just an illusion. Its biggest function is to wear the cloak of traditional moral and political "redress of grievances", continue to use the beautiful expectation that the upper control may succeed, and paralyze the hidden power of change among the people.
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