The disgraced official I took care of was actually Zhu Houcong's childhood friend.

Chapter 220

In any dynasty, it was difficult to establish a direct and effective means of communication between the common people and the imperial court.

Or rather, in most dynasties, neither the court nor the emperor cared much about the lives of ordinary people.

Even Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, who famously said that water can carry a boat but also capsize it, did not refer to the common people as ordinary citizens, but rather to those from humble backgrounds and powerful clans.

Ordinary people have always been bargaining chips in the eyes of those in power.

The bridge between ordinary people and the imperial court varied from dynasty to dynasty. Before the Tang Dynasty, it was the powerful clans and aristocratic families that facilitated communication between the upper and lower classes.

After the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, and even after the establishment of the Northern Song Dynasty, the literati, officials, and gentry became the social strata that facilitated communication between the upper and lower classes.

This reached its peak during the Yuan Dynasty.

The Mongols were extremely lenient in their management of the Han people. Even Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, said that the Yuan Dynasty perished because of its leniency.

The Yuan Dynasty implemented a tax farming system, which contracted out tax revenue to the Han Chinese scholar-official class. The Mongols only received a fixed amount of tax. The real exploiters of the people were not the Mongols, but the Han Chinese scholar-official class.

This is the fundamental reason why Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, continuously slaughtered officials left over from the previous dynasty after establishing the Ming Dynasty.

There may be a very few good ones among these officials, but 99% of them are rotten to the core.

However, even though Zhu Yuanzhang slaughtered so many officials throughout his life, it was only a drop in the ocean compared to the scholar-official and gentry class left over from the Yuan Dynasty.

Therefore, the problems that existed in the gentry class during the Yuan Dynasty were passed down. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the gentry class was more restrained and dared not be too unscrupulous.

After the death of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, these people couldn't help but show their fangs. Led by Huang Zicheng and others, these civil officials began to incite Zhu Yunwen to carry out a bloody campaign to reduce the power of the princes.

Only by eliminating all the vassal kings and sweeping away the military generals and nobles can the entire Ming Dynasty be under their control again.

However, Huang Zicheng and his ilk were both stupid and wicked, and too hasty. Their attempt to reduce the power of the princes led to the Yongle Emperor, and the Jingnan Campaign resulted in the massacre of officials once again.

So these people went into hiding again.

It wasn't until the so-called "Rule of Renxuan" that these people started to resurface, and from then on, they were unstoppable.

Today, the gentry class controls the entire Jiangnan region, deceiving their superiors and failing to implement their orders. In other words, whatever policies are given from above depends entirely on how they tell the common people at the bottom.

Taxes that didn't exist originally appeared in their mouths.

Therefore, neither Zhang Juzheng's Single Whip Law nor Yongzheng's land tax reform and the return of fire tax to the public were based on the interests of the common people or considered their lives.

To put it bluntly, both Zhang Juzheng and Emperor Yongzheng were simply trying to find ways to raise money for the court.

After the implementation of policies such as the Single Whip Law and the conversion of land tax and poll tax into public tax, the income of the gentry class decreased, so they would increase the burden on the common people at each level. Instead of improving, the people's lives became worse.

Because they lacked the means to communicate with the imperial court, they were essentially mute and unable to speak.

Hai Rui saw this most clearly. He believed that the Single Whip Law was only suitable for implementation in wealthy areas like Jiangnan, and not for the entire Ming Dynasty.

The reason why the Ming Dynasty fell was that the gentry class monopolized the power of discourse among the lower classes. Once the court targeted them, they would intensify their oppression of the common people, leading to uprisings by people in various places who could no longer survive.

Many people believe that members of the Zhu clan account for nearly half of the court's expenditures, but this is merely a smear campaign by civil officials.

According to records, even towards the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming imperial family members' living expenses required half of the grain collected by the court.