Four Surnames

One hundred and seventy years after the founding of Dasheng, it came to Zhaoqing. At the beginning, Taizu used the three-foot sword to set the tripod to punish the abuses of the previous dynasty, and established the methods of official salt, official cast, and official canal. The benefits were returned to the government, and the four people settled down for sixty years. The peace has lasted for a long time, the law has flourished, and the sources of profit have become more and more congested; wealthy businessmen have used gold and silk to tie up their subordinates, cover them with salt, and are good at canal roads, eroding official warehouses, soaking in fakes, and cannot be controlled. By the time of Zhaoqing, seventy-eight percent of the world's wealth belonged to the four surnames. The four surnames are Shen, Cui, Guo and Wei. Shen is in charge of salt, Cui is in charge of money, Guo is in charge of cao, and Wei is in charge of iron. Each of them occupies a state and is connected to nine regions. Half of the taxes paid by prefectures and counties go to his Yu; the salaries of hundreds of officials are redeemed by his votes; the wages and weapons of the border troops are transferred to him. In famine years, people shut down to control grain prices; in good years, they harvested low to combine fields and houses. There are official documents, and there are many scenes of them; there are also the sounds of Kedao Zhangs and memorials. The lawyer is a tool of the government, and the four surnames use it; the money is a national treasure, and the four surnames use it privately. Therefore, it is said in the world: outside there are hundreds of officials, and inside there are four surnames. In the eleventh year of Zhaoqing's reign, there was a great famine in Tai'an. People were fighting for rice and thousands of coins, and the roads were blocked by hungry people. The imperial court allocated 300,000 taels of internal funds for relief. In the third month of the month, there was no grain in the official warehouse and no silver in the government treasury. However, the four surnames held a banquet with candles burning all night long. They raised their glasses and said with a smile, "Official relief is not as good as business relief." It was winter, and Gu Shiheng, the censor Zhongcheng, was ordered to leave the capital. The world is called peaceful, but I call it chaos. The chaos is not caused by war, but by money and goods; the trouble is not caused by thieves, but by people's hearts.