Seeing a group of old rascals getting more and more outrageous in their talk, Zhu Jinsong's face grew darker and darker – he had heard of designated drivers, designated drinkers, and designated brides, but a designated urinator was indeed a first!
With a darkened face, Zhu Jinsong rapped on the table and said to Zeng Cheng and the other magnates, "The ashes of Qian Long, that old dog, and his entire family have been scattered, and their graves have become tourist attractions for anyone to visit. Where do you plan to urinate?"
"Besides, the public latrines installed in those scenic spots are enough to ensure that entire family never finds peace, so what's the point of you still needing to urinate?"
Hearing Zhu Jinsong's words, Zeng Cheng, Liu Huaiwen, and the other magnates came to their senses.
Indeed, all the ashes that should have been scattered had been scattered, and now those scenic spots were filled with public latrines, with large amounts of fresh excrement every day. If that stuff could really prevent a person from finding peace…
However, coming to one's senses was one thing, but still feeling stifled was another.
Liu Huaiwen said indignantly, "If it weren't for Mazzi starting with that policy of relocating borders and prohibiting maritime trade, how could the maritime transport of our Great Ming have ended up like this?"
Meng Fanzhi also snorted coldly, "How could it be just like this? The most shameless thing about that family is that after implementing the policy of relocating borders and prohibiting maritime trade themselves, they then cast all the blame onto our Great Ming!"
Hearing Meng Fanzhi say this, the other magnates immediately became interested, especially Liu Huaiwen, who directly asked, "Tell us, tell us. I know Mazzi relocated borders and prohibited maritime trade, but I really don't know how they're throwing the blame around."
Meng Fanzhi said, "Do you even need to think about this? It must be that they claimed to be inheriting the system of the previous dynasty, and because the Great Ming had implemented maritime prohibitions, they also implemented maritime prohibitions."
Liu Huaiwen was immediately taken aback and asked, "Didn't the Great Ming also implement maritime prohibitions?"
Meng Fanzhi snorted coldly, "The Great Ming did implement maritime prohibitions, but the Great Ming's maritime prohibitions were against private merchants. Who would prohibit normal business? Especially those ordinary people who relied on fishing for a living, if you prohibit maritime trade, can you prohibit them?"
"But the maritime prohibition policy of their Qing Dynasty was different. They targeted these ordinary people. As long as you lived within fifty li of the coast, they would confiscate your houses and destroy your boats. You want to fish? They would take your life first!"
"In the end, who are you going to blame? Blame the Great Ming for prohibiting maritime trade or blame Lord Guo for resisting the Qing along the coast? After they, the Jian Yi, occupied our Han Chinese land, is it wrong for us to want to take it back?"
"It's clearly something we're in the right about, but in the hands of their Qing Dynasty, it has become something we're in the wrong about. Isn't that strange?"
Liu Huaiwen smacked his dry pipe and said, "Heh, it is indeed quite strange – if you put it that way, then scattering their ashes is even too light a punishment. Even mixing it with animal feed to feed to pigs wouldn't vent our hatred!"
Zhu Jinsong couldn't help but rap on the table and said, "We've strayed too far from the topic. We were just talking about the maritime transport of our Great Ming, and how did we get to the ashes of Qian Long and his family?"
Being told this by Zhu Jinsong, Zeng Cheng and Liu Huaiwen felt a bit of a blush and cleared their throats, adopting a more upright posture.
Zhu Jinsong then continued, "Speaking of which, it is also my negligence. I haven't paid much attention to maritime transport matters all along."
This was akin to Zhu Jinsong taking the blame for Zeng Cheng and the other magnates. After all, Zeng Cheng was the Grand Secretary, Liu Huaiwen was the Minister of Revenue, and the other magnates were either Grand Secretaries or ministers of similar rank. Such matters should have been thought of by them first.
But being an emperor was different from being a master. A master could push all the blame onto his servants, while an emperor had to learn to proactively take the blame for his subordinates.
In essence, it was the same as Uncle Liu throwing A Dou – different methods, same purpose, all to win people's hearts.
As expected, after Zhu Jinsong proactively admitted his negligence, Zeng Cheng and the other magnates also began to admit their mistakes.
Zeng Cheng was the first to cup his hands and bow, saying, "Your subject, bearing the responsibility of a minister, did not think of this beforehand. This is our mistake. We beg Your Majesty to allow us to atone for our mistakes with meritorious deeds."
Liu Huaiwen also cupped his hands and said, "This matter cannot be blamed on Your Majesty. After all, the demand for maritime transport in our Great Ming was not that strong – the main reason is that England and France have stronger maritime transport capabilities. With them acting as intermediaries for transshipment, our Great Ming has saved a lot of time and effort."
Seeing that the other magnates were also about to take responsibility, Zhu Jinsong simply waved his hand and said, "I have already said that today, no one is to blame. I am just pondering how we can improve the maritime transport capabilities of our Great Ming."
Hearing this, Zeng Cheng and the other magnates immediately perked up.
Improving maritime transport capabilities was not as simple as building a couple more ships. It also involved the planning of routes. For example, where one route started and ended, what each route was mainly used for, what kind of goods were transported, and how to complete the connection and turnover between numerous routes. These messy problems were the real difficulties.
Among these messy problems, just determining the routes could very well require filling them with countless human lives – an uncharted reef, a current that appeared after an unknown period of time, could very well take the lives of a ship's crew.
To put it more plainly, behind every route, there were countless white bones sinking to the seabed, or perhaps not even bones remaining.
Of course, the current Great Ming was relatively at ease when facing this problem, because in addition to the sea charts preserved from the Yongle era, the Great Ming could also obtain the latest sea charts from England, France, Russia, and the United States.
As for what benefits of which small country would be exchanged for this, that was not something Zhu Jinsong cared about.
As for the other messy problems, they were actually similar to the problem of sea charts or routes. They seemed troublesome, but they were not difficult to solve.
What truly concerned Zhu Jinsong was how maritime transport should be managed.
Maritime transport completely controlled by the imperial court was naturally easy to handle. However, due to certain well-known reasons, Zhu Jinsong was unwilling to let the imperial court control all maritime transport. Otherwise, this troublesome business always lost money, losing tens of billions annually, and on top of that, it would sometimes plummet by one fen and rise by eight mao. Who could bear that?
However, Zhu Jinsong was also not entirely willing to let the nobility and private capital participate.
Lu Shuren once said that when everyone was poor, they could still be happy together. But if one person became rich first, it was easy for problems like looking down on people and envy to arise.
After pondering for a long time without coming to any conclusion, Zhu Jinsong rapped on the table and asked Zeng Cheng and the other magnates, "Your Excellencies, do you think it is permissible to allow those local gentry and scholars to participate in maritime affairs? And what about the nobles in the imperial court?"
Liu Huaiwen immediately stepped forward to state his position, "Reporting to Your Majesty, I believe that it is fine to let the civilian local gentry and scholars and the nobility participate, but there must be heavy taxation. Otherwise, wouldn't it be like letting them pick up money for free?"
Zeng Cheng couldn't help but glare at Liu Huaiwen and retorted, "Has Minister Liu forgotten the matter of the great philanthropist Liu?"
"Regarding these civilian gentry and scholars, I, the Grand Secretary, do not deny that there are good and honest people among them, but I also cannot deny that there are also scoundrels like the great philanthropist Liu among them."
"If these people are allowed to participate in maritime transport, and if some mad villain dares to take our Great Ming's books overseas, can you, Minister Liu, bear that responsibility?"
Liu Huaiwen was stunned, then retorted, "I, Liu Huaiwen, certainly cannot bear that responsibility, but aren't you, Grand Secretary Zeng, being overly cautious and stopping yourself from eating because you fear choking?"
"As you said, there will definitely be some scoundrels like the great philanthropist Liu among these people, but Grand Secretary Zeng, you must also know how many places in our Great Ming currently need money."
"Let me put it this way, the railways and telegraph lines that the Great Ming plans to build in the next five years will require no less than ten thousand million taels of silver – ten thousand million taels of silver, not one hundred million Great Ming banknotes."
"Developing maritime transport is one of the means of increasing revenue. If we allow private individuals to participate, we will not only earn money from maritime transport but also collect a large amount of taxes, not only from the sea merchants but also from the workshops that increase production due to the increase in maritime transport."
"If we prohibit civilians and nobility from participating, although maritime transport will be more stable, the speed of maritime transport development will inevitably slow down, and the treasury's revenue will inevitably be affected, thereby slowing down the speed of railway construction and telegraph line laying."
Zeng Cheng snorted coldly, "We only thought of maritime transport today. Didn't we build railways and telegraphs before we thought of it?"
Liu Huaiwen was so angry he laughed, "Building a railway with ten thousand taels of silver and building a railway with one hundred thousand taels of silver, can they be the same? With ten thousand taels of silver, you can at most choose one line to start construction, but with one hundred thousand taels of silver, you can choose ten lines at the same time."
Song Yucheng, the head of the Ministry of Works, suddenly spoke up, "Actually, even if they take books like 'Tiangong Kaiwu' and 'Tu Shuo on Firearms' out of the Great Ming, it won't have any impact on our Great Ming."
Zeng Cheng retorted, "What do you mean no impact?"
Song Yucheng said, "Books like 'Tiangong Kaiwu' and 'Tu Shuo on Firearms' only describe matchlock guns, but our Great Ming has already started to equip with copper breech-loading firing guns, completely abandoning ramrods."
"Grand Secretary Zeng, please do not underestimate this small ramrod. The entire small broken ball that can produce ramrods and supply the army can be counted on one's fingers. Even if they obtain these books and can produce ramrods themselves, they still won't be able to figure out firing guns."
Zhu Jinsong thought to himself, how strange this was. In later generations, there were still many countries that couldn't produce their own bullets and had to buy them with money – these miscellaneous things involved almost all aspects of science. To convert the content of these books into usable results…
Even excluding the difficulty of learning the Great Ming language and characters, it would take more than a year or two.
If it were even more sinister, they could simply wait until these barbarians had researched enough, and then throw out technologies and knowledge that were one generation ahead of theirs, making them continue to bow their heads to research technology and knowledge, completely destroying their possibility of self-reliance.
Therefore, letting the barbarians obtain books like 'Tiangong Kaiwu' and 'Tu Shuo on Firearms' had both advantages and disadvantages, but the advantages were greater, and the disadvantages were smaller.
Thinking of this, Zhu Jinsong simply flicked his finger on the old manuscript and said, "Regarding maritime transport, Minister Zeng, please discuss it thoroughly with the other ministers to see how it should be handled. As for books like 'Tiangong Kaiwu' and 'Tu Shuo on Firearms', we can also try to relax the restrictions a little."
"However, these books can be exchanged for some benefits with those barbarians by the court, but we cannot let these bastards take them as a token of allegiance for free."
Seeing that Zeng Cheng still wanted to persuade him, Zhu Jinsong simply waved his hand and said, "Our Great Ming has already phased out flintlock guns and the Menglianggu variant of firing guns. It doesn't matter if these technologies are obtained by the barbarians – in fact, the barbarians themselves can also produce flintlock guns and firing guns, but now they don't produce them because it's cheaper to buy them from the Great Ming."
"Giving them these books to master the technology of manufacturing flintlock guns and firing guns will also help them get a sense of their own capabilities."
"I plan to sell more technologies that are one or two generations behind in the future – of course, we absolutely cannot sell what the barbarians don't have, and we will sell what the barbarians already have at a low price, completely destroying their research and development capabilities."
Hearing this, Zeng Cheng and the other magnates couldn't help but gasp – look, everyone was just thinking about how to make money from the barbarians, but His Majesty was directly thinking about how to cut off the barbarians' roots!
After Zeng Cheng and the others agreed and took their leave, Zhu Jinsong once again turned his gaze to Ke Zhiming, "Give the order to pay close attention to the hidden arrangements left behind by Mr. Qian, Mr. Li, Mr. Zhang, and the like.
"If these people are willing to stay in the Great Ming, then we will not bother them for the time being. If these people still have other ideas in their hearts or even want to take Great Ming's books overseas, then we will deal with them after they go out to sea."
Allowing those barbarians to have the opportunity to obtain Great Ming's books was a completely different concept from these scoundrels giving Great Ming's books to the barbarians.
The former was akin to actively setting a trap for the barbarians, with substantial benefits to be exchanged. The latter, however, was using Great Ming's possessions as a token of allegiance, pure and simple provocation.
Ke Zhiming naturally understood this and immediately bowed in response, "Yes, this minister understands."