Chapter 33: Still Needs Discipline
Chu Xun was puzzled. The suggestion he put forward was to eliminate gluttonous and lazy people and ensure the harvest of the fields.
As a local official, collecting grain taxes every year and handing them over to the national treasury was one of the considerations for performance.
Especially since the current Emperor valued the people's livelihood the most, building bridges and repairing roads for a hundred miles might not be as useful as handing over a hundred extra loads of tax grain.
Tang Shijun saw his doubts and patiently explained, "If this precedent is opened, people could privately collude with others to drive away tenant farmers and seize their farmland. It would be hard to distinguish true from false. Even if the true and false could be distinguished, it would cause panic among the people, making it difficult to stabilize."
"These refugees have just arrived in this county and just obtained land. This official wants to keep them here to settle down in the future, so I have to endure the short-term pain."
"This official understands your grievance, but the set six years is six years, and it absolutely cannot be changed!"
Chu Xun already understood. The County Magistrate didn't care about true or false, he only sought stability.
Even knowing that those few refugees were scoundrels, he couldn't punish them.
Because punishing these few people would make other refugees feel alienated and uneasy.