After receiving this edict, the Governor and the Deputy Governor and the Deputy Governor of the Province will be reviewed and this order will be reviewed. Under the provincial servant under the door, there are a number of first officials, which are called "giving things". The official position in the matter is not high, but the emperor's edict must also participate in the opinion. If the province of Menxia objected to the edict, it would return the original edict with annotations, which was called "Tugui". The intention is to send the original edict back to the Chinese book province for redrafting. Tugui is also known as "refutation", "refuting", "refuting", etc., and its meaning is slightly the same. The right to confuse and refute belongs to the provinces. In today's idiomatic parlance, the province is in charge of a kind of countersignature. Every order must be countersigned by the subordinate province before it can be officially effective. If the province does not agree to countersign, the order cannot be executed. After the completion of the review procedures under the decree of the edict of the Chinese book, it will be sent to the province of Shangshu for execution. Shangshu Province only has the power to carry out orders, but does not have the right to intervene in decision-making orders. ——Excerpt from the second lecture of Qian Mu's "Political Gains and Losses in China's Past Dynasties" "The ** Organization of the Tang Dynasty" Mr. Qian Mu introduced the functions of Zhongshu Province and Menxia Province in the Tang Dynasty, involving an extremely important rule of power. However, Mr. Qian Mu's tone of voice when introducing this event is easily misleading.
He said, "The power of the Tang Dynasty to make a decree is practiced in Zhongshu Province." The emperor only agreed to draw and stop", at least I feel that the emperor of the Tang Dynasty was just a puppet, even if he made an order to order such a major national event, he was also manipulated in Zhongshu Province, and even in the hands of the low-grade Zhongshu people, the emperor just "painted and stopped". And now, it's a step further. Emperor Zhu approved, and the document was transferred to Menxia Province, which had the right to approve it. Since it is the right to approve, it includes both writing consent and writing disagreement. Therefore, the province has the right to return. This Tu Gui is not only Tu Tu to Zhongshu Province, but also Tu Tu to the emperor. We often hear a sentence, the emperor Chrysostom Yuyan, a word. Since what the emperor said was Jiuding, what about the words written by the emperor? Isn't it eighteen tripods and thirty-eight tripods? Further, what about the emperor's imperial approval? Isn't it one hundred and eighty tripods? Now the problem is that the emperor has drawn an edict, and the province of Menxia dares to return to it. Combined with what Mr. Qian said before, the emperor just "paints and stops", which shows that even if you are the emperor, here in Menxia Province, it is nothing.
At least it doesn't have power. At the same time, this also proves what Mr. Qian said in the first lecture of "Han Dynasty" that the emperor actually has no power, and all the power is in the hands of the prime minister. This passage at least gives people the impression that Menxia Province has the greatest power, not only has the right to Tu Zhongshu Province and the emperor, but once they issue the order of Zhongshu Province, Shangshu Province only has the right to carry out the points, and has no right to mention half a word. Doesn't this mean that the authority of the subordinate province is far above the Shangshu Province, the Zhongshu Province and even the imperial power? I don't want to say much about this matter, but what I want to say is that Menxia Province, like Zhongshu Province, is the second office of the Emperor's Imperial Council, and it is a secretarial body. Like Zhongshu Province, in the early days, Menxia Province was in the Imperial Palace, Menxia, and Lang, and their semantics were very close. The gate refers to the gate of the palace, and the lang, which refers to the corridor of the palace building, are all court officials, and they were also served by eunuchs at the earliest. It's just that later it went to the foreign dynasty and was changed to a scholar, and it became a ** institution.
The fundamental reason why they went to the outer court was that it was inconvenient for eunuchs to go out of the palace, and their work needed to be in constant contact with Zhongshu Province and Shangshu Province. But even if he moved out of the palace, he couldn't change the fact that it was still the emperor's two secretariats. Not only Zhongshu Province and Menxia Province, but also Shangshu Province, in understanding, is also the emperor's secretariat. This understanding is based on the understanding of the emperor's centralized power. It is not the understanding of public rights formed after the transfer of private rights. On the other hand, when Mr. Qian talked about the procedures for handling edicts in Zhongshu Province and Menxia Province, if we take away Mr. Qian's metaphysical thinking when he introduced this procedure and summarize its metaphysical aspects, can we understand it in this way: Zhongshu Province has decision-making power, Menxia Province has the power to approve and approve, while Shangshu Province has neither decision-making power nor approval power, but only execution power.
If the factor of the emperor's role in these three powers is set aside, can it be assumed that this is a structure of separation of powers? Since it is the separation of decision-making power, approval power and executive power, it can at least explain the fact that by the time of the Tang Dynasty, the separation of powers had been explored and a certain system had been formed. If you compare this with the power that Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Wang Mang and Emperor Guangwu have been pursuing, is this a big improvement? Since it involves the separation of powers, I would like to say a few words further. In the West, there are not only power holders like Solon, who have explored some methods of exercising power when they were in power, but also some scholars who have nothing to do with power, who have conducted some research on the rational exercise of power and put forward some theories. In China, the work and practice in this area have never stopped, but the theoretical research has not been, at least, not in writing.
In terms of practical exploration, there have been some typical historical figures and typical historical events. Guan Zhong is one person, Shang Ying is one person, and Wang Mang should also be counted as one. Including the later Wang Anshi, Zhang Juzheng, etc., and even Cao Cao, Cao Pi and his son, Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty, such names can be listed in a large list. I won't talk about the incidents one by one. At the very least, the direction of this exploration may be mainly concentrated in three directions: first, land rights reform, second, supervision power reform, and third, separation of powers. These three directions are all revolutionary and milestone. On the other hand, we must recognize the reality that this separation of powers is not the result of the emperor's subjective will, let alone the emperor's study of the laws of power, which is summarized and then implemented, even if it is not an experimental exploration. This separation of powers is a natural occurrence, the result of objective needs, and an attempt to concentrate private power. Since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he has begun a series of actions to reduce power, and he wants to weaken the executive power, including the executive power of the military, the executive power and the supervision power, not just the weakening of the administrative executive power.
Emperor Wu of Han hoped that through this effort, more power would be taken into his own hands. This is the inversion of private rights to public rights. In fact, whether it is the end of the Western Han Dynasty or the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, it seems that the power reduction action has been successful, but the entire power system has collapsed. These two extremes form a pair of devastating contradictions. Whether it is the Western Han Dynasty or the Eastern Han Dynasty, what is the destruction of power? Destroyed by the emperor's self-belief that he was successful, but in essence, while the power was weakened, it quietly flowed into the hands of some people, which actually inflated the private rights of others. This is a philosophical law, which is often embodied and repeated again and again in the science of power. It is ridiculous that those emperors who thought they were extremely smart and extremely successful dug up the grave of the dynasty and claimed to be meritorious to the world.
The emperor is also a human being, whether he is intelligent and peerless, incomparable, we don't care for the time being. As long as those who hold power, they must go down the old path, that is, to do everything in their power to increase their own power and weaken the power of others. And people's thinking is flawed, and if you are afraid, you are afraid that the wise will think a thousand times, and you will make a mistake. The emperor's loss is likely to be a few hundred years for the entire people. From ancient times to the present, emperors have solved political problems in two ways.
First, for those who have made great contributions, they have to authorize high positions, and this kind of high positions cannot be adapted to their powers, such as the high positions are not heavy, so the method of vacating the high positions is adopted. Second, people who really do things are doers and capable people, and for such people, we must not only give them the power to do things, but also prevent them from having the power to damage the political power, and there is only a three-pronged approach to this. The first tube, do not give them too high positions, such as Zhongshu Ling and Shizhong only give the third grade, the six Shangshu of the Monk Book Province are at the same level, the Shangshu Order is also only given to the second grade, the same as the three divisions, and the deputy of the Shangshu Province is shot left and right, but it is from the second grade, and the grade is above the Zhongshu Ling and the servant. The second tube is to use the Imperial Historical Observatory for supervision. The third management, that is, the separation of powers between departments, forms an administrative situation of mutual checks and balances. Mutual checks and balances will inevitably lead to some stretching of tensions. There's no way around it. While it is true that it will be inefficient, there is no better way to do it.