Ways to Provide Army Grain, Point by Point條列措置粮餉。啓

The exhaustion and shortage of army grain is the most pressing worry of the present day. If this cannot be provided for, there is no other plan worth making. Now within the capital the expenditures are very many, yet what is stored in the Great Granary (太倉) is not enough for even a few months' use; outside, the stores of the public offices are all empty, and what is privately stored is not much either. There is nowhere to provide for both the supply of the Ming troops and what is to be turned to the use of our own several armies, so that there is fear of all collapsing and scattering. Nothing is more distressing or more urgent than this.

Yet the ways of providing army grain are no more than a few points. The first is to collect in rice; the second is to collect the taxes; the third is to gather in grain; the fourth is to buy grain. If these four points are weighed as is fitting and carried out in earnest, there will be a way to keep the grain coming. I respectfully set out point by point below what ought to be done.

Item. Let the soldiers who come up to the capital for their turn of duty, the households (戶) and support men (奉足) of the cavalry and the infantry, and the special armored households (別甲戶) and their support men, all be spread out evenly and made to render rice, each man rendering five mal of rice or millet; and let the slaves of each office, the several staff (員), the artisans, and the support men of the court musicians and players also all render five mal of rice. Their number will come to a hundred thousand seom and more. Only, the soldiers of Chungcheong, Gyeonggi, Hwanghae, and Gangwon are now serving their turn in the capital; if their turn is abruptly dismissed and they are made to render rice in their home districts, there will be no soldiers to stand guard in the interval before the arrangements take hold. For this year let it first be tried in Jeolla Province: let it be collected lightly and conveniently according to the number of soldiers now present and kept each in its own district, and then either carried up to the capital by the tribute ships or added to the army grain of the south. Let this be made a schedule of articles (事目) and put into effect.

Item. The scattered rations (散料) regularly paid out here and there in the capital come to some two thousand seven hundred seom a month, and the special-case (別例) expenditures are not counted in this number. Let the Ministry of Taxation first reckon what will be used in the twelve months of a year: if three thousand seom are used in a month, that is thirty-six thousand seom in all for the year; and besides this, for the supply of the Ming troops as they come and go, there must surely be ten or twenty thousand seom before the use can be reckoned. Let the whole principal sum of this year's land tax (田稅) be brought to account, the expenditures and the sums that rise and fall by special case be deducted, and all the rest be stored apart without remainder and held solely as army grain, not to be used elsewhere, waiting for the time when the army is raised. However, in places such as Gyeongsang Province the tax was always rendered at the Gaheung Granary (可興倉) in the fourth month of the following year; this year it has already not been sent up, so it should be collected in each district as soon as grain is plentiful in autumn and winter, and made army grain.

Item. As for gathering in grain, there are not wanting people among the folk who are willing to render it; only, the fixed amount is too large, so that households of middling means cannot raise and render it, and besides they fear the state will break faith, and so all hide their grain deep and do not bring it out. If in such a case they are pressed and scraped by force, the people's resentment will boil over and what is got will not be much. That the harm of gathering grain of late only sickens the people and is no help to the work is precisely for this reason. Let the Ministry of Taxation reckon and fix the number of seom anew, so that it is light and convenient and easy to render; and let rewards be given in good time according to how much each has rendered, so that faith with the people is not broken as before and the people follow gladly.

Item. As for buying grain, what is got is in the end not ample and falls short of filling the need of even one corner, so it would seem to be without avail. Yet a market is just now being opened at Junggang (中江) by Uiju, so there is indeed a way to bring in Liaodong grain. Let silver be reckoned out, and in autumn, when grain is plentiful, let much be bought and stored in the district granaries.

Would it not be well to have the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Taxation fix the detailed articles for the several points above and carry them out with urgency, so that there is real avail?