In the first year of Qing Xianfeng (1851), there was a case in Rongcheng County that caused a sensation in the whole country and the civil litigation government sentenced unfair punishment, known in history as the "Li Tingjue Salt Case". Li Tingjue, a fisherman from a fisherman's family, braved power and continuous resistance in the whole case, and after 7 years of persistent efforts, he finally won the case. This salt case is of landmark significance in the history of salt production in Rongcheng County and even in Weihai.
Rongcheng is located on the shore of the Yellow Sea, and has a long history of sea salt production in the territory. The salt extraction model of "boiling the sea for salt" was still used until the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty. At that time, when the preservation technology was extremely backward, most of the coastal fishermen used pickling methods to process marine fish for storage, transportation and marketing. Therefore, the amount of salt required by fishermen every year is extremely large. However, the amount of decoction salt in Rongjia is very limited, which cannot meet the needs of the annual catch season for pickling fish, often causing stove owners to sit on the ground, the price of salt has soared, and salt fishermen have complained. At the same time, the salt produced by the traditional decoction method is used in Rongcheng, which is bitter and dry, and is very unsuitable for pickled fish. The Kanto salt produced in Liaoning uses the salt method, and the crystalline particles of salt are larger than those of fried salt. At that time, the method of marinating fish was to cut the belly of the fish and collect salt. Kanto salt particles are large and well ventilated, which can ensure that the storage and transportation time of pickled fish is durable and has no bitter taste; at the same time, kanto salt production is high and the price is low, which alone can save a lot of production costs for the majority of fishermen. Kanto salt is naturally popular with fishermen and merchants, so it continues to enter the Rongbidi market.
The large amount of kanto salt has objectively promoted the relatively stable salt price in Rongda, and also ensured the processing and export of local marine fish. But this will naturally damage the vested interests of another part of the people, especially the idea of letting the local stove people enjoy the benefits of price increases has become a fantasy, so many stove people often use the "name of private salt" to repeatedly sue, trying to prevent Kanto salt from entering the territory.
In the first year of Xianfeng (1851), Wang Xilin of Rongcheng Zhi County, who had just been in office for two or three months, received a report that Li Tingjue, a gongsheng from Wolong Village, Longsu Island, Rongcheng County, and others had purchased 20 quintals (about 11,000 catties) of Kanto salt from Liaoning to prepare for pickling fish at the turn of spring and summer. After receiving the report, Wang Xilin quickly led people to Wolong Village, seized all the Kanto salt purchased by Li Tingjue on the grounds that he had sold illegal salt and violated the ban on land, and detained all the parties concerned, Li Tingjue, and others. Li Tingjue was not satisfied with this and began the road of protest. This is the famous "Li Tingjue Salt Case" in modern times.
Li Tingjue expressed dissatisfaction with the punishment of Rongcheng Zhi County, so he filed a lawsuit step by step on the grounds that "coastal pickled fish should be used for large salt, and salt should not be used for it."
As a scholar, the reason why Li Tingjue dared to accuse the government of unfair punishment was, on the one hand, because he was dissatisfied with Wang Xilin's so-called accusation of private salt in Zhixian County; on the other hand, there were also lessons from the past. As a Gongsheng, Li Tingjue was familiar with the subset of the history of the scriptures, but also paid great attention to the regulations and current political information of the Qing Dynasty on salt administration. He and the local fishermen have been buying kanto salted fish for several years, because they are familiar with the relevant regulations of the government and know that their actions do not violate the laws of the Great Qing. At the same time, he is also familiar with a salt purchase case and the result of the penalty that occurred more than a decade ago in Ninghai Prefecture, the capital of Dengzhou. Li Tingjue knew that the salt case he was involved in was of the same nature as the one decades earlier. At that time, in that case, the government ruled that the salt people's purchase of salt was legal and would not be prosecuted. Li Tingjue did not expect that the same thing that happened to him more than ten years later, the result of handling was diametrically opposite.
The case more than a decade ago was roughly like this. In the eighteenth year of Daoguang (1838), Sun Yichen, a stove household in Ninghai Prefecture, Shandong Province, and others sued Yang Tinghuai for accumulating salt. The prefect of Dengzhou personally investigated in English, and finally understood that the Kanto salt hoarded by Yang Tinghuai was for the purpose of pickling fish, and was not sold in the market, which was not a smuggling salt. The prefect Immediately acquitted Yang Tinghuai and released him. Through this case, the prefect English also investigated in detail the salt situation in Dengzhou's jurisdiction. At that time, the jurisdiction of Dengzhou was all ticket land, salt has always been a stove frying stove drying, the people's movement of people's sales, salt tax into the land, the amount of salt set up a quota ticket management, the amount of tickets from no stagnation, it can be known that the livelihood of the stove people and the stove stove pot tax that they should pay have a basic guarantee. At the same time, the local amount of decoction salt is limited, and it is not suitable for pickled fish, and coastal residents are engaged in fishing and pickling fish, and the amount of salt used is huge, and they must buy Kanto salt. Therefore, he immediately ordered: "After that, all the large salts needed by fishermen shall be allowed to be bought one after another for the use of pickled fish." If there is a place for sale in the market and if there is a commercial ticket for sale in The Tuli Xing seller, it should be strictly investigated. ”
The prefect's English talent and boldness in dealing with Yang Tinghuai's case of illegal salt hoarding was extraordinary. He proceeded from reality to investigate and study, and in handling this case, he took into account the national taxation and people's livelihood, and coordinated the interest relationship between the stove people and the fishermen. The arbitration of the case has had a profound impact on the prefectures and counties of Dengzhou, and Guangxu's "Chronicle of the Capital of Dengzhou" records that "the people of the county have recorded it and have been contemplated to this day.".
Now Rongcheng County is under the jurisdiction of Dengzhou Prefecture, from the Yang Tinghuai salt case to the first year of Xianfeng, local fishermen and fishermen have legally bought Kanto large salted fish for 12 years, and the officials and the people have been at peace. However, the new Rongcheng Zhi County Wang Xilin banned salt on the grounds of selling illegal salt, and Li Tingjue was of course not convinced. For the sake of his hard work and the livelihood of his family, and for the sake of his fathers and fellow villagers in his hometown to legally buy and use Kanto salt, Li Tingjue must seek justice.
Li Tingjue was very familiar with the verdict of the Dengzhou prefect's English handling of Yang Tinghuai's salt case in English that year, so in the lobby of the Dengzhou capital, he defended himself on the grounds that "frying salt is not suitable for pickling fish, and transporting salt into the northeast to dry salt is not table salt".
Who knew that the prefect Wang Chengyong was self-conscious, did not ask the root cause, and upheld the original judgment on the grounds that Li Tingjue "although it is called the use of pickled fish, it is a private salt without a ticket".
Li Tingjue was not discouraged, he withstood all kinds of pressure, and in the second year of Xianfeng (1852), he went to Jinan to file a complaint with the Inspector of Shandong. Inspector Li Yu of Shandong had just been transferred from Henan to Inspector Of Shandong, and because he had been through the eunuch sea for a long time, he knew that this case had a wide range of hooks and was a mass incident, and it was necessary to handle it carefully, so he immediately forwarded the case to the Dengzhou government for trial and interrogation, and ordered the Dengzhou government to investigate in detail whether the previous prefect's English judgment on Yang Tinghuai's salt case conflicted with the salt law.
A year later, Wang Chengyong upheld the first-instance judgment on the grounds that "although it is called pickled fish, it is private salt without a ticket", and ruled that the large grain of salt they bought in the Kanto was "private salt". In the official document reported to Inspector Li, Wang Chengyong truthfully reported the objective reasons for the existence of this gray transaction, and also explained his comprehensive consideration of the interests of upholding the original judgment. Wang Chengyong also knows that Kanto salt is very good for local fishermen to pickle fish, and this custom has been going on for a long time. Wang Chengyong believes that if this kind of behavior is immediately banned, I am afraid that it will have a great impact on the people's livelihood; but if it is allowed to do so, I am afraid that some lawless people will use this as an excuse to transport salt to other places for profit, which is afraid that it will have an adverse impact on the interests of the Qing Dynasty. It should be said that Wang Chengyong stood in the position of the official government, and the problems he considered were not unreasonable. Therefore, the Governor of Shandong was considering the royal interests of the Qing government and could only approve of the Decision of the Dengzhou Government to uphold the original judgment.
In the fifth year of Xianfeng (1855), after unsuccessful accusations at the prefectural and provincial levels, Li Tingjue sued the capital on the grounds of "official service collusion" and other reasons. At that time, the Qing government was at the intersection of internal and external troubles, and had no energy to take care of local trivial cases, so it approved the transfer back to Shandong and asked the inspectors to deal with it effectively.
The case had already reached the imperial court, and this matter was not trivial, so the inspector of Shandong had to attach great importance to it and immediately instructed the Inspector general to investigate and discuss it with the Salt Transport Division. After careful verification, the two divisions concluded that Rongcheng is located on the seashore, and the residents are engaged in salting fish, and it has been a long time since they bought salt. The government did not explicitly prohibit it, which shows that the fish and salt in this place are naturally beneficial to the people, and the behavior of Li Tingjue and others does not constitute a violation of the law. At the same time, it is explained that fishermen buy Kanto salt, which is indeed used for pickling fish, not as salt or smuggling for profit, and Dengzhou government should allow coastal fishermen to buy fish salt.
Because Li Tingjue committed two "crimes of overstepping the charges", he was punished by 80 floggings according to the law, which meant that he would be beaten on the back or buttocks and legs 60 times by a bamboo board or thorn, and then he was deducted with money, and the qualifications of the students were also restored. In the seventh year of Xianfeng (1857), the salt case that lasted for seven years ended in li tingjue's victory, and the salt was allowed to be transported into the beach from other places for fishing.
Li Tingjue did not hesitate to spend a lot of energy and money to appeal for the people, showing that Rong Adult was not afraid of power, and Geng was straightforward and true. In order to commemorate Li Tingjue's merits in asking for the people's lives, the fishermen's trading house in Rongcheng County specially erected a huge monument next to the road, engraved with the four big characters of "Insight into Minyin".
(Leung Sun-yong)