商人、牙行与书吏:清中后期重庆城的商税包揽及其变迁

Merchants,Brokers and Clerks:Commercial Tax-farming and Its Transformation of Chongqing City from the mid-Qing Dynasty

在清代正额财政短缺的背景下,本文以重庆府巴县为例,展现出早在嘉道年间,一个经制外的、实质上的地方财政体系已经形成。乾嘉以降,重庆地方官府开始以差徭为名向工商业者征派陋规。随着官价补贴日渐不足,工商业者只得自筹经费,并以铺户帮差、牙行包揽的方式供办,由商人、牙行与书吏构成的商税包揽群体逐渐形成。咸丰年间,重庆厘金的征收名义上委任士绅办理,但实际上依然高度依赖牙行包揽,并将其正式化、制度化,形成"厘局-牙行-行帮-铺户"的多级征派组织。本文揭示出,清代"耗羡归公"后州县陋规的长期存在,不仅为地方行政提供了重要的经费来源,也为晚清厘金的开征奠定了制度与组织基础。

Through a case study of Ba County,this paper reveals that an extra-legal and substantial local fiscal system was established during the Jiaqing-Daoguang period in response to a regular shortage of funds.The local government of Chongqing began to impose corvée burden on workers and merchants in the name of lougui from the Qianlong-Jiaqing period onward.As the government could only provide insufficient compensation,merchants had to raise their own funds and entrusted brokers with the entire task of corvée.Thus,a network of tax farmers consisting of merchants,brokers and clerks gradually formed.By the Xianfeng reign,the lijin tax was in principle supposed to be collected by members of the gentry,but the actual collection procedure in Chongqing still relied heavily on the tax-farmer system run by brokers.This paper argues that the long-term existence of lougui not only provided an indispensable source of funding for the local government,but also laid the institutional and organizational foundation for the collection of lijin in the late Qing Dynasty.