清代书吏顶充及顶首银之探讨

An Examination of the Filling of Clerical Vacancies and the Associated Payment in the Qing Dynasty

清代自中央至州县各级衙门,书吏顶补普遍行用顶首银,市有定价。考察存留下来的书吏顶补文书,可知浙江藩司衙门书吏多达两千余人,是定制的三四十倍。顶充者可以自己入署办事,也可因故再择他人理事,吏缺持有人与实际进署办事者往往并非同一人,吏缺与承事相分离。吏缺具有所有权,可以继承,也可以公开转让出售,甚至可以以之作为抵押向人借款。吏缺市场行情不断上涨,但顶首银并未昂贵至时人所称的动辄"数千金"以"至万金者"的地步。顶首文书未见吏满考官事例,似乎说明书吏考满的概率很小。江浙省级衙门书吏可能只在同地同业书吏中传承,而家世相承代代相袭的现象并不突出。接充者由同行"禀举",说明接充书吏需要官府允准;由同行"公举",说明吏缺不能"私相授受",既要同行商议,更需官府认可。多数书吏实际收入并不高,有些人生活相当拮据。文书所载内容,与制度设计皇帝谕令官府申饬大相径庭,与令典要求和人们想象也颇有出入。

In the Qing bureaucracy,at all levels fromi the central governmient down to prefectures and counties,it was comimion practice for those wishing to fill a clerical vacancy()to miake a paymient for the position at market prices.An examination of the extant documentation on the filling of these vacancies shows that over 2000 clerical staff worked for the Zhejiang financial commissioner,a figure that was 30 or 4 0 times the authorized staff ceiling.The person filling the vacancy could either go towork in the office himself or,if necessary,choose someone else to handle the actual work.T'he nomiinal holder of the position was often not the person actually doing the work;that is,the position and the work were separate.The position camewith ownership rights,and could be inherited or sold on the open market,or even be used as collateral for a loan.The price of these positions kept rising,but their cost to the purchaser never reached the heights claimicd by contcmiporarics,who said they had shot up to“thousands of taels of gold”or“up to ten thousand taels of gold.’’There is no record of the end of a clerk’s term,suggesting that miost positions did not have a term limiit.In the provincial governments of Jiangsu and Zhejiang,the positions of clerical staff could apparently only be handed on to clerks in the samie place and the samie occupation,but inheritance within successive generations of a family was not evident.Anyone taking over a position had to be recommended by his colleagues,indicating that governmental approval was necessary when a position was passed on.The requirement for colleagues’public recommendations shows that vacancies could not be passed to and fro in private;both consultation with colleagues and governmient approval were needed.Most clerical staff did not have high real incomes,and some lived in considerable penury.The records in the extant files are very different from the institutional arrangements laid down in imperial edicts,and also very different from the requirements of the legal code and from what people imagined.