皇室与国家财政分开视角下的咸同财政危机

The Breakdown of the Qing Fiscal Separation and the Prolonged Fiscal Crisis during and after the Taiping Civil War

既有的太平天国财政史研究多从中央与地方权力博弈的角度分析中央集权的传统财政体系的瓦解和传统财政向近代的转型。较少被关注的是19世纪中叶财政危机中,作为国家财政有机组成部分的皇室财政状况,尤其是皇室财政与政府财政以及中央与地方财政这两对关系之间的互动在咸同财政危机中的作用。本文揭示:太平天国战争不仅空前深化了清政府财政危机,打破了中央与地方之间财政的平衡,而且还破坏了内务府与户部间的财政平衡。一方面,厘金等新税的征收不仅在战时对历来内府收入两大宗的两淮盐税和粤海关税造成侵蚀,而且这种影响延续到了战后,成为内府收入入不敷出、频频向户部索款之主因。另一方面,前此二百余年内库、外库分开的家法一旦被打破,皇室消费行为渐渐走向无度。简言之,失衡的中央与地方财政关系加剧了内务府财政危机同时,日渐崩坏的内务府与户部之间的财政关系,通过加重户部的财政负担、削弱中央的财政管理能力,反过来恶化了本已问题重重的中央与地方关系。

Different from the central-local perspective that has dominated late Qing fiscal studies for decades,this paper offers a more detailed analysis by differentiating the imperial household and the ministry of revenue and examines how the two parts of the central fiscal bureaucracy interacted with each other and how these interactions contributed to the deepening of the fiscal crisis during the Taiping civil war. This paper reveals that the Taiping rebellion not only deepened the Qing government’s financial crisis in an unprecedented way,disrupting the financial balance between the central and local governments but also disrupted the financial balance between the ministry of revenue and the imperial household department. On the one hand,collecting new taxes in the wartime led to decreases of Lianghuai salt tax and Canton custom,the two greatest contributors to imperial household revenues,not only during the wartime but also in the postwar era,which was the single most important cause to the fiscal crisis of the imperial household. On the other hand,once the imperial fiscal separation was broken,royal spending went unchecked. In short,while the fiscal decentralization contributed to the fiscal crisis of the imperial household,the deteriorating fiscal relationship between the imperial and bureaucratic governments in turn worsened the already problematic central-local relationship by increasing the fiscal burden on the ministry and weakening the fiscal management capacity of the center.