<論説>捐納と印結について : 清代捐納制度論考 (二)

Abstract

捐納というのは、政府が財政難を解決するために、所定の規則にしたがって、官職や栄典などを販売し、一般人民や官僚がそれを購入する制度である。清代の官僚制度史・政治史・財政史・官僚生活史、及び社会史を研究するにあたって、避けて通ることのできない問題である。印結とは、現職官僚が発行する、官切の押される保証書で、文書行政を特徴とする伝統中国の日常行政のなかでよく使われる文書の一つである。捐納の現場では、捐納をする人の身元を確認するために、清朝政府は、彼らに対し、印結の提出を義務付けた。 本文は、印結の由来を概観し、捐納と印結との関係、印結局による印結・印結手数料・印結銀の管理、印結銀と京官収入との関係について検討した。そして、「徴信原理」に基づいて結成した印結局のパブリックな性格について説明したうえで、「友」で呼び合う印結局から見られる伝統社会から近代社会への動きについて私見を述べる。

The purchase of office, juanna 捐納, was a system in which the government offered to ordinary people the sale of official government posts and titles as a way to overcome fiscal difficulties. The purchase of posts and titles is an integral feature of institutional, political, fiscal, and social history, as well as any study of the lives of government officials. One variety of document very commonly used in dairy administration in traditional China, the yinjie 印結, was a letter of guarantee issued by officials and stamped with government seals. The Qing government required a letter of guarantee to confirm the identity of a person purchasing an office or title. Drawing on archival materials, this essay examines the relationship between the purchase of office and the letter of guarantee. I have looked in particular at the connection between the lives of officials and the Tax on the Letter of Guarantee, yinjieyin 印結銀, the processing fee that amounted to additional income for the official. I discuss the trend toward modernity in the Letter of Guarantee Bureau, Yinjieju 印結局, through an explanation of the internal regulations of the bureau, which were formed by bureaucrats acting in their official capacity and under the influence of the conception of the "public." Put in different terms, as a result of making public information of the adjustment of profits within the Letter of Guarantee Bureau, it was demonstrated there were "no private interests" at work. This policy of management demanded trustworthiness of all parties involved. One can see a movement toward modernity in the adoption of the principle of "public" by traditional Chinese bureaucratic society. This is critically important to our understanding of Chinese bureaucratic institutions and Chinese society during the period of transition from a traditional to a modern bureaucratic system. The epochal shift is not only a noteworthy development in China's institutional history, but we should also note that it had been hastened by the nascent movement toward modernity already developing in Chinese society.