Declare Your Goods: The Han Property Levy and the Rewards for Informers

The proposal opens by restoring an old rule: 'in former times the carts and the cash of merchants were counted at fixed rates; let them be counted as before' (異時算軺車賈人緡錢皆有差，請算如故). The officials begin with their reasons: parts of the commanderies have suffered disaster, the poor have no property, merchants have multiplied, and the poor, having nothing stored, all look to the government (商賈滋眾。貧者畜積無有，皆仰縣官). What follows is a schedule — who declares, what is counted, how much, and what happens to a man who understates. The words are a speech by senior officials, introduced with 'then the ministers said' (於是公卿言); only later does the text call the result 'the cash-tax order' (緡錢令). This article keeps the two apart: a proposal first, an order afterwards.

Who declares, and how much

The first surprise is the coverage. 'All merchants, small manufacturers, lenders, buyers and sellers, those who store goods in towns, and those who profit by trade — even without a market register — shall themselves declare their goods' (諸賈人末作貰貸賣買，居邑稽諸物，及商以取利者，雖無市籍，各以其物自占). The four characters 'even without a market register' widen the net from registered merchants to anyone making money by moving goods. And the verb is 自占, to declare oneself: the office does not inventory the shop, it has the owner write himself down.

Two rates are given. Merchants pay 'one count per two thousand cash' (率緡錢二千而一算); those who work on contract or cast metal pay 'one count per four thousand' (諸作有租及鑄，率緡錢四千一算) — half the rate on the same unit. Carts and boats are counted separately, carts by status and boats by length: 'the carts of the Three Elders and the northern frontier knights — men not ranked with officials — one count; the carts of merchants, two counts; boats of five zhang and over, one count' (軺車以一算；商賈人軺車二算；船五丈以上一算). A merchant's cart is counted twice; a boat once, if it is long enough.

What a count was worth, the pages do not say. There is no gloss and no conversion; the whole schedule is written in its own unit. It is generally thought that one count meant a hundred and twenty cash, from later commentary, but neither page says it, and this article does not use the figure to compute a rate. So all that can be written is the original: one count per two thousand, one per four thousand, one per cart, one per boat — and not a percentage.

Concealment, and the informer's half

Two penalties follow: 'concealing and not declaring, or declaring incompletely — one year on the frontier, and confiscation of the cash strings' (匿不自占，占不悉，戍邊一歲，沒入緡錢). Then comes the clause that changed the character of the whole thing: 'anyone able to inform shall be given half' (有能告者，以其半畀之). Half of the confiscated property went to the informer. A property return, written to this point, has become a bounty on one's neighbour. One prohibition hangs on the same paragraph: merchants with a market register and their families 'may not hold land in their own names, so as to benefit the farmers; those who break the order lose the land and the servants' (皆無得籍名田……沒入田僮).

From a paragraph to a campaign

After the order came an example. The emperor honoured Bu Shi, the herdsman who had offered half his fortune for the frontier, made him a palace attendant, gave him land, and 'proclaimed it through the empire so that all should know' (布告天下，使明知之). It did not work: 'the common people never came forward to share their wealth with the government' (百姓終莫分財佐縣官). Then: 'thereupon denunciations of the cash tax were let loose' (於是告緡錢縱矣). Teams of censors and of the commandant of justice's deputies were sent out by division to try the cash-tax cases in the commanderies and kingdoms (乃分遣御史廷尉正監分曹往，即治郡國緡錢). The execution is told in three sentences — Yang Ke's denunciations 'ran through the empire' (楊可告緡遍天下), 'households of middling means and above were mostly accused' (中家以上大抵皆遇告), and 'Du Zhou judged them, and few were reversed' (獄少反者). One organizer, one judge, one sentence for the reach of it.

Then the inventory, in the only quantities the chapter has, all of them approximations: goods taken 'counted by the hundred million' (以億計), slaves 'by the thousand and ten thousand' (以千萬數), fields 'several hundred qing in a large county, a hundred-odd in a small one' (田大縣數百頃，小縣百餘頃), houses likewise. The result is one line: 'merchants of middling means and above were for the most part ruined, and the people took their pleasure in good food and fine clothes and did not attend to storing up property' (商賈中家以上大率破，民偷甘食好衣，不事畜藏之產業). These are not statistics; they are the text's own quantities, and this article does not add them up.

Money, land, people: where each went

The disposal is the most concrete passage in the chapter. The cash was divided among the offices: 'the water office, the privy treasury, the grand agriculture and the imperial carriage each set up agricultural officials, who often farmed the confiscated fields on the spot in the commanderies and counties' (水衡、少府、大農、太仆各置農官，往往即郡縣比沒入田田之). The people were not released: 'the confiscated slaves were distributed to the parks to feed dogs, horses, birds and beasts, and to the various offices' (分諸苑養狗馬禽獸，及與諸官). Money, land and labour each had a destination; here the levy stops being a document and becomes an establishment. The establishment was costly: 'the various offices were multiplied, the convicts and slaves were many, and the grain shipped down the river reached a quota of four million shi, and the offices still had to buy more' (諸官益雜置多，徒奴婢眾，而下河漕度四百萬石，及官自糴乃足).

The two texts do not read alike, and the differences are set side by side rather than smoothed. First the character: where the Shiji writes 緡錢, the Hanshu page writes 嬢錢 in several places (率嬢錢二千而算一, 告嬢遍天下); it is understood as 缗钱, but the transcription is quoted as it stands and flagged. Then the word: the Shiji has 大抵皆遇告, the Hanshu 大氐皆遇告 — 氐 for 抵. Then the closing clause: the Shiji has 'and the government's funds were the more abundant' (用益饒矣), the Hanshu '用少饒矣' — one character, and the sense runs differently; both stand here, and neither is chosen. A fourth difference sits in the same paragraph: the Shiji's 沒入田僮, land and servants, against the Hanshu's 沒入田貨, land and goods.

The years the pages do not give

Neither page gives the years: when the levy began and when the denunciations stopped are simply not there, and this article supplies none. Two later passages do show it could be waived: settlers sent to the new Qin territories were offered 'remission of denunciation' (以除告緡) as an inducement, and those who delivered grain to Ganquan were promised 'no denunciation' for life (不告緡; the Hanshu has 不復告嬢). That is enough to keep it in its place — a policy that could be lifted, not a standing tax with a permanent name. The rule can be copied out sentence by sentence; the result can only be counted in 計 and 數.

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