Pan Yun said, "Yu Qian had been cracking down on official corruption these past few years, and the Imperial Court had grown much cleaner. But if one investigated the Ministry of Personnel and the Censorate, one would find plenty still drawing empty salaries and acting recklessly. Those were the things that could be uncovered. Go to the local regions, and there would be even more overlooked corners."
Thus, Cao Nai wanted to reform official administration and was even gradually cutting back the hereditary privileges granted to nobles and high ministers.
There were many voices of opposition at court. Some ministers even pointed at Cao Nai's nose and cursed, "You are destroying the foundation of the state, making His Majesty act harshly and without grace, driving the nation's talents away!"
Without hereditary privileges, how many great talents in the world would be willing to serve the Emperor?
Yet quite a few people at court also saw the evils of hereditary privilege. From the Founding Emperor to the present, through seven generations of Emperors, too much dead weight had accumulated—especially among the noble houses and the Imperial clan.
Civil officials' hereditary privileges lasted only for their own generation. When a person left, the tea went cold; that was no empty saying. In the end, aside from powerful ministers, if their descendants wanted to rise above the crowd, they still had to go through the imperial examinations and enter office by the proper road.
But nobles were different. Their privileges passed from generation to generation, and like the Imperial clan, they clung to the lifeblood of the nation and sucked its blood.
Their forebears had made tremendous contributions to the Ming Dynasty and to the realm. No one among the court's civil and military officials objected to rewarding their descendants with hereditary privilege.