Discourses on salt and iron : a debate on state control of commerce and industry in ancient China, chapter I-XXVIII / translated from the Chinese of Huan K'uan, with introduction and notes, by Esson M. Gale. |
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| XII. | CHAPTER XII |
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 | CHAPTER XII Discourses on salt and iron : |  |
CHAPTER XII
FRONTIERS, THE GREAT CONCERN[1]
a. The Lord Grand Secretary: You say, oh Literati, that the
Enlightened Ruler is concerned when the Empire is not at peace
and the states are not at rest.[2]
To be sure, the Prince should
consider the Empire as if it formed a single household. Even if one
man find not his proper position in life, he cannot be happy. Consequently,
he is not a Benevolent Prince who lets his people drown
in distress[3]
without making an attempt to rescue them; and he is
not a loyal minister who shows no concern for the misfortunes of
his state. To hold fast to his charge in defeat, even unto death,
is the duty of a minister; to clothe the cold and feed the hungry
is the way of a kindly father.
b. At present as our sons and younger brothers, far from home,
them day and night; and all the ministers turn all their energies
to the consideration of methods whereby the state revenue might
be increased. Thus it came about that the Keeper of the Privy
Treasury[4] proposed to establish the liquor excise,[5] in order to provide
for the frontier, supply the needs of our fighting men, and bring
succor to the people in distress. Out of sheer humanity, could we,
their fathers and elder brothers, help but do it? But it has been
found insufficient to have thus economized in the interior on prime
necessities, in order to relieve the need abroad. If we follow your
repeated suggestions to abolish these sources of revenue, and to
decrease thereby the provisions for the frontier, we would certainly be
acting contrary to the ways of kindly fathers or worthy elder brothers.
c. The Literati: In the period of Chou's decline, the Emperor's
power grew weak and the feudal lords ruled by force. Consequently,
princes sat uneasy on their thrones, and their counsellors rushed
restlessly about. Why? Because, threatened by enemy countries on
all sides, the Dynasty[6]
was in constant danger. At present, however,
the Nine Provinces[7]
are enclosed within one boundary and the whole
Empire is under one rule. Your Majesty can leisurely promenade
through Your lofty halls, while the ministers advance their exhaustive
proposals. In unison[8]
the hymns and chants sound within Your
Your pure virtue is as illuminating as that of Yao and Shun; Your
illustrious deeds will flow down to posterity. How could the barbarian
tribes of the Man or Mai,[10] and their barren lands, be worth all this
trouble and worry that brings us back to the uncertainty of the
Warring States[11] period. Should Your Majesty be unwilling to
abandon them to their fate, You have but to manifest Your virtue[12]
towards them and extend Your favors to cover them, and the
northern barbarians will undoubtedly come of their own accord to
pay You tribute at the Wall. If held to be our "outside subjects",[13]
then the Hsiung Nu will never[14] in all their lives lack the sustenance
they need.
d. The Lord Grand Secretary: The Sage Ruler gives much thought
to the fact that the Middle Kingdom is not yet tranquilized and the
northern frontier not yet pacified. So He dispatched the chief criminal
judge[15]
P'ing to inquire about the grievances among the people, to
needy. Envisaging, however, the possibility that in spite of their
efforts to make manifest the Imperial virtue and to give peace to
the world, the officials[16] might not obtain complete records, He gave
orders that the scholars were to be questioned on these subjects.
e. Now, your learned men in their arguments would either try
to reach high Heaven or penetrate the Abyss.[17]
Then they would
attempt, and how ineffectively, to compare the conduct of the affairs
of some hamlet or village with the great business of the nation!
They come straight from farms or out of their beggars' alleys,
unmindful of cold douches of icy waters, as half-awakened drunkards.
They have certainly proved unfit to take part in discussions.
f. The Literati: If one desired to find the Way to pacify the
people and enrich the country, one would find it in a return
to the fundamental; for when the fundamental is established, the
Way comes of itself.[18]
Follow the principles of Heaven and utilize
the wealth of the Earth, and you will accomplish deeds without
laborious effort. If you do not improve the fountain-head and busy
yourself only with the stream; if you have not the fundamental
as the rallying point, although you exhaust your energy and
overtax your mind, you will not advantage the administration. In
your attempts to settle matters, you only succeed in endangering
the situation. And in your efforts to save the situation, you only
bring about destruction. The principle of order and disorder depends
With that understood, you can attain to the Way without exerting
your mind. Confucius said: Those who do not understand one's
speech are difficult to speak with about administration; men of different
ways cannot deliberate with one another.[19] As for you, the Minister,
your mind is biased, and therefore you have no use for our words.
g. The Lord Grand Secretary: I have heard that a minister should
execute his duties with all loyalty, and a son should assume his
patrimony with due filial piety. When the ruler commits some
error, the minister should cover it. When the father does some
wrong, the son should aid and abet.[20]
Thus, when the ruler dies,
the minister does not change his policy. When the father dies, the
son does not alter his ways.[21]
The Spring and Autumn[22]
disapproved
of the destruction of the Ch'üan Tower, because the work of the
ancestors was destroyed; and this created the impression of a wrong act
of old by rulers and fathers.
h. Now the salt and iron monopoly and the equable marketing
are long standing.[23]
To abolish them, would that be possible without
the virtue of the Enlightened Ruler! The officials, therefore, are
biased in favor of the ways of loyalty and filial piety.[24] This is how
their ways "differ" from, and why they cannot "deliberate" with,
the Literati.
i. The Literati: Enlightened persons adapt themselves to the times.
The wise devise systems to conform with the needs of their contemporaries.
Confucius said: A linen cap is the prescribed form, but
nowadays silk is worn. This saves expense and I follow the general
usage.[25]
Therefore the Sages and the Worthies without departing
from antiquity, follow custom but without being partial to what
is convenient. Duke Ting of Lu arranged his ancestors' tablets in the
order of his remote progenitors and immediate ancestors.[26]
Duke Chao[27]
dismissed his ministers and officers to save expense. No one could
call this a change in their ancestors' policies or in their father's ways.
On the other hand, the Second Emperor wasted money in elaborating
Kao piled up[29] the legislation of Ch'in to extend its awesomeness.
No one could call them a loyal minister and a filial son.
[OMITTED]. Cf. ch. I, paras. d to h. The most detailed study of the age-old conflict
of the Chinese with the peoples on the north and west frontiers, designated by
Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien as the Hsiung Nu (Hung-nŏ) [OMITTED], has been made by de Groot in
Die Hunnen der vorchristlichen Zeit. (Chi. Urk. zur Gesch. Asiens, I). The Chinese
sources made use of by de Groot for the Han period are especially, Shih-chi CX,
[OMITTED] (to 97 B. C.), and Ch'ien-han-shu XCIV, [OMITTED] (to about
25 A. D.). His posthumously published work, a continuation of studies on the peoples
beyond the western frontiers of China, has appeared as a second volume, Chi. Urk. zur
Gesch. Asiens, II, Die Westlande Chinas in der vorchristlichen Zeit. The Chinese records
of the wars with the Hsiung Nu, the subject matter of the discussion in this chapter
of the YTL., appear in chaps. XII and XIII (for the periods 96—85, 85—68, B. C.)
of de Groot's first volume. The extraordinary importance in the world's history of the
unremitting defence of China's frontier (as advocated by Sang Hung-yang), is summarized
by de Groot (op. cit., I, 192): Die Stiftung eines westlichen Hunnenreichs war nun im
Werden begriffen; die Abwanderung der Hunnen nach dem weiten Westen und Éuropa,
die den Anstoss gab zu der grossen Völkerwanderung, hatte ihren Anfang genommen.
[OMITTED].... Wang omits [OMITTED], as [OMITTED] and [OMITTED] are interchanged
in ancient texts. [OMITTED] is held to be a copyist's gloss.
The term used here is shê-chi [OMITTED], the spirits, or gods, of the land and grain.
In early times each prince, feudal lord, or district, possessed a tutelary god of the
soil. The Lord of the Harvest [OMITTED] was necessarily associated with the god of the
soil. The two terms thus became a synonym for the protecting institution of the ruling
family, the "palladium" of the reigning dynasty, as in our text. The origins of the
term shê have been exhaustively treated by Chavannes in Le Dieu du Sol dans la Chine
antique, and have been recently discussed by Ku Chieh-kang [OMITTED] in the autobiographical
section of his Ku Shih Pien [OMITTED]. Cf. also Maspero,
La Chine Antique, 167—175; and Karlgren, "Some Fecundity Symbols in Ancient
China," in Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, No. 2, 1930, on the
possibility of the original phallic significance of shê.
Li-chi, Ching Chieh [OMITTED] [Legge, Sacred Books, Vol. XXVIII, 256]: At his
entertainments he listens to the singing of the Odes of the Kingdom and the Odes of
the Temple and Altar . . . . When he rides in his chariot, there are the harmonious
sounds of the bells attached to his horses.
[OMITTED]: the several states of China of the Vth to the IIIrd centuries B. C.,
who struggled incessantly for the hegemony, culminating in the triumph of Ch'in
[OMITTED]. (Cf. Maspero, La Chine Antique, 392 seq.). The wars of the period form the
subject matter of the Chu-shu-chi-nien [OMITTED], the Chan-kuo-ts'ê [OMITTED],
and ch. V of the Shih-chi.
That peoples may be attracted by a manifestation of Kingly virtue is of course a
favored tenet of early Chinese literature. The theme of the Odes (Shih-ching, III, i, x,
King Wên [OMITTED]),
From the south to the north,
There was not one who thought of refusing submission,"
translation, p. 166]).
[OMITTED] "chief criminal judge", an office dating from the Ch'in dynasty and
maintained under Han Wu Ti. The text here is evidently corrupt. The t'ing-wei Wang
P'ing [OMITTED] and others, altogether five officers, were despatched to make such
enquiries (cf. the Han-wu-chi [OMITTED], Ch'ien-han-shu, 2nd year of the shih-yüan
era).
The text has [OMITTED], probably [OMITTED], as an edition, the Hua-pên [OMITTED],
cited by Chang, reads.
Cf. Huai-nan-tzŭ ch. XIX: Speakers ([OMITTED]) should stay on the level
with the mass ([OMITTED]) and be in agreement with custom ([OMITTED]).
Nowadays if they do not discourse on the "Empyrean" ([OMITTED]), then they
speak of the "Tartarean" ([OMITTED]) . . . .
[OMITTED], from the Lun-yü I, ii: The true philosopher devotes
himself to the fundamental, for when that has been established right courses naturally
evolve . . . [Soothill].
The first half of this quotation is not found in the Lun-yü; the second is from
ch. XV, xxix: Those whose ways are different do not make plans together [Soothill].
The Lun-yü reads [OMITTED] for YTL. [OMITTED]. Cf. Shih-chi, LXI, where the quotation
from the Lun-yü is found followed by [OMITTED], "and so each one
follows the bent of his own will."
Cf. Lun-yü XIII, xviii, where Confucius defends this principle: The father conceals
the misconduct of the son, and the son conceals the misconduct of the father [Legge].
Here and in the ensuing paragraphs, the statesman employs the Confucian argument,
evidently with the direct purpose of attacking his opponents with their own weapons.
The clash between the Confucian standards of personal morality, and the emphasis on
civic duties maintained by the School of Law, is discussed by Duyvendak, The Book
of Lord Shang, 114 seq.
Paraphrase of Lun-yü, I, xi: . . . when [a man's] father is dead mark his conduct.
If for three years he does not change from his father's ways . . . . [Soothill].
The story is based on the Kung-yang comm., Wên Kung [OMITTED], XVI. ". . .
lady Këang was . . . the mother of Wăn. Kungyang says that `the tower of Ts'euen'
[[OMITTED]] was the name given to that built at Lang by Duke Chwang in his 31st
year. The Chuan says: `There came out from the palace of Ts'euen, and entered the
capital, serpents, as many as there had been marquises of Loo; and when Këang
died on Sin-we in the 8th month, [the duke] caused the tower to be pulled down' "
[Legge, Chi. Classics, vol. V, pt. i, 27; cf. also op. cit. 281, note, par. 1].
See p. 2, notes 1 and 3, supra, where the date for the establishment of the salt and iron
control is stated as 119 B. C., and for the introduction of equable marketing as 115 B. C.
Here the Lord Grand Secretary cleverly reverses his usual arguments against
following the precedents of antiquity; while in the ensuing passage (para. i), the Literati,
on the defensive, employ the legalist principle of opportunism, [OMITTED]
[OMITTED], quoting Confucius to justify it.
Soothill, Analects, IX, iii. The commentator (Chu Hsi [OMITTED]) is quoted: The
prescribed cap was of the very finest linen and of a dark color. Its warp had 2400 strands.
[OMITTED]. In the ancestral temple [OMITTED], the four shrines or
tablets of the ancestors of a feudal prince were arranged in two rows, north and south
of the shrine of the founder of the house [OMITTED]. On one side, fronting south, were the
of fathers. These were called chao [OMITTED]. On the other side, fronting north, were
those of sons; these were called mu [OMITTED]. Upon the interment of a prince, the tablet of
one of the remote ancestors was removed to make room. The ni [OMITTED] was the shrine
or tablet of the deceased father of the prince. The arrangement of the tablets in the
shrines of the ancestral temple was thus specifically prescribed, and any departure therefrom
was "unnatural." Duke Ting of Lu [OMITTED] (508 B. C. [Legge]) corrected
a previous error in the arrangement of the tablets of his ancestors, by restoring them
to their proper places. For the arrangement of the ancestral tablets, cf. Couvreur, Li
Ki, I, 287, note on [OMITTED], and for [OMITTED], ibid., 415, note. The record of the incident
appears in the Ch'un-ch'iu, XI, vii, 15 [Legge, Chi. Classics, vol. V, pt. ii, 768—9,
and note].
[OMITTED]. The incident has not been found in the Ch'un-ch'iu, in the chronicle
of Duke Chao (Book X).
[OMITTED], the celebrated edifice constructed by Shih-huang-ti, the "First Emperor"
[OMITTED], and described by Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien (Shih-chi, VI). Any elaboration of the
original structure by the Second Emperor [OMITTED], would be an example
of extravagance. For the pronunciation and meaning of O-pang, cf. Chavannes, Mém.
hist., II, 174, note 5.
| CHAPTER XII Discourses on salt and iron : | |