Ancient China Simplified

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The matter may be compendiously stated as follows. Without
attempting to go backward beyond the conquest by the Chou
principality and the founding of a Chou dynasty in 122 B.C.
(though there is really no reason to doubt the substantial
accuracy of the vague "history" of patriarchal times, at least so
far back beyond that as to cover the 1000 years or more of the two
previous dynasties' reigns), we may state that, whilst in general
the principles and ritual of the two previous dynasties were
maintained, a good many new ideas were introduced at this Chou
conquest, and amongst other things, a compendious and all-
pervading practical ritual government, which not only marked off
the distinctions between classes, and laid down ceremonious rules
for ancestral sacrifice, social deportment, family duties,
cultivation, finance, punishment, and so on, but endeavoured to
bring all human actions whatsoever into practical harmony with
supposed natural laws; that is to say, to make them as regular, as
comprehensible, as beneficent, and as workable, as the perfectly
manifest but totally unexplained celestial movements were; as were
the rotation of seasons, the balancing of forces, the growth and
waning of matter, male and female reproduction, light and
darkness; and, in short, to make human actions as harmonious as
were all the forces of nature, which never fail or go wrong except
under (presumed) provocation, human or other. The Emperor, as
Vicar of God, was the ultimate judge of what was _tao_, or
the "right way."

Now this simple faith, when the whole of the Chinese Empire
consisted of about 50,000 square miles of level plain, inhabited
probably by not more than 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 homogeneous
people, was admirably suited for the patriarchal rule of a central
chief (the King or Emperor), receiving simple tribute of metals,
hemp, cattle, sacrificial supplies, etc.; entertaining his
relatives and princely friends when they came to do annual homage
and to share in periodical sacrifice; declaring the penal laws
(there were no other laws) for all his vassals; compassionating
and conciliating the border tribes living beyond those vassals.
But this peaceful bucolic life, in the course of time and nature,
naturally produced a gradual increase in the population; the
Chinese cultivators spread themselves over the expanse of
_loess_ formed by the Yellow River and Desert deposits and by
aeons of decayed vegetation in the low-lying lands; no other
nation or tribe within their ken having the faintest notion of
written character, there was consequently no political cohesion of
any sort amongst the non-Chinese tribes; the position was akin to
that of the European powers grafting themselves for centuries upon
the still primitive African tribes, comparatively few of which
have seen fit to turn the art of writing to the practical purpose
of keeping records and cementing their own power. Wherever a
Chinese adventurer went, there he became founder of a state; to
this day we see enterprising Chinamen founding petty "dynasties"
in the Siamese Malay Peninsula; or, for instance, an Englishman
like Rajah Brooke founding a private dynasty in Borneo.

Some of these frontier tribes, notably the Tartars, were of
altogether too tough a material to be assimilated. They even
endeavoured to check the Chinese advance beyond the Yellow River,
and carried fire and sword themselves into the federal conclave.
Where resistance was _nil_ or slight, as, for instance, among
some of the barbarians to the east, there the Chinese adventurers,
either adopting native ways, or persuading the autochthones to
adopt their ways, by levelling up or levelling down, developed
strong cohesive power; besides (owing to the difficulties of
inter-communication) creating a feeling of independence and a
disinclination to obey the central power. The emperors who used in
the good old days to summon the vassals--a matter of a week or two
in that small area--to chastise the wicked tribes on their
frontiers, gradually found themselves unable to cope with the more
distant Tartar hordes, the eastern barbarians of the coast, the
Annamese, Shans, and other unidentified tribes south of the Yang-
tsz, as they had so easily done with nearer tribes when the
Chinese had not pushed out so far. Moreover, new-Chinese, Chinese-
veneered, and half-Chinese states, recognizing their own
responsibilities, now interposed themselves as "buffers" or
barriers between the Emperor and the unadulterated barbarians;
these hybrid states themselves were quite as formidable to the
imperial power as the displaced barbarians had formerly been.
Hence, as we have seen, the pitiful flight from his metropolis of
one Emperor after the other; the rise of great and wealthy persons
outside the former limited sacred circle; the pretence of
protecting the Emperor, advanced by these rising powers, partly in
order to gain prestige by using his imperial name in support of
their local ambitions, and partly because--as during the Middle
Ages in the case of the Papacy--no one cared to brave the moral
odium of annihilating a venerable spiritual power, even though
gradually shorn of its temporal rights and influence.

Lu was almost on a par with the imperial capital in all that
concerns learning, ritual, music, sacrifice, deportment, and
spiritual prestige. Confucius, in his zeal for the recovery of
imperial rights, was really no more of a stickler for mere form
than were Tsz-ch'an of Cheng, Ki-chah of Wu, Hiang Suh of Sung,
Shuh Hiang of Tsin, and others already enumerated; the only
distinguishing feature in his case was that he was not a high or
influential official in his earlier days; besides, he was a Sung
man by descent, and all the great families were of the Lu princely
caste. Thus, for want of better means to assert his own views, he
took to teaching and reading, to collecting historical facts, to
pointing morals and adorning tales. As a youth he was so clever,
that one of the Lu grandees, on his death-bed, foretold his
greatness. It was a great bitterness for him to see his successive
princely masters first the humble servants of Ts'i, then buffeted
between Tsin and Ts'u, finally invaded and humiliated by barbarian
Wu, only to receive the final touches of charity at the hands of
savage Yiieh. His first act, when he at last obtained high office,
was to checkmate Ts'i, the man behind the ruler of which jealous
state feared that Lu might, under Confucius' able rule, succeed in
obtaining the Protectorate, and thus defeat his own insidious
design to dethrone the legitimate Ts'i house. The wily Marquess of
Ts'i thereupon--of course at the instigation of the intriguing
"great families"--tried another tack, and succeeded at last in
corrupting the vacillating Lu prince with presents of horses,
racing chariots, and dancing women. Then it was (497) that
Confucius set out disheartened on his travels. Recalled thirteen
years later, he soon afterwards began to devote his remaining
powers to the Annals so frequently referred to above, and it was
whilst engaged in finishing this task that he had presentiments of
his coming end; he does not appear to have been able to exercise
much political or advisory power after his return to Lu.

During his thirteen years of travel (a more detailed account of
which will be given in a subsequent chapter), he found time to
revise and edit the books which appear to have formed the common
stock-in-trade for all China; one of his ideas was to eliminate
from these all sentiments of an anti-imperial nature. They were
not then called "classics," but simply "The Book" (of History),
"The Poems" (still known by heart all over China), "The Rites" (as
improved by the Chou family), "The Changes" (a sort of cosmogony
combined with soothsaying), and "Music."

CHAPTER XX

LAW

Let us now consider the notions of law as they existed in the
primitive Chinese mind. As all government was supposed to be based
on the natural laws of the universe, of which universal law or
order of things, the Emperor, as "Son of Heaven," was (subject to
his own obedience to it) the supreme mouthpiece or expression,
there lay upon him no duty to define that manifest law; when it
was broken, it was for him to say that it was broken, and to
punish the breach. Nature's bounty is the spring, and therefore
rewards are conferred in spring; nature's fall is in the autumn,
which is the time for decreeing punishments; these are carried out
in winter, when death steals over nature. A generous table
accompanies the dispensing of rewards, a frugal table and no music
accompanies the allotment of punishments; hence the imperial
feasts and fasts. Thus punishment rather than command is what was
first understood by Law, and it is interesting to observe that
"making war" and "putting to death" head the list of imperial
chastisements, war being thus regarded as the Emperor's rod in the
shape of a posse of punitory police, rather than as an expression
of statecraft, ambitious greed, or vainglorious self-assertion.
Then followed, in order of severity, castration, cutting off the
feet or the knee-cap, branding, and flogging. The Emperor, or his
vassals, or the executive officers of each in the ruler's name,
declared the law, _i.e._ they declared the punishment in each
case of breach as it occurred. Thus from the very beginning the
legislative, judicial, and executive functions have never been
clearly separated in the Chinese system of thought; new words have
had to be coined within the last two years in order to express
this distinction for purposes of law reform. Mercantile Law,
Family Law, Fishery Laws--in a word, all the mass of what we call
Commercial and Civil Jurisprudence,--no more concerned the
Government, so far as individual rights were concerned, than
Agricultural Custom, Bankers' Custom, Butchers' Weights, and such
like petty matters; whenever these, or analogous matters, were
touched by the State, it was for commonwealth purposes, and not
for the maintenance of private rights. Each paterfamilias was
absolutely master of his own family; merchants managed their own
business freely; and so on with the rest. It was only when public
safety, Government interests, or the general weal was involved
that punishment-law stepped in and said,--always with _tao_,
"propriety," or nature's law in ultimate view: "you merchants may
not wear silk clothes"; "you usurers must not ruin the agriculturalists";
"you butchers must not irritate the gods of grain by killing cattle":--
these are mere examples taken at random from much later times.

The Emperor Muh, whose energies we have already seen displayed in
Tartar conquests and exploring excursions nearly a millennium
before our era, was the first of the Chou dynasty to decide that
law reform was necessary in order to maintain order among the
"hundred families" (still one of the expressions meaning "the
Chinese people"). A full translation of this code is given in Dr.
Legge's Chinese classics, where a special chapter of The Book is
devoted to it: in charging his officer to prepare it, the Emperor
only uses the words "revise the punishments," and the code itself
is only known as the "Punishments" (of the marquess who drew it
up); although it also prescribes many judicial forms, and lays
down precepts which are by no means all castigatory. The mere fact
of its doing so is illustrative of reformed ideas in the embryo.
There is good ground to suppose that the Chinese Emperor's "laws,"
such as they were at any given time, were solemnly and periodically
proclaimed, in each vassal kingdom; but, subject to these general imperial
directions, the _themis_, _dike_ or inspired decision of the
magistrate, was the sole deciding factor; and, of course, the ruler's
arbitrary pleasure, whether that ruler were supreme or vassal, often
ran riot when he found himself strong enough to be unjust. For instance,
in 894 B.C., the Emperor boiled alive one of the Ts'i rulers, an act that
was revenged by Ts'i 200 years later, as has been mentioned in previous
chapters.

In 796 B.C. a ruler of Lu was selected, or rather recommended to
the Emperor for selection, in preference to his elder brother,
because "when he inflicted chastisement he never failed to
ascertain the exact instructions left by the ancient emperors."
This same Emperor had already, in 817, nominated one younger
brother to the throne of Lu, because he was considered the most
attractive in appearance on an occasion when the brethren did
homage at the imperial court. For this caprice the Emperor's
counsellor had censured him, saying: "If orders be not executed,
there is no government; if they be executed, but contrary to
established rule, the people begin to despise their superiors."

In 746 B.C. the state of Ts'in, which had just then recently
emerged from Tartar barbarism, and had settled down permanently in
the old imperial domain, first introduced the "three stock" law,
under which the three generations, or the three family connections
of a criminal were executed for his crime as well as himself. In
596 and 550 Tsin (which thus seems to have taken the hint from
Ts'in) exterminated the families of two political refugees who had
fled to the Tartars and to Ts'i respectively. Even in Ts'u the
relatives of the man who first taught war to Wu were massacred in
585, and any one succouring the fugitive King of Ts'u was
threatened with "three clan penalties"; this last case was in the
year 529. The laws of Ts'u seem to have been particularly harsh;
in 55 the premier was cut into four for corruption, and one
quarter was sent in each direction, as a warning to the local
districts. About 650 B.C. a distinguished Lu statesman, named
Tsang Wen-chung, seems to have drawn up a special code, for one of
Confucius' pupils (two centuries later) denounced it as being too
severe when compared with Tsz-ch'an's mild laws--to be soon
mentioned. Confucius himself also described the man as being "too
showy." This Lu statesman, about twenty years later, made some
significant and informing observations to the ruler of Lu when
report came that Tsin (the Second Protector) was endeavouring to
get the Emperor to poison a federal refugee from Wei, about whose
succession the powers were at the moment quarrelling. He said:
"There are only five recognized punishments: warlike arms, the
axe, the knife or the saw, the branding instruments, the whip or
the bastinado; there are no surreptitious ones like this now
proposed." The result was that Lu, being of the same clan as the
Emperor, easily succeeded in bribing the imperial officials to let
the refugee prince go. The grateful prince eagerly offered Tsang
W&n-chung a reward; but the statesman declined to receive it, on
the ground that "a subject's sayings are not supposed to be known
beyond his own master's frontier." About, a century later a
distinguished Tsin statesman, asking what "immortality" meant, was
told: "When a man dies, but when his words live; like the words of
this distinguished man, Tsang W&n-chung, of Lu state." This same
Tsin statesman is said to have engraved some laws on iron (513),
an act highly disapproved by Confucius. It is only by thus piecing
together fragmentary allusions that we can arrive at the
conclusion that "there were judges in those days." Mention has
been several times made in previous chapters of Tsz-ch'an, whose
consummate diplomacy maintained the independence and even the
federal influence of the otherwise obscure state of Cheng during a
whole generation. In the year 536 B.C. he decided to cast the laws
in metal for the information of the people: this course was
bitterly distasteful to his colleague, Shuh Hiang of Tsin (see
Appendix I.), and possibly the Tsin "laws on iron" just mentioned
were suggested by this experiment, for it must be remembered that
Tsin, Lu, Wei, and Cheng were all of the same imperial clan.
Confucius, who had otherwise a genuine admiration for Tsz-ch'an,
disapproved of this particular feature in his career. In a minor
degree the same question of definition and publication has also
caused differences of opinion between English lawyers, so far as
the so-called "judge-made law" is concerned; it is still
considered to be better practice to have it declared as
circumstances arise, than to have it set forth beforehand in a
code. The arguments are the same; in both cases the judges profess
to "interpret" the law as it already exists; that is, the Chinese
judge interprets the law of nature, and the English judge the
common and statute laws; but neither wishes to hamper himself by
trying to publish in advance a scheme contrived to fit all future
hypothetical cases.

About 680 B.C. the King of Ts'u is recorded to have passed a law
against harbouring criminals, under which the harbourer was liable
to the same penalty as the thief; and at the same time reference
is made by his advisers to an ancient law or command of the
imperial dynasty, made before it came to power in 1122 B.C.-"If
any of your men takes to flight, let every effort be made to find
him." Thus it would seem that other ruling classes, besides those
of the Chou clan, accepted the general imperial laws, Chou-
ordained or otherwise. Although it is thus manifest that the
vassal states, at least after imperial decadence set in, in 771
B.C., drew up and published laws of their own, yet, at the great
durbar of princes held by the First Protector in 651 B.C., it is
recorded that the "Son of Heaven's Prohibitions" were read over
the sacrificial victim. They are quite patriarchal in their
laconic style, and for that reason recall that of the Roman Twelve
Tables. They run: "Do not block springs!" "Do not hoard grain!"
"Do not displace legitimate heirs!" "Do not make wives of your
concubines!" "Do not let women meddle with State affairs!" From
the Chinese point of view, all these are merely assertions of what
is Nature's law. In the year 640, the state of Lu applied the term
"Law Gate" to the South Gate, "because both Emperor and vassal
princes face south when they rule, and because that is,
accordingly, the gate through which all commands and laws do
pass." It is always possible, however, that this "facing south" of
the ancient ruler points to the direction whence some of his
people came, and towards which, as their guide and leader, he had
to look in order to govern them.

In the year 594 there is an instance cited where two dignitaries
were killed by direct specific order of the Emperor. In explaining
this exceptional case, the commentator says: "The lord of all
below Heaven is Heaven, and Heaven's continuer or successor is the
Prince; whilst that which the Prince holds fast is the Sanction,
which no subject can resist."

Not very long after Confucius' death in 479 B.C., the powerful and
orthodox state of Tsin, which had so long held its own against
Ts'in, Ts'i, and Ts'u, tottered visibly under the disintegrating
effects of the "great family" intrigues: of the six great families
which had, as representatives of the earlier eleven, latterly
monopolized power, three only survived internecine conflicts, and
at last the surviving three split up into the independent states
of Han, Wei, and Chao, those names being eponymous, as being their
sub-fiefs, and, therefore, their "surnames," or family names. In
the year 403 the Emperor formally recognized them as separate,
independent vassaldoms. Wei is otherwise known as Liang, owing to
the capital city having borne that name, and the kings of Liang
are celebrated for their conversations with the peripatetic
philosopher, Mencius, in the fourth century B.C. In order to
distinguish this state from that of Wei (imperial clan) adjoining
Lu and Sung, we shall henceforth call it Ngwei, as, in fact, it
originally was pronounced, and as it still is in some modern
dialects. The first of the Ngwei sovereigns had in his employ a
statesman named Li K'wei, who introduced, for taxation purposes, a
new system of land laws, and also new penal laws. These last were
in six books, or main heads, and, it is said, represented all that
was best in the laws of the different feudal states, mostly in
reference to robbery: the minor offences were roguery, getting
over city walls, gambling, borrowing, dishonesty, lewdness,
extravagance, and transgressing the ruler's commands--their exact
terms are now unknown. This code was afterwards styled the "Law
Classic," and its influence can be plainly traced, dynasty by
dynasty, down to modern times; in fact, until a year or two ago,
the principles of Chinese law have never radically changed; each
successive ruling family has simply taken what it found; modifying
what existed, in its own supposed interest, according to time,
place, and circumstance. Li K'wei's land laws singularly resembled
those recommended to the Manchu Government by Sir Robert Hart four
years ago.

CHAPTER XXI

PUBLIC WORKS

It is difficult to guess how much truth there is in the ancient
traditions that the water-courses of the empire were improved
through gigantic engineering works undertaken by the ancient
Emperors of China. There is one gorge, well known to travellers,
above Ich'ang, on the River Yang-tsz, on the way to Ch'ung-k'ing,
where the precipitous rocks on each side have the appearance and
hardness of iron, and for a mile or more--perhaps several miles--
stand perpendicularly like walls on both sides of the rapid Yang-
tsz River: the most curious feature about them is that from below
the water-level, right up to the top, or as far as the eye can
reach, the stone looks as though it had been chipped away with
powerful cheese-scoops: it seems almost impossible that any
operation of nature can have fashioned rocks in this way; on the
other hand, what tools of sufficient hardness, driven by what
great force, could hollow out a passage of such length, at such a
depth, and such a height? It is certain that after Ts'in conquered
the hitherto almost unknown kingdoms of Pa and Shuh (Eastern and
Western Sz Ch'wan) a Chinese engineer named Li Ping worked wonders
in the canalization of the so-called CH'ENg-tu plain, or the rich
level region lying around the capital city of Sz Ch'wan province,
which was so long as Shuh endured also the metropolis of Shuh. The
consular officers of his Britannic Majesty have made a special
study of these sluices, which are still in full working order, and
they seem almost unchanged in principle from the period (280 B.C.)
when Li Ping lived. The Chinese still regard this branch of the
Great River as the source; or at least they did so until the
Jesuit surveys of two centuries ago proved otherwise; it was quite
natural that they should do so in ancient times, for the true
upper course, and also Yiin Nan and Tibet through which that
course runs, were totally unknown to them, and unheard of by name;
even now the so-called Lolo country of Sz Ch'wan and Yiin Nan is
mostly unexplored, and the mountain Lolos are quite independent of
China. The fact that they have whitish skins and a written script
of their own (manifestly inspired by the form of Chinese
characters) makes them a specially interesting people. Li Ping's
engineering feats also included the region around Ya-thou and Kia-
ting, as marked on the modern maps.

The founder of the Hia dynasty (2205 B.C.) is supposed to have
liberated the stagnant waters of the Yellow River and sent them to
the sea; as this is precisely what all succeeding dynasties have
tried to do, and have been obliged to try, and what in our own
times the late Li Hung-chang was ordered to do just before his
death, there seems no good reason for suspecting the accuracy of
the tradition; the more especially as we see that the founder of
the Chou dynasty sent his chief political adviser and his two most
distinguished relatives to settle along this troublesome river's
lower course, as rulers of Ts'i, Yen, and Lu; the other
considerable vassals were all ranged along the middle course.

The original Chinese founder of the barbarian colony of Wu
belonged, as already explained, to the same clan or family as the
founder of the Chou dynasty, and in one respect even took
ancestral or spiritual precedence of him, because the emigrant had
voluntarily retired into obscurity with his brother in order to
make way for a third and more brilliant younger brother, whose
grandson it was that afterwards, in 1122 B.C., conquered China,
and turned the Chou principality, hitherto vassal to the Shang
dynasty, into the Chou dynasty, to which the surviving Shang
princes then became vassals in the Sung state and elsewhere. Even
though the founder of Wu may have adopted barbarian ways, such as
tattooing, hair-cutting, and the like, he must have possessed
considerable administrative power, for he made a canal (running
past his capital) for a distance of thirty English miles along the
new "British" railway from Wu-sih to Ch'ang-shuh, as marked on
present maps; his idea was to facilitate boat-travelling, and to
assist cultivators with water supplies for irrigation.

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