Not Content
With This Payment, Chao Yuen Subsequently Exacted The Right To Build
Fortresses Along The Chinese Frontier.
Soon after this Chao Yuen was
murdered by one of his sons, whose betrothed he had taken from him.
If
Jintsong was not fortunate in his wars he did much to promote education
and to encourage literature. He restored the colleges founded by the
Tangs, he built a school or academy in every town, he directed the public
examinations to be held impartially and frequently, and he gave special
prizes as a reward for elocution. Some of the greatest historians China
has produced lived in his reign, and wrote their works under his
patronage; of these Szemakwang was the most famous. His history of the
Tangs is a masterpiece, and his "Garden of Szemakwang" an idyll. He was
remarkable for his sound judgment as well as the elegance of his style,
and during the short time he held the post of prime minister his
administration was marked by ability and good sense. The character of
Jintsong was, it will be seen, not without its good points, which gained
for him the affection of his subjects despite his bad fortune against the
national enemies, and his reign of thirty years was, generally speaking,
prosperous and satisfactory. After the brief reign of his nephew,
Yngtsong, that prince's son, Chintsong the Second, became emperor.
The career of Wanganchi, an eccentric and socialistic statesman, who
wished to pose as a great national reformer, and who long possessed the
ear and favor of his sovereign, lends an interest to the reign of the
second Chintsong. Wanganchi did not possess the confidence or the
admiration of his brother officials, and subsequent writers have generally
termed him an impostor and a charlatan. But he may only have been a
misguided enthusiast when he declared that "the State should take the
entire management of commerce, industry, and agriculture into its own
hands, with the view of succoring the working classes, and preventing
their being ground to the dust by the rich." The advocacy of such a scheme
is calculated to earn popularity, as few of those who are to benefit by it
stop to examine its feasibility, and Wanganchi might have been remembered
as an enlightened thinker and enthusiastic advocate of the rights of the
masses if he had not been called upon to carry out his theories. But the
proof of experience, like the touch of Ithuriel's spear, revealed the
practical value of his suggestions, and dissolved the attractive vision
raised by his perfervid eloquence and elevated enthusiasm. His honesty of
purpose cannot, however, be disputed. On being appointed to the post of
chief minister he took in hand the application of his own project. He
exempted the poor from all taxation. He allotted lands, and he supplied
the cultivators with seeds and implements. He also appointed local boards
to superintend the efforts of the agricultural classes, and to give them
assistance and advice. But this paternal government, this system of making
the state do what the individual ought to do for himself, did not work as
it was expected.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 46 of 366
Words from 23368 to 23888
of 191255
