China | Page 6

mind, and, in his efforts to form a regular army, he had recourse
to "those classes in the community who were without any fixed
profession, and who were possessed of exceptional physical strength."
He was thus the earliest possessor in China of what might be called a
regular standing army. With this force he succeeded in establishing his
power on a firm basis, and he may have hoped also to insure
permanence for his dynasty; but, alas! for the fallacy of human
expectations, the structure he erected fell with him.
Great as an administrator, and successful as a soldier, Hwangti was
unfortunate in one struggle that he provoked. At an early period of his
career, when success seemed uncertain, he found that his bitterest
opponents were men of letters, and that the literary class as a body was
hostile to his interests and person. Instead of ignoring this opposition or
seeking to overcome it by the same agency, Hwangti expressed his
hatred and contempt, not only of the literary class, but of literature
itself, and resorted to extreme measures of coercion. The writers took
up the gage of battle thrown down by the emperor, and Hwangti
became the object of the wit and abuse of every literate who could use
a pencil. His birth was aspersed. It was said that he was not a Tsin at all,
that his origin was of the humblest, and that he was a substituted child
foisted on the last of the Tsin princes. These personal attacks were
accompanied by unfavorable criticism of all his measures, and by
censure where he felt that he deserved praise. It would have been more
prudent if he had shown greater indifference and patience, for although

he had the satisfaction of triumphing by brute force over those who
jeered at him, the triumph was accomplished by an act of Vandalism,
with which his name will be quite as closely associated in history as
any of the wise measures or great works that he carried out. His
vanquished opponents left behind them a legacy of hostility and
revenge of the whole literary class of China, which has found
expression in all the national histories.
The struggle, which had been in progress for some years, reached its
culminating point in the year 213 B.C., when a Grand Council of the
empire was summoned at Hienyang. At this council were present not
only the emperor's chief military and civil officers from the different
provinces, but also the large literary class, composed of aspirants to
office and the members of the academies and College of Censors. The
opposing forces in China were thus drawn up face to face, and it would
have been surprising if a collision had not occurred. On the one side
were the supporters of the man who had made China again an empire,
believers in his person and sharers in his glory; on the other were those
who had no admiration for this ruler, who detested his works,
proclaimed his successes dangerous innovations, and questioned his
right to bear the royal name. The purpose of the emperor may be
detected when he called upon speakers in this assembly of his friends
and foes to express their opinions of his administration, and when a
member of his household rose to extol his work and to declare that he
had "surpassed the very greatest of his predecessors." This courtier-like
declaration, which would have been excusable even if it had had a less
basis of truth than it unquestionably possessed in the case of Hwangti,
was received with murmurs and marks of dissent by the literati. One of
them rose and denounced the speaker as "a vile flatterer," and
proceeded to expatiate on the superior merit of several of the earlier
rulers. Not content with this unseasonable eulogy, he advocated the
restoration of the empire to its old form of principalities, and the
consequent undoing of all that Hwangti had accomplished. Hwangti
interrupted this speaker and called upon his favorite minister Lisseh to
reply to him and explain his policy. Lisseh began by stating what has
often been said since, and in other countries, that "men of letters are, as
a rule, very little acquainted with what concerns the government of a

country, not that government of pure speculation which is nothing more
than a phantom, vanishing the nearer we approached to it, but the
practical government which consists in keeping men within the sphere
of their proper duties." He then proceeded to denounce the literary class
as being hostile to the State, and to recommend the destruction of their
works, declaring that "now is the time or never to close the mouths of
these secret enemies and to place a curb on their audacity." The
emperor at once from his throne ratified the