The King and His People

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English translation

Original Chinese text

English translation

King Hui of Liang said, ‘I have done all I can for my state. When famine strikes Henei, I move its people to Hedong and send grain from Hedong to Henei. When famine strikes Hedong, I do the same in reverse.’

Original Chinese text

English translation

‘Looking at the governments of neighboring states, I see none so attentive as mine. Yet their populations do not shrink, and mine does not grow. Why?’

Original Chinese text

English translation

Mencius replied, ‘Your Majesty is fond of war, so let me use a battle as an example. The drums thunder, weapons meet, and soldiers throw off their armor and flee, dragging their arms behind them. Some stop after a hundred paces, others after fifty. What would you say if those who ran fifty paces laughed at those who ran a hundred?’

Original Chinese text

English translation

The king said, ‘They cannot. They merely did not run a full hundred paces; they fled all the same.’ Mencius replied, ‘If you understand that, Your Majesty, do not expect your population to outnumber that of your neighbors.’

Original Chinese text

English translation

‘Do not disrupt the farming seasons, and there will be more grain than people can eat. Keep fine-meshed nets out of the ponds, and fish and turtles will be plentiful. Cut trees only at the proper time, and timber will be abundant.’

Original Chinese text

English translation

‘When grain, fish, and turtles are more than people can eat, and timber more than they can use, they can support the living and bury the dead without regret. That is the beginning of kingly rule.’

Original Chinese text

English translation

‘Plant mulberry trees around a five-mu homestead, and people of fifty can wear silk. Raise chickens, piglets, dogs, and grown pigs without missing the proper seasons, and people of seventy can eat meat. Do not take time away from the cultivation of a hundred-mu field, and a household of several people need not go hungry.’

Original Chinese text

English translation

‘Attend carefully to the teaching in local schools, stressing respect for parents and elder siblings, and the gray-haired will no longer carry loads on their backs or heads along the roads. If people of seventy can wear silk and eat meat, and ordinary people suffer neither hunger nor cold, there has never been a ruler who failed to win the allegiance of the realm.’

Original Chinese text

English translation

‘Dogs and pigs eat food fit for people, yet no one restrains this waste. The roads hold people dead from hunger, yet no one opens the granaries. When people die, the ruler says, “It was not my doing; it was the harvest.”’

Original Chinese text

English translation

‘How is that different from stabbing someone to death and saying, “It was not I; it was the weapon”? Your Majesty, stop blaming the harvest, and people from across the realm will come to you.’

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