to feed their living and bury their dead without repining; and this is the first step towards establishing a perfect system of government.
“Let the mulberry-tree be cultivated in accordance with regulation; then persons of fifty years old will be able to wear silk. Let due attention be paid to the breeding of poultry, and swine, and dogs; then persons of seventy years old will be able to eat meat. Let there be no interference with the labour of the husbandman; and there will be no mouths crying out for food. Let education of the people be reverently attended to;―above all, let them be taught their duties towards their parents and brethren;―and there will be no gray-headed burden-carriers to be seen along the highway. For, where septuagenarians wear silk and eat meat, where the black-haired people are neither hungry nor cold, it has never been that perfect government did not prevail.
“Your dogs and swine are battening on the food of men, and you do not limit them. By the roadside there are people dying of hunger, and you do not succour them. If they die, you say, ‘It was not I; it was the bad season.’ What is this but to stab a man to death, and say, ‘It was not I; it was the weapon?’ O king, blame not the season for these things, and all men under the canopy of heaven will flock to you.”
King Hui replied, “I beg to receive your instructions.”
Mencius continued, “Is there any difference between killing a man with a bludgeon and killing him with a sword!”
“There is none,” answered the king.
“Or between killing him with a sword and killing him by misrule?” pursued Mencius.
“There is none,” replied the king again.
“Yet in your kitchen,” said Mencius, “there is fat meat, and in your stables there are sleek horses, while famine sits upon the faces of your people, and men die of hunger in the fields. This is to be a beast, and prey upon your fellow-man.
“Beasts prey upon one another, in a manner abhorrent to us. If, then, he who holds the place of father and mother to the
