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IMMOLATION FORBIDDEN.

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guard thwarted their plans and put down the seditious movement in blood. Another, promoted by the prime minister, Cheheng, was fortunately discovered in time, and its authors were promptly arrested and executed after being stripped of their rank and honours. Cheheng avoided some of the ignominy of his sentence by taking poison. It was only through such anxieties as these that Yngtsong could make good his claim to reign in China, nor did the condition of the country afford much room for rejoicing, despite the fact that the Tartars left for a season the borders undisturbed. Earthquakes and inundations caused considerable loss to the country, and spread terror among a superstitious people accustomed to see in natural phenomena the measure of their faults and the anger of the celestial powers.

Yngtsong's death occurred in the year 1465, when he was thirty-eight years old, and he left his throne to his eldest son Chukienchin. In his will, which contained nothing else that was remarkable, he ordered that none should immolate themselves on account of his death, and by forbidding this mistaken practice he manifested some fellow-feeling towards his subjects. Yngtsong's later reign did not come up to the expectations formed about it before it began, but, at the least, it was not marked by any disaster similar to that of Toumon. When Yngtsong died, he could fairly say that he left to his children the heritage he had received almost intact, and in nearly the same condition as when he received it.

CHAPTER XXX.

THREE MING EMPERORS.

HIENTSONG promptly gained popular acclamation by the religious manner in which he obeyed his father's last instructions. The prescribed interval of mourning was kept with due observance, and the young ruler selected as his Empress the princess whom his father had designated for him. In great acts, not less than in small ones, he strove to imitate his predecessor, and to copy his virtues without repeating his vices. The harsh treatment and ingratitude shown towards the illustrious Yukien had been one of the darkest spots on the reputation of Yngtsong's later years. Hientsong had both the discrimination and the resolution to remove, so far as he could, this reproach to his family by publicly paying honour to the memory of that minister and general. The ceremony of rehabilitating the character of this worthy man, and of restoring his original honours, was performed with scrupulous exactitude, but in any other country than China this would seem but a useless and unnecessary proceeding. The Chinese have, however, continued to attach importance to this posthumous practice, partly because it may be held a tribute to truth, and also because it must be considered some redeeming feature in the hard conditions of their official service, which bestows comparatively few rewards, and which always calls for severe hardships.

During the twenty-two years that Hientsong occupied the throne, many questions presented themselves for his consideration, and, so far as may be judged, he endeavoured to, and did, fulfil his duties in a creditable and conscientious

A BLEAK REGION.

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manner. This period was one also of almost incessant warfare, not only on the extreme frontiers, but also in some of the more inaccessible districts of the interior. Yet no campaign on a large scale, signalized either by some great triumph, or by some equally decisive reverse, was fought to redeem the memory of these small wars from oblivion. When it has been stated that there were insurrections in Hupeh and Szchuen, seditious movements in Leaoutung and Yunnan, that there were disturbances among the fierce Miaotse, and the tribes of the Tibetan border, enough has been said to illustrate the condition of the country, and to show the vicissitudes of empire. None of these wars attained serious dimensions, and in all the encounters necessary to vindicate the authority of the Government, the arms of Hientsong were crowned with victory.

One contest, and one alone, threatened to assume a larger aspect, and may fairly claim brief description in this place. In the bleak region round the sources of the Hoangho, where scattered tribes have found it difficult, from the remotest ages, to gain a sustenance for themselves and their flocks, the chief Patan had gathered into his hands some of the power of supreme authority. His town or permanent camp, with its mud rampart, appeared in the eyes of his simple race as good a symbol of kingly power as the more pretentious buildings of the greater capitals seemed to a people of higher culture. The first ruler of Chechen, as this district was called, was quite satisfied to recognize the supremacy of the Chinese Emperor. Patan had been the faithful ally and dependent of the later princes of the Yuen dynasty, and when they were displaced and vanished from the scene he transferred his allegiance without hesitation to the new ruler Hongwou.

Time went on, and the arrangement, which had seemed natural and prudent to Patan and his son, assumed an irksome character in the eyes of the ambitious Mansu, the grandson of the former chief. The Chinese declared that he availed himself of his favourable position to make his town the refuge-place for all the evil-doers on the western borders, and certainly he adopted the attitude of a man who conceived that he had some more profitable and distinguished work to

do than to guide the fortunes and sway the councils of a pastoral tribe. His first collision with the Chinese authorities was caused by a dispute over the collection of the small tribute for which he was liable, and the removal of this difficulty was not facilitated by the existence of a sanctuary controversy. A small body of troops received directions to march against him, but Mansu was on his guard. He succeeded in taking them by surprise, and overwhelmed this detachment in the narrow approaches to his capital. This victory invested his party with a more formidable character than had yet been attached to it, but it also entailed the grave peril of marking him out as an irreclaimable foe of China. Fresh troops were sent against him; his followers, dismayed by the sight of the extensive military preparations brought to bear on them, deserted him, and at last Mansu himself fell into the hands of his enemy. His fate was intended to act as a warning to any who might aspire to imitate him, and on his arrival at the capital he was forthwith executed as a rebel.

Two measures of domestic policy carried out by the Emperor Hientsong attracted considerable notice, and both excited almost universal condemnation. The first of these was the creation of a Council of Eunuchs, into whose hands were placed all matters of life and death. At first it seemed as if this creation of a new administrative body aimed only at humouring a whim of the ruler, and it was not seriously anticipated that this tribunal would exercise much influence over practical affairs. It soon became clear, however, that its functions were more than honorary, and, as a body of troops was specially set apart for the execution of its behests, the new council rapidly became an engine of tyranny. The part taken by its members in the work of administration was most important, and the character of its charter also absolved it from responsibility. No one knew what decrees it passed, but none could escape the malice of a private enemy who happened to be a member of this Chinese Star Chamber. During five years this palace conclave was the terror of the land, but at last the public outcry against it became so loud that Hientsong had to suspend its functions, although he still

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hesitated to destroy the work of his own hands. The nation was little satisfied with this inadequate reparation, and after its members had been formally denounced as enemies of the state, several of the principal of them were sentenced to death. Hientsong's popularity thereupon revived, and his subjects charitably attributed to weakness and amiability his having so long condoned the criminal and tyrannical proceedings of this section of his most intimate courtiers.

In the second measure, of which the consequences did not become immediately perceptible, will be found one of the chief causes that operated towards effecting the early overthrow and destruction of the Mings. The members of the reigning House, and all who had contributed to its elevation, naturally expected some reward for their position or their services; and it became their first ambition to obtain territorial grants from the Sovereign, and to found an estate which could be handed down as a patrimony to their descendants. The feudal practices and system had died out in China many centuries before, and it was not to be supposed that a people, like the Chinese, strongly imbued with the principles of equality, and only recognizing as a superior class the representatives of officialdom and letters, would look with much favour on any attempt to revive an order of territorial magnates with whom they had no sympathy. Hientsong himself felt no strong interest in the matter. He knew the people's mind on this subject, and he was aware that the authority of the King is rather diminished than enhanced by the presence of a powerful and warlike nobility, who have always been prone to see in the ruler the highest member of their order rather than the "divinely elected" guide of a people. On the other hand, he was not sufficiently cold to resist the importunities of his friends. In the matter, therefore, of making territorial grants to the more prominent of his supporters he vacillated from one side to the other. The representations of one of the censors led him to pass an edict against any territorial concessions, but within a very few weeks of this firm and wise decision he was so far influenced by his relatives that he conferred several grants of land on members of his family. The rule once broken was seldom afterwards rigidly

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