Your servant Poh Lo-kuan, in trepidation and fear, prostrating him: alnundred times, sends up this Lo him from whom all Heavenly bl flow, our Lord the King. Your Majesty's norvant has not even sufficient merit to justify him in dying for his country; yet 10 dares to present a petition full of grotesque and foolish words, not seeking to avoid death by the axe as his toward, 'What reason is there, then, for my audacity? Iam the oon of a Captain of the Royal Guard, who was raised from obscurity by' one of you holy and intelligent pre ors, who has served under three Kings, for more than forty years; such was the benignity showered upon him by your Majesty's ancestors, comparable only to the favour of Heaven and Earth. The parents of your Majesty's servant have been long desirous of making some return for the ten-thousandth part of your Maty' kindness; but ten years ago his became useless from a poral nor it without assistance, and the very thought of the Royal Family brings tears to his eyes. As for me, Your servant, stupid though Iam, do I not think upon the duty of following the example of my father? 'The stepI am now taking seems out of my place as an officer of ment; according to the statutes of th of Lu, have thus made myself an out even rebels would have the right to kill me. "But, all the servants of your Majesty' Government to-day who ara not rebeltiou: and riotous subjects, are very few; although they have studied the books of Confucius, Mencius, Chen-toze and Chutsze, they yot ponder the teachings of Jesus and Matthew [395 /4# Ma-to—Matthew or Matteo Ricci 2]; they eat the grain of their own country and the country of their Parents, but wear the, costume of the warfed foreigners (the Japanese) and that of France and America. They have left rectitude and entered [the paths of] depravity. They are the rightful servants this country, but they work for others they change our civilised state into barbarism, favouring their private ends at the expense of the public welfare to such an extent that they lead even your Sscred and Intelligent Majesty into delusions. Your aut therefore begs your Majesty's sanction that he may behead these men. But whether they be put or death or no, Your servant is himself deserving of capital punishment. But am I afraid of being put to death, so that I do not dare to kill them? If I put them to death, and I rebel, that is suficient cause why I should die myself. That would be great good fortune for me. The death of Your servant would be better for the country than his life, for three reasons (1) there is no other way to show the sincerity of his father's patriotic love; (2) there are no other means to shame the divided allegiance of Government officials (8) there is no other way to rebut the contempt of the Japanese Hanabusa. If I am to die, then, what may I not dare to say first? ' Your servant wishes to explain fully the dangers at present threatening our country, and their origin. I sincerely beg your Majesty not to turn a deaf ear on account of the insignificance of the Me-monalist or the contemptible nature of his words, but to investigate his represent: tions thoroughly. Now in the year Jen Chen, when the Dwarf country (Japan) was defeated by Corea, it harboured vengeance and heaped up resentment to such an extent that it took ten years to sharpen a single sword and ten years to perfect a single art, There was no place whither their merchant-vessels and trading-boats did not resort; hand-in-hand they went everywhere and concluded treaties with n countries, to delude and deceive the Middle Kingdom, narrowly watching any internal trouble in our country. This they have done for years. Yet though they watched even our ears and cheek they were not able to carry out their pi ud for these reasons, Our country uses pal riotism and piety as its armour and sword, virtue and rectitude as its walls and for: tresses; impregnable by eitherstratagemsor strength. They therefore spread rumours throughout our country that Corea would be ruined by means of her Ancestral Temples. But the temples of Ancestral Worship are the places where vi exalted and merit recomb. learning is explained and doc! trated; where, through all holy gen the country has been ruled protected by deep coun: sighted precautions. If anything has been
calculated to defend the Holy Doctrine, done advantageous to the body-politic or there it is honoured with an Imperial testimonial. When your Majesty first ascended the throne in Your tender youth, powerful nobles conducted the affairs of state on their own responsibility, who we infected with heterodoxy. The Royal, Holy, and Patriotic Temples were then all demolished. This was like the prohibition of the wooden-bow in the Chou dynasty, which only hastened the fall of the empire or like the precaution taken by Ts'in Shilt Huang against the northern barbarians [HRB] which actually brought about the speedy destruction of his House.+ At the time of the destraction of the temples, arose a great noble, related to You by blood, who obscured your Majesty's intelligence, inciting both those within and without the Palace with the assurance that the Temples were not any benefit to the country; 80 that all mouths were unanimous on the subject. Therefore the proper love of relatives for one another was swept away and mutual affection destroyed. It was then that he instituted a military was protected in the reign of Ts'in Shih Huang that the ruin of his dynasty would result from 9, which he interpreted as referring to the barham the north, and therefore built the Great Wall. But the prophecy was fulfilled in the person of his son and successor, whose name was aleo fi—ED. guard, and precipitated the discussion as to who should be recognised as Heir Apparent. Then in the year Pin, Tez a compromise was concluded, anc Government officials who were privy to the plot did not dare to open. their mouths, Thus was disaster brought son the country,—our great and exalted country of a thousand chariots, which had always exercised its own independent rights! What reason was there for our having recourse to Hanabusa, and 20 redue-our country to auch a state of insignia ficance, forgetting the enmity which forbed us existing under the sameheayen with him, and satisfying an avarice which is not even satiated by the swallowing of a tiger? Whatever [the Japanese] ask, we give them; whatever they command, we obey fearing only lest we do not come up to their requirements! If, after your Majesty has passed a thousand autumns ten thousand generations, Your success sor ascends the Precious Throne, this Hanabusa will say that it was he who established him; and how can we put the stopper on' such talk? The Book of Poetry says, "As long as etiquette is not infringed, the four propless will be upright; when fathers and sons, older and younger brothers are worthy of imitation, then the people will take example by them." Sedition and anarchy never take their rise otherwise than from [the rulers,] In the first instance, Tsui I-hsien said, "If the treaty of peace is decided upon, then your Majesty's fortunes are ruined for over and, lastly, Hung Tsai-ho said, " If the books of Jesus are allowed to circu-Into, everybody will rebel ayainst th cardinal virtues and in every family th five relationships will be destroyed But these repre tations did not accord with Your Royal ideas, and Tsai-ho's body succumbed to the Great Punishment, Alas, alas, how pitiful The memorial of the upright Minister embodied what was in parable from the pence of the country, and what he succumbed to was the natural cause of rebellion. Even in my stupidity, T can soo that not one of the officials in your holy Dynasty, like Hsin Ching-chi of the Han Dynasty, can bear to soo your Majesty's name handed down to the world and to posterity at the of @ noble and a worthy man, It is beyond sighs and groans. Your servant has found out the opinion of all classes—metropol stud and even women. When ho was about to undergo his death, it was found that the lock of his prison door would not open; when he was on his way to the place of execution the axle of his cart-wheel broke down three tit If it were not on ant of his patriotism, which penetre even to the Sun and Moon, and hie sincerity, which reached to the Gods above, how could it have come to this? Your servant is only angered that he could not walk in the same track, and follow him to death, and wander with him in the regions below the earth for he cannot endure the sight of a dynasty of five hundred years falling into the hands of the barbarians, and thirty million souls gntoring the mouths of dogs and. sheep. Alas, alas, how painful is all this! For our country is the country of our remotest ancestors; and this country your Majesty has overthrown in Your single person, which is not the way to preserve that which has been committed to Your charge. The Book of History says, The example set for the Yin dynasty is not far off; it is only in the Hsia dynasty, [immediately preceding it]." Why does not your Majesty take the affaire of ancient times as your example? Li Ohi [one of the ancient Corean kings] reverently yielded his right and declined to ascend the Throne; that the monks and nuns passed in and out of the Forbidden Precincts (or palace) until Hsing Ao established self as king, and he treated the peuple as though they were charcoal under hig
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.