A letter to Minister of Works Zhou Bao of Zhexi浙西周寶司空書

Some time ago I received your official dispatch, which said, "The rebel soldiers of Linhuai of this circuit have crossed the river and come to surrender. They were gathered in a broad open place, and their surrender has already been accepted." I have gone over your letter three times, and it is hard not to answer what it says. Surrender, as a word, carries a very great principle. That the Miao came to Yu Shun in seventy days, and that Yuan came over to the Marquis of Jin in three days, were both cases where men had broken the bonds of order and thrown the constant way into confusion, raising troops and stirring up crowds. To go slow with them would let harm ripen; to press them hard would bring killing and wounding crosswise. So a small mercy was borrowed and a great good faith was shown in the end, that the transforming power of virtue might spread and the crafty and vile be made to change. But if there are men who happen to gather in the reeds and dare to be thorns in the road, they must be stamped out together; do not let them rest at ease. Now Your Excellency counts this neighbor's calamity good fortune and takes pleasure in the misfortune of its army. You cannot hate what is evil, and instead you would show kindness to the crafty. I fear this runs against the authority of one who holds the battle axe, and that you boast in vain of a victory of spears turned about. Take last year: the company of Chen Ru rushed rudely upon your garrison, and there were barely sixty thousand and more men on the borders while Xuanzhou reported danger day after day. Why did Your Excellency not call them and admonish them then, and so let them trespass and oppress? Yet on seeing a few petty stubborn villains you at once set yourself diligently to draw them in. I cannot fathom your high intent, and truly it betrays the hearts of the many. Does the Zuo zhuan not say, "□ calls in the bandits from outside"? Does the Book of Documents not say, "He becomes the master of runaways"? Consider the utmost principle a little more closely, and do not trust empty words. Long ago, when a rebel band of the Xiongnu came over to the Han court, Emperor Jing meant at once to grant them fiefs, and Zhou Yafu said, "If those who turn their backs on their own lord are rewarded, how will you hold a subject to his constancy?" Take the small to figure the great, and the state of things can be measured. Moreover the one commandery of Linhuai followed the marching camp on the Fei early on, and down to the fighting on the Huai border there were always generous rewards with never a partiality. From that time on, faced with goods they vied in greed, and meeting the bandits none of them had the will to fight. They soon fell to hanging back, and still they were treated with indulgence. Some time ago they asked again that their corps commander be changed, and their request was granted. It was not known at all that a dog readily turns rabid and a pig is hard to check once it squeals and struggles. Before they had all been cut down and taken, they were already plotting to run and hide. Fortunately they have not yet left the nearby border, and it is surely right to block the source of this crookedness together. Having been disloyal here, they must be of no profit there either. What Shi Qizi said, "The evil of the world is one. If a thing is hated in Song and sheltered by me, what good is the sheltering?" lies just here. Besides, in the affairs of neighboring prefectures, now one side and now the other rescues the other, and so they reach peace together. Thus in the sixth month of the year before last, soldiers of the original following from Tianping and Lufu in your garrison turned traitor and fled. They were barely a hundred in number, yet the trouble was no small one, and you sent a dispatch asking that they be pursued and taken. I, the commissioner here, had Liang Chu, the Qiang commander, lead the cavalry and attack them wherever they were, and I sent notices to each prefecture within my jurisdiction to send out picked soldiers and join their strength in the pursuit. Soon the several garrisons and the roving inspector of Dongtang took thirty-eight men one after another, and as soon as they were brought in captive I had them sent under escort. Then a report came from Liang Chu: reaching the border of Haozhou he caught up with the remnant brood and killed thirty and more, and the rest, who slipped the net, all fled wounded by the bow. The vile band taken alive were all executed in your province. That your heart could be made glad was truly owing to the labor spent on this side. Now, on the contrary, you have called to the rebel soldiers of Linhuai along the river, declared their surrender accepted, and gone on to fill posts with them; and though I have asked in dispatch after dispatch, you do not send them back across the river. How much wickedness is gathered up, and how deep this nursing of crookedness goes. Should I dare say that kindness is repaid with rancor? Truly I fear that in ease one forgets danger. The Book of Songs says, "You throw me a quince, and I repay it with fine jade. It is not a repayment; it is to be friends forever." This is the teaching left by the Airs of the States, bright and clear to see. Your Excellency is open to what is humane. Weigh this in some detail, and do not bring the world's derision upon yourself. The rest I have set out in full in my reply dispatch. I humbly beg you to look down and examine it.