Urging Ploughing and Sowing, and Auditing the Magistrates勸課種耕查覈守令勤慢。啓

This year the rain has fallen in good measure. If the magistrates of each province would give their whole heart to urging and overseeing the ploughing and breaking of the fields, the people who remain would have a way to live. This is a matter of the utmost urgency and cannot be put off for a moment, and so from last winter until after this spring opened we have reported and petitioned and given notice to the governors of each province, going over it again and again until it was set out in full detail. Yet of the magistrates there are not one or two in ten who have taken it up and carried it out; how can there be a thing so grievous as this?

Of late, whenever anyone has come up from the provinces, we have questioned him as we saw him. Though their words cannot all be believed, we shall set out the general sum of them.

In Hwanghae Province only Haeju and Baecheon are said to have ploughed and sown to any extent. Baecheon has suffered worse ruin than any place in the province, and yet the magistrate Namgung Je (南宮悌) has given his whole heart to his office, gathered the people, made garrison farms, and already planted three hundred seom; this is most commendable. Of the rest we have heard nothing, but Yeonan and Pyeongsan are said to be the least careful, their fields and wastes are rough, and their people are scattered and wandering.

In Gyeonggi the few districts of Tongjin, Jangdan, and Anseong have broken a little ground; but Namyang, large district though it is, has no place ploughed or broken at all, and the salt households (鹽戶) along its coast too, harried by harsh government, have scattered until they are nearly gone. For this reason salt is as dear as gold.

In Chungcheong Province the districts of Cheonan, Deoksan, and Danyang have likewise ploughed and sown; and the magistrate of Cheongan, Jeon Yu-hyeong (全有亨), has called in those scattered and wandering, provided seed, and gone busily about within his borders urging and overseeing the farming, so that in the one district of Cheongan there is hardly a place left fallow and abandoned, and the people of Cheongju and the neighboring parts on every side are said to be leading one another back.

This is only what we say according to what we have heard. From it one may see that the thing does not depend on whether a district is wasted or whole, poor or well off, but only on whether the magistrate gives his whole heart to it or not.

The court is far off, a thousand li away, so that even where there are commands of benevolence toward the people and measures of grace toward the destitute, they are carried out only when the right man is found. And the governor is the net-cord of the magistrates; only when the court relies wholly upon the governor, and the governor holds the magistrates answerable so that dismissals and promotions are clear and encouragement and chastisement are vigorously carried out, will the people's living receive any real benefit. This is truly why those who governed in old times made it an urgent business to hold men answerable in substance according to their titles, to allow nothing empty or false to pass, to set down every good however small, and to cut away every evil however slight.

Now, if the magistrates are idle and fail in their duties as here reported, and the governor merely sits and watches and does not set their fault right; and if the seed that has been moved and distributed here and there in small amounts does not go into the ground at all but all falls into the hands of the clerks, then though the court send out one order in the morning and another command in the evening, that too is but wasted labor, and what help will it be to the business?

Of late the seed distributed to Gyeonggi by the Resettlement Office (安集廳) has also been much. We beg that the Governor of Gyeonggi be made to investigate, one by one, how much has been ploughed and sown in each district and each township and how many people there are, and to report it as the rainfall is reported in ordinary times. From Chungcheong and Hwanghae to Jeolla, Gyeongsang, Gangwon, Hamgyeong, and Pyeongan, let all alike follow and carry this out, urging and overseeing the ploughing and sowing with haste, and reporting the amounts, great or small, and whether the magistrates give their whole heart to it or not; and let them name those who are worst among them in the same report, so that reward and punishment may be carried out. And would it not be well for the court to send envoys at no fixed time, drawing lots to make an inspection for abuses (摘奸), so as to verify the true state of it?