Requesting That a Memorial Go with the Mission of Thanks請因謝。恩之行幷爲陳奏。啓

Having humbly received Your Majesty's instruction (下敎), your servant cannot keep back his tears. From of old, a country's meeting with a hard fate is like a man's body falling under a great affliction: only after guarding it about in a hundred layers and taking thought to the point of excess can one hope to come through whole. The fate of the country today is hard and perilous in ten thousand ways, and its state is like a stack of eggs, so that none can tell from what quarter an unlooked-for calamity may yet break out. Therefore in your servant's foolish view every matter must be guarded at every turn.

That man seems to be one who, when a matter comes before him, dares to carry it through with nothing he looks back at or shrinks from. The one phrase, "the fisherman's gain," your servant did not look at closely, being ill; but now, having received Your Majesty's instruction, he feels a chill at heart in spite of himself. Judging by such words, it would take no more than the turning over of a hand for them, riding on their indignation, to make up words beyond all reckoning and raise yet another upheaval against our country. For this reason your servant thinks always: what our country fears today lies in the Japanese enemy alone, but he fears that the calamity of later days may not lie in the Japanese enemy alone.

To send a memorial upward is truly not proper; but if they wish to memorialize, there is no contending with that either. We humbly hear that more than twenty thousand seom of grain have been granted for the relief of the starving, and we cannot but give thanks for that grace. It seems it would do no harm to have the memorial go together with this mission of thanks, and to send it galloping by a single rider (單騎). All this is what your servant has thought in his confusion while ill; it rests only on the court's handling it well in a hundred layers.