Levying Troops and Urging Farming without Unsettling the People因忠淸監司狀。啓論抄軍勸農勿使民心騷擾。啓
忠淸監司書狀據司。啓目帖連。啓下云云凡事不論難易皆當以措置得宜順便民情不至騷動而能致集事爲貴若使民心驚擾互爲逃避則雖盡發民下爲兵而何補於實用哉况今百役叢集民困已甚雖有不得已調發之擧所當多般區處先聚控弦可用之士不務其多惟取其精而老弱疲民之不堪戰鬪者趁此農耕之月無失農業然後方可爲戰守良圖若囚繫太多怨號徹天則事未集而邦本先搖殊非要遣巡邊之意更察事目本意緩急適中施行事巡邊使李鎰處。下諭何如
On the Chungcheong governor's report, the Border Defense Council drew up a memorandum, attaching that report, and it was handed down as it stood.
In all matters, whether hard or easy, what should be held precious is that the measures taken be fitting, that they go with the people's feeling and be easy for them, and that the business be accomplished without coming to an uproar. If the people's hearts are startled into confusion and they flee and hide from one another, then though every last one of them were taken and made a soldier, what would it add to the real use?
How much more so now, when every kind of corvée has crowded in and the people's hardship is already deep. Though there be a levying of troops that cannot be helped, it ought to be weighed and handled in every light. Let us first gather soldiers fit to draw a bow, not striving for numbers but taking only the choice ones, and let the old, the weak and the worn, who cannot bear battle, not lose their farming while this farming season lasts; only then will it be a good plan for fighting and holding. If those seized and shut up are too many and the sound of their resentment reaches to heaven, then the root of the state will be shaken before the business is accomplished, and that is certainly not what was meant in sending out the Border Commissioner.
May a letter be handed down to Border Commissioner Yi Il (李鎰), that he look again into the true intent of the regulations and carry them out with slowness and haste rightly matched?