On Extravagance and License論奢縱第二十五
貞觀十一年，侍御史馬周上疏陳時政曰：
In the eleventh year of Zhenguan Ma Zhou, the attending censor, sent up a memorial setting out the government of the time:
臣歷睹前代，自夏、殷、周及漢氏之有天下，傳祚相繼，多者八百餘年，少者猶四五百年，皆為積德累業，恩結於人心。豈無僻王？賴前哲以免爾！自魏、晉以還，降及周、隋，多者不過五六十年，少者才二三十年而亡。良由創業之君不務廣恩化，當時僅能自守，後無遺德可思。故傳嗣之主政教少衰，一夫大呼而天下土崩矣。今陛下雖以大功定天下，而積德日淺，固當崇禹、湯、文、武之道，廣施德化，使恩有餘地，為子孫立萬代之基。豈欲但令政教無失，以持當年而已！且自古明王聖主雖因人設教，寬猛隨時，而大要以節儉於身、恩加於人二者是務。故其下愛之如父母，仰之如日月，敬之如神明，畏之如雷霆。此其所以卜祚遐長而禍亂不作也。
Your servant has looked through the ages before us. From Xia and Yin and Zhou down to the house of Han holding the empire, the blessing was handed on and carried forward, eight hundred years and more in the longest line and still four or five hundred years in the shortest. This was all because they piled up virtue and heaped up merit, and their kindness was bound into the hearts of men. How should there have been no wayward kings among them? They were spared only by leaning on the wise men who had gone before.
From Wei and Jin onward, down to Zhou and Sui, the longest did not pass fifty or sixty years, and the shortest perished in a bare twenty or thirty. This was truly because the lords who opened those enterprises did not work to broaden kindness and its transforming power. At the time they were just able to hold their own, but they left behind no remaining virtue for later men to think on. So when the lords who inherited the succession let government and teaching decline a little, one man raised a great shout and the empire crumbled like earth.
Now, though Your Majesty has settled the empire by great merit, the virtue piled up is still shallow. You ought truly to hold high the way of Yu and Tang and King Wen and King Wu and to spread virtue and its transforming power widely, so that kindness has room to spare and a foundation of ten thousand generations is laid for your sons and grandsons. How should you wish only to keep government and teaching from fault and so hold out for the present year?
And from of old, though enlightened kings and sage lords set up their teaching according to their people and were lenient or severe as the times required, the great essential lay in working at two things, to be sparing in their own persons and to add kindness to the people. So those below loved them as father and mother, looked up to them as to the sun and the moon, revered them as gods and spirits, and feared them as thunder. This is why the blessing divined for them was far and long and why calamity and disorder did not arise.
今百姓承喪亂之後，比於隋時才十分之一，而供官徭役，道路相繼，兄去弟還，首尾不絕。遠者往來五六千裏，春秋冬夏，略無休時。陛下雖每有恩詔，令其減省，而有司作既不廢，自然須人，徒行文書，役之如故。臣每訪問，四五年來，百姓頗有怨嗟之言，以陛下不存養之。昔唐堯茅茨土階，夏禹惡衣菲食。如此之事，臣知不復可行於今。漢文帝惜百金之費，輟露臺之役，集上書囊以為殿帷，所幸夫人衣不曳地。至景帝以錦繡綦組妨害女工，特詔除之，所以百姓安樂。至孝武帝，雖窮奢極侈，而承文、景遺德，故人心不動。向使高祖之後即有武帝，天下必不能全。此於時代差近，事跡可見。今京師及益州諸處營造供奉器物，並諸王妃主服飾，議者皆不以為儉。臣聞昧旦丕顯，後世猶怠，作法於理，其弊猶亂。陛下少處民間，知百姓辛苦，前代成敗，目所親見，尚猶如此，而皇太子生長深宮，不更外事，即萬歲之後，固聖慮所當憂也。
Now the people have come after harm and disorder, and set beside the time of Sui they are barely one in ten. Yet the labor service they furnish to the offices follows on and on along the roads, the elder brother going out as the younger comes back, head and tail unbroken. Those who go far travel five or six thousand li, and in spring and autumn and winter and summer there is almost no time of rest. Though Your Majesty sends down a gracious edict again and again bidding that it be cut down and reduced, the offices in charge do not give up the building they have begun, and men are naturally needed for it, so the documents travel to no purpose and men are set to work as before. Whenever your servant asks about it, he finds that for four or five years now the people have had words of resentment and sighing, saying that Your Majesty does not look after them and nourish them.
Long ago Yao had a roof of thatch and steps of earth, and Yu of Xia wore poor clothes and ate plain food. Your servant knows that such things cannot be done again now. Emperor Wen of Han grudged the cost of a hundred pieces of gold and gave up the work on the Terrace of Dew; he gathered the bags that memorials came in and made them into curtains for his hall, and the robes of the lady he favored did not trail on the ground. Emperor Jing held that brocade and embroidery and woven cords hindered the work of women, and by a special edict he did away with them, and so the people were at peace and content. By the time of Emperor Xiaowu extravagance went to its farthest limit, yet because he came after the virtue left by Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing the hearts of men were not shaken. Had Emperor Wu come straight after Gaozu, the empire surely could not have held together. This lies rather near our own age, and the traces of it can be seen.
Now the vessels and goods made and presented in the capital and in Yizhou and other places, and the clothes and ornaments of the princes and the consorts and the princesses, are held to be sparing by none who speak of them. Your servant has heard that though a ruler was greatly illustrious from the first light of dawn, the ages after him still grew slack, and that though laws were made for good order, the harm they brought was still disorder. Your Majesty spent your youth among the people and knows their hardship, and you saw the success and failure of the ages before us with your own eyes, and even so it is like this; but the crown prince was born and grew up deep in the palace and has not passed through affairs outside. What comes after ten thousand years is truly what your sage thought should be anxious about.
臣竊尋往代以來成敗之事，但有黎庶怨叛，聚為盜賊，其國無不即滅，人主雖欲改悔，未有重能安全者。凡修政教，當修之於可修之時，若事變一起，而後悔之，則無益也。故人主每見前代之亡，則知其政教之所由喪，而皆不知其身之有失。是以殷紂笑夏桀之亡，而幽、厲亦笑殷紂之滅。隋帝大業之初，又笑周、齊之失國，然今之視煬帝，亦猶煬帝之視周、齊也。故京房謂漢元帝云：「臣恐後之視今，亦猶今之視古。」此言不可不戒也。
Your servant has quietly searched the affairs of success and failure from past ages, and wherever the common people resented their lord and turned against him and gathered as bandits, that state was never anything but destroyed at once. Though the ruler might wish to change and repent, there has never been one who could be at peace and whole again.
The work of ordering government and teaching should be done at the time when it can be done. If one repents after the turn of events has once come, it is of no use. So whenever a ruler sees the fall of an earlier age, he knows why government and teaching were lost there, and yet none of them knows that there is fault in his own person. Thus Zhou of Yin laughed at the fall of Jie of Xia, and King You and King Li laughed in turn at the ruin of Zhou of Yin. The emperor of Sui, at the beginning of Daye, laughed at Zhou and Qi for losing their states, and to look at Emperor Yang now is just as Emperor Yang looked at Zhou and Qi. So Jing Fang said to Emperor Yuan of Han, "Your servant fears that those who come after will look at today just as today looks at the past." These words cannot but be taken as a warning.
往者貞觀之初，率土霜儉，一匹絹才得粟一斗，而天下帖然。百姓知陛下甚憂憐之，故人人自安，曾無謗讟。自五六年來，頻歲豐稔，一匹絹得十餘石粟，而百姓皆以陛下不憂憐之，咸有怨言。又今所營為者，頗多不急之務故也。自古以來，國之興亡不由蓄積多少，惟在百姓苦樂。且以近事驗之，隋家貯洛口倉，而李密因之；東京積布帛，王世充據之；西京府庫亦為國家之用，至今未盡。向使洛口、東都無粟帛，即世充、李密未必能聚大眾。但貯積者固是國之常事，要當人有餘力而後收之。若人勞而強斂之，竟以資寇，積之無益也。然儉以息人，貞觀之初，陛下已躬為之，故今行之不難也。為之一日，則天下知之，式歌且舞矣。若人既勞矣，而用之不息，倘中國被水旱之災，邊方有風塵之警，狂狡因之竊發，則有不可測之事，非徒聖躬旰食晏寢而已。若以陛下之聖明，誠欲勵精為政，不煩遠求上古之術，但及貞觀之初，則天下幸甚。
In days past, at the beginning of Zhenguan, frost lay over all the land and the harvest failed, and a single bolt of silk got barely a peck of millet, yet the empire was quiet and settled. The people knew that Your Majesty was deeply anxious for them and pitied them, and so each man was at ease in himself and there was never any reviling or resentment.
For five or six years now the grain has ripened well season after season, and a single bolt of silk gets more than ten bushels of millet, yet the people all say that Your Majesty is not anxious for them and does not pity them, and they all have words of resentment. This is also because much of what is being built now is not urgent business.
From of old, the rise and fall of a state has not come from how much or how little was stored up, but only from whether the people are in hardship or in ease. Try it by recent affairs. The house of Sui stored grain in the Luokou granary, and Li Mi leaned on it. Cloth and silk were piled up in the Eastern Capital, and Wang Shichong took hold of it. The storehouses of the Western Capital became the use of our state as well and are not spent even now. Had there been no millet and silk at Luokou and the Eastern Capital, Shichong and Li Mi could surely not have gathered great crowds.
Storing up is indeed a constant business of a state, but the essential thing is to gather it only after the people have strength to spare. If the people are worn out and it is exacted by force, in the end it supplies the bandits, and storing it is of no use. Yet resting the people by being sparing is what Your Majesty already did in your own person at the beginning of Zhenguan, and so it is not hard to do it now. Do it for a single day and the empire will know it and will sing and dance as well.
If the people are already worn out and are set to work without cease, and if the Middle Kingdom should suffer the calamity of flood or drought and there should be an alarm of wind and dust on the frontier, and the wild and the crafty take their chance and rise up in secret, then there will be things that cannot be measured, and it will not stop at Your Majesty eating late and sleeping late. With the sageness and enlightenment of Your Majesty, if you truly wish to gather your spirit and govern, there is no need to go far and seek the arts of high antiquity. Only come up to the beginning of Zhenguan, and the empire is most fortunate.
太宗曰：「近令造小隨身器物，不意百姓遂有嗟怨，此則朕之過誤。」乃命停之。
Taizong said:
"Of late I have had small vessels and things for my own use made, and I did not think the people would come to sigh and resent it. This is my own fault and my error."
And he gave order that it be stopped.