Six great chancellors stand conspicuous as having introduced law and order into a rude society, and paved the way for final success.  Every one of these was a “foreigner.”  The princes whom they served [Page 102] deserve no small praise for having the good sense to appreciate them and the courage to follow their advice.  Of some of these it might be said, as Voltaire remarked of Peter the Great, “They civilised their people, but themselves were savages.”  The world forgets how much the great czar was indebted for education and guidance to Le Fort, a Genevese soldier of fortune.  Pondering that history one is able to gauge the merits of those foreign chancellors, perhaps also to understand what foreigners have done for the rulers of China in our day.

Shi-hwang-ti was the real founder of the Chinese Empire.  He is one of the heroes of history; yet no man in the long list of dynasties is so abused and misrepresented by Chinese writers.  They make him a bastard, a debauchee, and a fool.  To this day he is the object of undying hatred to every one who can hold a pen.  Why? it may be asked.  Simply because he burned the books and persecuted the disciples of Confucius.  Those two things, well-nigh incredible to us, are to the Chinese utterly incomprehensible.

Li-Sze, a native of Yen, was his chancellor, a genius more daring and far-sighted than any of the other five.  The welding together of the feudal states into a compact unity was his darling scheme, as it was that of his master.  “Never,” he said, “can you be sure that those warring states will not reappear, so long as the books of Confucius are studied in the schools; for in them feudalism is consecrated as a divine institution.”  “Then let them be burned,” said the tyrant.

The adherents of the Sage were ejected from the [Page 103] schools, and their teachings proscribed.  This harsh treatment and the search for their books naturally gave rise to counterplots.  “Put them to death,” said the tyrant; and they went to the block, not like Christian marytrs for religious convictions, but like the Girondists of France for political principles.  Their followers offer the silly explanation that the books were destroyed that the world might never know that there had been other dynasties, and the scholars slaughtered or buried alive to prevent the reproduction of the books.

The First Hwang-ti did not confine his ambition to China.  He sent a fleet to Japan; and those isles of the Orient came to view for the first time in the history of the world.  The fleet carried, it is said, a crew of three thousand lads and lasses.  It never returned; but the traditions of Japan affirm that it arrived, and the islanders ascribe their initiation into Chinese literature to their invasion by that festive company—­a company not unlike that with which Bacchus was represented as making the conquest of India.  Their further acquaintance with China and its sages was obtained through Korea, which was long a middle point of communication between the two countries.  It was, in fact, from the Shantung promontory, near to Korea, that this flotilla of videttes was dispatched.