metal coin of full value was called in and exchanged for debased coin.  Another modern-sounding institution, that of the “equalization offices”, was supposed to buy cheap goods in times of plenty in order to sell them to the people in times of scarcity at similarly low prices, so preventing want and also preventing excessive price fluctuations.  In actual fact these state offices formed a new source of profit, buying cheaply and selling as dearly as possible.

Thus the character of these laws was in no way socialistic; nor, however, did they provide an El Dorado for the state finances, for Wang Mang’s officials turned all the laws to their private advantage.  The revenues rarely reached the capital; they vanished into the pockets of subordinate officials.  The result was a further serious lowering of the level of existence of the peasant population, with no addition to the financial resources of the state.  Yet Wang Mang had great need of money, because he attached importance to display and because he was planning a new war.  He aimed at the final destruction of the Hsiung-nu, so that access to central Asia should no longer be precarious and it should thus be possible to reduce the expense of the military administration of Turkestan.  The war would also distract popular attention from the troubles at home.  By way of preparation for war, Wang Mang sent a mission to the Hsiung-nu with dishonouring proposals, including changes in the name of the Hsiung-nu and in the title of the shan-yue.  The name Hsiung-nu was to be given the insulting change of Hsiang-nu, meaning “subjugated slaves”.  The result was that risings of the Hsiung-nu took place, whereupon Wang Mang commanded that the whole of their country should be partitioned among fifteen shan-yue and declared the country to be a Chinese province.  Since this declaration had no practical result, it robbed Wang Mang of the increased prestige he had sought and only further infuriated the Hsiung-nu.  Wang Mang concentrated a vast army on the frontier.  Meanwhile he lost the whole of the possessions in Turkestan.

But before Wang Mang’s campaign against the Hsiung-nu could begin, the difficulties at home grew steadily worse.  In A.D. 12 Wang Mang felt obliged to abrogate all his reform legislation because it could not be carried into effect; and the economic situation proved more lamentable than ever.  There were continual risings, which culminated in A.D. 18 in a great popular insurrection, a genuine revolutionary rising of the peasants, whose distress had grown beyond bearing through Wang Mang’s ill-judged measures.  The rebels called themselves “Red Eyebrows”; they had painted their eyebrows red by way of badge and in order to bind their members indissolubly to their movement.  The nucleus of this rising was a secret society.  Such secret societies, usually are harmless, but may, in emergency situations, become an immensely effective instrument in the hands of the rural population.  The secret societies then