Wang An-shih (as shi in shirk), popularly known as the Reformer, was born in 1021.  In his youth a keen student, his pen seemed to fly over the paper.  He rose to high office; and by the time he was forty-eight he found himself installed as confidential adviser to the emperor.  He then entered upon a series of startling political reforms, said to be based upon new and more correct interpretations of portions of the Confucian Canon, which still remained, so far as explanation was concerned, just as it had been left by the scholars of the Han dynasty.  This appeal to authority was, of course, a mere blind, cleverly introduced to satisfy the bulk of the population, who were always unwilling to move in any direction where no precedent is forthcoming.  One of his schemes, the express object of which was to decrease taxation and at the same time to increase the revenue, was to secure a sure and certain market for all products, as follows.  From the produce of a given district, enough was to be set aside (1) for the payment of taxes, and (2) to supply the wants of the district; (3) the balance was then to be taken over by the state at a low rate, and held for a rise or forwarded to some centre where there happened to be a demand.  There would be thus a certainty of market for the farmer, and an equal certainty for the state to make profits as a middleman.  Another part of this scheme consisted in obligatory advances by the state to cultivators of land, whether these farmers required the money or not, the security for the loans being in each case the growing crops.

There was also a system of tithing for military purposes, under which every family having more than two males was bound to supply one to serve as a soldier; and in order to keep up a breed of cavalry horses, every family was compelled to take charge of one, which was provided, together with its food, by the government.  There was a system under which money payments were substituted for the old-fashioned and vexatious method of carrying on public works by drafts of forced labourers; and again another under which warehouses for bartering and hypothecating goods were established all over the empire.

Of all his innovations the most interesting was that all land was to be remeasured and an attempt made to secure a more equitable incidence of taxation.  The plan was to divide up the land into equal squares, and to levy taxes in proportion to the fertility of each.  This scheme proved for various reasons to be unworkable; and the bitter opposition with which, like all his other measures of reform, it was received by his opponents, did not conduce to success.  Finally, he abolished all restrictions upon the export of copper, the result being that even the current copper “cash” were melted down and made into articles for sale and exportation.  A panic ensued, which Wang met by the simple expedient of doubling the value of each cash.  He attempted to reform the examination system, requiring from the