道千乘之国章

Original text

子曰：“道千乘之国，敬事而信，节用而爱人，使民以时。”

Translation

Confucius said, "To govern a country that owns thousands chariots, one must put respectful and careful concentration on the government affair and keep good faith, retrench the expenses and love the people, employ escuage only in felicitous time."

Annotation from research

Confucius begins his political discussion in a very early verse. His political view generally originates from an agricultural social background, but it applies universally. In Confucius' times, the China mainland was governed by several seigneurs, and each of them ruled a demesne which was generally called a country. A country that owned thousands chariots had very strong military force. But even for such countries, Confucius didn't think they should rely on their power. On the contrary, he suggested that only benevolent policies should be counted by the governors.

Confucius particularized what is benevolent policies not in an abstract way. Instead, he gave out his guidance in most important three aspects that every governor should encounter daily: government affair (spiritual), economic consideration (material) and escuage (people-related). Confucius used polished words but expressed good information. He said that for spiritual affairs, which is governors' major, he should be respectful and careful. Respect comes from recognition of responsibilities which governors are always bore with but often underestimate. Only if a governor takes people, faith and responsibilities seriously enough, will he or she be fulfilled with respect and care when dealing with government affair, and thus the policies becomes benevolent. For economy and escuage, which is the duties the people have to take upon, Confucius did not simply suggest that the governors should reduce such taxes. He thought in a flexible way. Firstly, not only the people has economic duties for the governors. Such duties should be carried out in a two-way manner. The love towards people from the governors is the reward, and that counts for the core value of the benevolence as well. Secondly, the escuage should be arranged only in good time. The original meaning of Confucius is that such escuages should be arranged in the seasons that farmers have leisure times between the harvest and next sow, usually late fall and winter. That will not put farmers into exhausted situation. We can see from these suggestions that Confucius' political opinion is likely to take people as the foremost, and that is the application for his philosophy of benevolence in politics.