| Fixing of Rights and...: |
Gong-sun Yang replied: 'There should be instituted, for the laws, government officers who are able to understand the contents of the decrees, and who should be the regulators of the empire. Then they should memorialize the Son of Heaven, whereupon the Son of Heaven would personally preside over the law and promulgate it. All should then issue to their inferiors the mandates they have received, and the law officers should preside personally over the law and promulgate it. When people venture to neglect practising the items named in the promulgations of the officers presiding over the law, then each one is punished according to the item in the law which he has neglected. In the eventuality of these officers, who preside over the law, being transferred or dying, students should be made to read the contents of the law and a standard of knowledge should be fixed for them, so that, within a certain number of days, they should know the contents of the law, and for those students who do not reach the standard, a law is made for punishing them. Should any one dare to tamper with the text of the law, to erase or add one single character, or more, he shall be condemned to death without pardon. Whenever government officials or people have questions about the meaning of the laws or mandates, to ask of the officers presiding over the law, the officers should, in each case, answer clearly according to the laws and mandates about which it was originally desired to ask questions, and they should, in each case, prepare a tablet of the length of 1 foot 6 inches, on which should be distinctly inscribed the year, month, day and hour, as well as the items of law about which questions were asked, for the information of the government officials or of the people. Should the officers who preside over the law not give the desired information, they should be punished according to the contents of the law, that is, they should be punished according to the law about which the government officials or people have asked information. The officers, presiding over the law, should forthwith give to those government officials who ask information about the law, the left half of the document and they themselves should store carefully the wooden bindings with the right half of the document, keep them in a room and seal them with the seal of the chief of the office of laws and mandates. Later, on the death of the officer, affairs should be transacted according to these files. |
