592
History of the Ming Dynasty.
Nov.
ART. III. Ming Shi, or History of the Ming dynasty. In 68
vols., royal octavo.
Reviewed by a Correspondent.
Two notices of Hungwu, the founder of this dynasty, having already appeared in the Repository, it is needless to speak again of his history. From a scullion he rose to be a monarch, and in truly va- luable qualities for ruling over a large nation has had few equals in all history-certainly not in Chinese history. Hungwú, in 1368, was in full possession of the empire, and sat up upon the throne till 1399, a period to him of unremitted cares. In a solemn assembly he took leave of all his courtiers, and recommended to his well tried
ministers his grandson, then aged only 16 years, whose reign was call- ed Kienwan.
建文
Notwithstanding the precautions that were
taken to establish the throne, Hungwú committed a radical error in bestowing principalities upon all his sous. When therefore, they saw a mere stripling appointed to succeed him, they were indignant at his choice, and like all ambitious princes thought themselves much better entitled to receive the imperial yellow, then a beardless boy. To crush this dangerous dissatisfaction, the regency com- initted blunder upon blunder. First, they seized the weakest of the princes, degraded him to a common man, and sent him to Yunnan, to give him the opportunity of dying there of an epidemical disease. This naturally checked the others; they saw before them the same fate, and when two officers appeared at the court of the ruler of Yen, to see what was transpiring, he instantly killed them as spies. This he did with impunity; but not so his brothers; one of them had kill- ed a magnate, and was sentenced by the regency to lose his possession and end his days in exile. Another on a similar accusation of hav- ing executed one of his subjects, preferring death to disgrace, set fire to his palace and perished in the flames. The prince of Yen, think- ing himself no longer safe, took up arms, in order, as he expressed himself in a manifesto, to free his innocent nephew from such treache- rous ministers. The struggle now commenced in true Chinese style; large armies were soon collected and suddenly disappeared, cities
rived from the opium farin in Penang alone, for the whole revenue to the Company and the crown cannot be much under two millions sterling. The remarks in the last paragraph, also, regarding the cultivation of the poppy, venality of the officers, and the habits of his imperial majesty, would have been materially modified if the writer had been in Chma.)