And now, when Your Majesty has consolidated the empire, and, distinguishing black from white, has constituted it a stable unity, they still honour their peculiar learning, and combine together; they teach men what is contrary to your laws. When they hear that an ordinance has been issued, every one sets to discussing it with his learning. In the court, they are dissatisfied in heart; out of it, they keep talking in the streets. While they make a pretense of vaunting their Master, they consider it fine to have extraordinary views of their own. And so they lead on the people to be guilty of murmuring and evil speaking. If these things are not prohibited, Your Majesty's authority will decline, and parties will be formed. The best way is to prohibit them, I pray that all the Records in charge of the Historiographers be burned, excepting those of Ch'in; that, with the exception of those officers belonging to the Board of Great Scholars, all throughout the empire who presume to keep copies of the Shih-ching, or of the Shu-ching, or of the books of the Hundred Schools, be required to go with them to the officers in charge of the several districts, and burn them [1]; that all who may dare to speak 1 悉詣守尉雜燒之. together about the Shih and the Shu be put to death, and their bodies exposed in the market-place; that those who make mention of the past, so as to blame the present, be put to death along with their relatives; that officers who shall know of the violation of those rules and not inform against the offenders, be held equally guilty with them; and that whoever shall not have burned their Books within thirty days after the issuing of the ordinance, be branded and sent to labor on the wall for four years. The only Books which should be spared are those on medicine, divination, and husbandry. Whoever wants to learn the laws may go to the magistrates and learn of them." 'The imperial decision was -- "Approved."' The destruction of the scholars is related more briefly. In the year after the burning of the Books, the resentment of the emperor was excited by the remarks and the flight of two scholars who had been favourites with him, and he determined to institute a strict inquiry about all of their class in Hsien-yang, to find out whether they had been making ominous speeches about him, and disturbing the minds of the people. The investigation was committed to the Censors [1], and it being discovered that upwards of 460 scholars had violated the prohibitions, they were all buried alive in pits [2], for a warning to the empire, while degradation and banishment were employed more strictly than before against all who fell under suspicion.