“Your dogs and swine eat the food of men, and you do not know to store up of the abundance.  There are people dying from famine on the roads, and you do not know to issue your stores for their relief.  When men die, you say, ‘It is not owing to me; it is owing to the year,’ In what does this differ from stabbing a man and killing him, and then saying, ’It was not I; it was the weapon’?  Let your Majesty cease to lay the blame on the year and instantly the people, all under the sky, will come to you.”

King Hwuy of Leang said, “I wish quietly to receive your instructions.”  Mencius replied, “Is there any difference between killing a man with a stick and with a sword?” “There is no difference,” was the answer.

Mencius continued, “Is there any difference between doing it with a sword and with governmental measures?” “There is not,” was the answer again.

Mencius then said, “In your stalls there are fat beasts; in your stables there are fat horses.  But your people have the look of hunger, and in the fields there are those who have died of famine.  This is leading on beasts to devour men.  Beasts devour one another, and men hate them for doing so.  When he who is called the parent of the people conducts his government so as to be chargeable with leading on beasts to devour men, where is that parental relation to the people?  Chung-ne said, ’Was he not without posterity who first made wooden images to bury with the dead?’ So he said, because that man made the semblances of men and used them for that purpose; what shall be thought of him who causes his people to die of hunger?”

King Hwuy of Leang said, “There was not in the kingdom a stronger State than Ts’in, as you, venerable Sir, know.  But since it descended to me, on the east we were defeated by Ts’e, and then my eldest son perished; on the west we lost seven hundred li of territory to Ts’in; and on the south we have sustained disgrace at the hands of Ts’oo.  I have brought shame on my departed predecessors, and wish on their account to wipe it away once for all.  What course is to be pursued to accomplish this?”

Mencius replied, “With a territory only a hundred li square it has been possible to obtain the Royal dignity.  If your Majesty will indeed dispense a benevolent government to the people, being sparing in the use of punishments and fines, and making the taxes and levies of produce light, so causing that the fields shall be ploughed deep, and the weeding well attended to, and that the able-bodied, during their days of leisure, shall cultivate their filial piety, fraternal duty, faithfulness, and truth, serving thereby, at home, their fathers and elder brothers, and, abroad, their elders and superiors, you will then have a people who can be employed with sticks which they have prepared to oppose the strong buff-coats and sharp weapons of the troops of Ts’in and Ts’oo.