The Literati Reemergent

Chuang Ts'un-yü's criticism was veiled, as we have seen, in classical studies. Ts'un-yü himself did not speak out directly, no doubt because he and other officials had lost the ear of the Ch'ien-lung Emperor to Ho-shen. Chuang only witnessed Ho-shen’s rise to power. Hung Liang-chi, however, protested it. It would be too much to attribute Hung's 1799 letter to the influence of Chuang Ts'un-yü's Kung-yang Confucianism. Yet both were products of literati debates surrounding Ho-shen's position in state politics. In addition, both Chuang and Hung drew on Ch'ang-chou traditions of statecraft and scholarship to articulate their respective positions. And Hung's relations with the Chuang lineage in Ch'ang-chou had long been intimate, going back to his childhood and continuing into his mature adult life. More a Han Learning scholar than New Text advocate, Hung Liang-chi's statecraft interests nonetheless bore the stamp of the "learning of Ch'ang-chou."^[21]

Hung's letter is clearly the work of a man who lived to see the end of Ho-shen and the subsequent promise of reform under a new emperor. When the reform failed to materialize, Hung felt compelled to break the silence:

But I am torn by an inner conflict that I cannot resolve. On the one hand I am beset by my deep devotion to my master; on the other, I dare not forget the true significance of the advice from teachers and friends. Now I am merely a Hanlin [academician]. It is not part of my duty to remonstrate. But I can think of many times, in the few years since I became an official, that I have enjoyed unusual favor in serving my country. An official does not receive such favor without repaying it. Nor would a subject dare to seem as if he had feelings that he had not voiced completely.

Hung's decision to protest as a concerned Hanlin academician may also be explained in light of efforts then underway to reconsider the

[21] See Hung's exchange of scholarly views with Chuang Shu-tsu in Hung Liang-chi, Hung Pei-chiang shih-wen chi , vol. 1, pp. 250-51 (chüan 6). See also Polachek, Inner Opium War.

limited role of the Hanlin Academy, which had become devoid of political concerns.^[22]

Yao Nai, a Sung Learning advocate distressed by the apolitical vocations of most Hah Learning scholars, composed an essay entitled "On the Hanlin Academy" ("Han-lin lun"). He complained of the superficiality of the academy's purely literary concerns and its failure to encourage candor. Criticizing the Hanlin Academy's loss of its remonstrance function (chien-shu), which it shared in earlier dynasties with imperial censors (yü-shih yen-kuan), Yao Nai, perhaps mindful of Hung Liang-chi's letter to Prince Ch'eng, complained:

For this reason, the gentleman searches after the Way. Petty men seek after [literary] techniques. The [public] responsibility of the gentleman is expressed through the Way. The responsibility of the petty man is expressed through [literary] techniques. . ..Of course, the Way is contained within [literary] technique. Yet it would be better if expressed through loyal remonstrance and public debate, which encompass the greatness of the Way. Simply to use phrases and graphs to occupy the time of a Hanlin academician only limits him to [literary] technique.

Yao pointedly added that Ming Hanlin academicians surpassed their Ch'lng counterparts as voices of remonstrance. Hung Liang-chi's 1799 letter in many ways was an early form of ch'ing-i protest patterns that became characteristic of nineteenth-century gentry activism.^[23]

Hung Liang-chi appealed to the literatus as a concerned individual, not to any particular faction. By going it alone, Hung was able to sidestep the full force of Confucian strictures against literati cliques. His solitary stance may in part account for the Chia-ch'ing Emperor's decision to exile Hung to Chinese Turkestan instead of having him summarily executed. More important, the emperor's mercy signaled that literati dissent would be tolerated as long as it was voiced through appropriate channels.^[24]

A vital precedent, imperially authorized, had been established, and Hung Liang-chi's letter became a celebrated case throughout the Ch'ing empire. Hung was treated as a hero by adoring crowds and admiring gentry he met on the way to exile in far-off I-li. The Chia-ch'ing Emperor, cognizant that an execution would unintentionally spread terror

[22] Pei-chuan chi, 51.6b, translated in Mann (Jones), "Hung Liang-chi," p. 161.

[23] Yao Nai, Hsi-pao-hsuan ch'üan-chi, 1.4a-5a. See Polachek, "Literati Groups." Cf. Whitbeck, "Kung Tzu-chen." For a somewhat dated discussion of ch'ing-i see Eastman, Throne and Mandarins , pp. 20-29.

[24] Nivison, "Ho-shen and His Accusers," p. 242.

throughout the bureaucracy and thus prevent other officials from speaking freely and offering him needed advice, maintained that he had never considered killing Hung. In fact, he claimed he was keeping Hung's letter near his bedside as a constant reminder of a ruler's obligations in affairs of state.

In fact, the emperor pardoned Hung Liang-chi in 1800 and allowed him to return after a drought in Peking resulted in the ritual granting of amnesties to propitiate heaven. In the official pardon, the emperor publicly blamed himself for punishing a remonstrating official. Rain immediately fell, according to the imperial account, and the emperor composed a poem to commemorate the occasion, which was included in one of Hung Liang-chi's collected writings.^[25]

Susan Mann observes that Hung Liang-chi regarded himself simply as an honest Confucian official in the finest tradition of official remonstrance (yen-lu ). She adds:

But to students of imperial power and its changes in the Ch'ing dynasty, Hung's letter marks the beginning of the shift of the balance, away from the throne and out into the ranks of the bureaucracy. For Hung's ruler not only failed to halt, but was unable to discern, the fading of imperial authority that Hung and his contemporaries had been watching for "twenty or thirty years."

By 1800 the political climate in China had changed. The Chia-ch'ing Emperor had tolerated what previous emperors—particularly the Yung-cheng and Ch'ien-lung emperors—had expressly forbidden, namely, unauthorized public censure of the throne.^[26]

The Hung Liang-chi case did not legitimate factions, however. Consequently, the Chia-ch'ing Emperor's efforts to lessen the autocratic aura of the throne did not retract or even modify Confucian injunctions against collective political participation. In fact, the emperor feared that a policy of vindictiveness against the remnants of Ho-shen’s cronies would revive the destructive factionalism of the late Ming. He had been lenient with Ho-shen's followers to avoid divisions at the court. Now he dealt leniently with Hung Liang-chi as well.

Tung-lin-style factionalism thus remained expressly forbidden by imperial fiat and Confucian ideology. Within a nineteenth-century imperial system caught between internal rebellion and external imperialism,

[25] Susan Mann (Jones), "Hung Liang-chi, " pp. 159-60. See Ta-Ch'ing Jen-tsung Jui (Chia-ch'ing) huang-ti shih-lu , 50.44a.

[26] Susan Mann, "Hung Liang-chi," p. 160, and Nivison, "Ho-shen and His Accusers," p. 243.

however, China's lettered elite increasingly sought political legitimacy for their role in determining their fate. "Voices of remonstrance" came forth and attempted to redress literati grievances and to ameliorate the dynasty's problems. Factions and parties took shape around contemporary political, social, and economic issues.^[27]

Hung Liang-chi's dramatic 1799 letter marked the first overt re-emergence of gentry activism within the institutional and ideological confines of the late Ch'ing Confucian imperium. The Ch'ien-Chia transition had altered the focus of debate within which New Text Confucianism and statecraft issues would be rhetorically utilized during the nineteenth century. It was not accidental, then, that both statecraft politics and New Text theory contributed to the ideological integrity that ch'ing-i factions needed in order to vie for the upper hand in imperial politics and to gain the political leverage required to deal with the decay of the Ch'ing imperial state.

As the dynasty faltered, the influence of its scholar-officials grew stronger. Seeking precedents, ch'ing-i groups reevaluated their seven-teenth-century predecessors, and the Tung-lin legacy was reopened for particular study and possible emulation. Efforts by late Ming Tung-lin activists and early Ch'ing statecraft scholars to redefine literati solidarity within the state bureaucracy were now reinterpreted as heroic examples for contemporaries to address the problems of the early nineteenth century.^[28]