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Confucianism -> Mengzi -> Liang Hui Wang I -> 3.4

:「'Since your Majesty knows this,' replied Mencius,
'you need not hope that your people will become more numerous than those of the neighboring kingdoms.
If the seasons of husbandry be not interfered with,
the grain will be more than can be eaten.
洿 If close nets are not allowed to enter the pools and ponds,
the fishes and turtles will be more than can be consumed.
If the axes and bills enter the hills and forests only at the proper time,
the wood will be more than can be used.
When the grain and fish and turtles are more than can be eaten,
and there is more wood than can be used,
使this enables the people to nourish their living and mourn for their dead, without any feeling against any.
This condition, in which the people nourish their living and bury their dead without any feeling against any,
is the first step of royal government.
Let mulberry trees be planted about the homesteads with their five mu,
and persons of fifty years may be clothed with silk.
In keeping fowls, pigs, dogs, and swine,
let not their times of breeding be neglected,
and persons of seventy years may eat flesh.
Let there not be taken away the time that is proper for the cultivation of the farm with its hundred mu,
and the family of several mouths that is supported by it shall not suffer from hunger.
Let careful attention be paid to education in schools,
inculcating in it especially the filial and fraternal duties,
and grey-haired men will not be seen upon the roads, carrying burdens on their backs or on their heads.
It never has been that the ruler of a State, where such results were seen - persons of seventy wearing silk and eating flesh, and the black-haired people suffering neither from hunger nor cold - did not attain to the royal dignity.'


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