Page:Ta Tsing Leu Lee (1810).pdf/77

 II.

TO

BY

E,

THE FIRST OF THE PRESENT DYNASTY.

HEN we contemplate the progressive establishment of our dominions in the East, by our Royal Ancestors and immediate Predecessors, we observe that the simplicity of the people originally required but few laws and that, with the exception of crimes of extraordinary enormity, no punishments were inflicted besides those of the whip and the bamboo.

Since, however, the Divine Will has been graciously pleased to entrust us with the administration of the Empire of China, a multitude of judicial proceedings in civil and criminal cases, arising out of the various dispositions and irregular passions of mankind in a great and populous nation, have successively occupied our Royal attention. Hence we have suffered much inconvenience, from the necessity we have been almost constantly under of either aggravating or mitigating Rh