338 LAND REFORM"Some say that if all the sadaebu have to write their names in the land regis-
ters, it will bother them. I say that land registers are as important as household
registers [hoj6k); they are material necessary for later investigation and they have
to be clear .... In accordance with present regulations, just have them write in
the name of their household slave."79 In other words, contrary to Yu's expressed
sentiments against slavery, slavery was necessary to the operation of his own
system of land reform!
IfYu had abolished slavery (in his system) at the same time that he ruled out
tenancy, the only alternatives he would have had left to provide for the support
of the sadaebu would have been either prebends (the right to collect taxes from
certain lands) or salaries paid from general tax revenues. Yu, of course, explic-
itly ruled out both salaries and prebends as the means of supporting a sadaebu
elite. Salaries were improper because an immutable principle of ancient gov-
ernment was that salaries could only be provided to those who performed ser-
vice for the state as officials.
Prebends were a more difficult problem because, as Yu admitted, under the
well-field system the sadaebu did receive ch 'aeji for their families; they only
received salaries if they held office. He had to concede that in principle it would
be proper to grant prehends (sikch 'ae or sikse) to scholars and officials because
these had been used in ancient times. In fact, he stated that if some future gov-
ernment were to adopt this method, it would also be proper to permit some degree
of inheritance to ensure that the families of scholars and officials who did not
hold office would not suffer from poverty.
Furthermore, if a prebendal system were used, Confucian scholars and men
with official rank from 7A to 9B (in a scale from IA to 9B) would be entitled
to retain the prebend only for their own lifetime (irrespective of officeholding).
If the recipient had no male heirs, his widow should be entitled to half the prebend
until she died. Men with official rank higher than grade 7 A, with their sons, would
retain the prebend for their lifetimes, and prebends of officials of the highest
ministerial rank (the taebu and kyong), which probably referred to officials of
the first two or three ranks. would be retained through the generation of the grand-
sons or great-grandsons.^80
Although Yu conceded that prebends were justified and permissible in prin-
ciple and theory, they would be undesirable because "most of the taxable land
(sejon) in the country would end up in the hands of the families of the sadaebu
and the state would not have enough to meet its expenses.',81 In other words, in
an age of centralized bureaucracy, the financial requirements of the state could
not be satisfied by a system that was originally designed to fit a feudal, decen-
tralized mode of government.
Furthermore, there was a fundamental difference between the sadaehu of a
feudal system and the sadaebu of a centralized bureaucratic system. The sadaebu
in feudal antiquity were granted either ch 'aeup or sikse (prebends), but their pow-
ers or rights were not limited to the collection of tax revenues from these grants;
"they were also in charge of the governance of the people on their land, or they