OFFICIAL SALARIES AND EXPENSES 827the whole bureaucracy. "If those who make the laws are affected by even one
iota of private thoughts, mistakes will be made in the correct handling of all
affairs." Drawing a firm line between public and private (kongsa) interests was
indispensable to distinguishing between moral and immoral behavior, between
Heaven's principles (Ch 'iilli) and human desires (inyok). "When you are man-
aging a state's affairs and establishing institutions, you cannot permit the slight-
est degree of private interest [to be involved]."22
Currently government offices were stocked with a variety of private as well
as public materials and there was no system of rigid accounting to prevent the
mixture and confusion of the two, especially when envoys and guests arrived to
be entertained. Yu wanted a system of budgeted costs to provide for a basic quota
of rice that could be stored in advance. Instead of listing the cost of each item
like honey, oil, pheasants, and chickens, magistrates could allocate available funds
as they saw fit. Then "there will no longer be the evil situation whereby official
and private expenditures in an official yamen are mixed together."2^1 Further-
more, Yu anticipated that the future development of the market would ensure a
sufficient supply of all anticipated necessities: "Moreover, after the commercial
shops have flourished and all kind of goods are circulating [in the market], then
even though you may have some urgent need [for themJ. you need not worry
[about finding them in the marketplace 1."2^4 Not only the standard items of yamen
costs, but even more ordinary purchases of consumption items like fish and salt
could be bought directly by the magistrate's yamen on the market.
Nonetheless, even though the needs of a magistrate's yamen was more var-
ied than the costs of a capital bureau, Yu emphasized that reliance on the mar-
ket could not mean that officials be allowed to use their power to force merchants
to sell their goods at cheap and unprofitable prices. Although the private house-
holds of high officials in the capital were in the habit of making daily purchases
from merchants in the marketplace without attempting to use their influence and
prestige in an oppressive way,
in the district towns [the officials] have the lives of people completely under their
grasp. Even in the case of a low-ranking district [hyon]. the situation there is in
fact run like a small state. If [the officials] were to trade directly with people in
the market, it goes without saying that it would lead officials and clerks to pursue
their own private interests, and in every case it would produce an evil situation
for the people.^25This had to be avoided by determining what goods needed to be purchased
and what their prices should be, a procedure that was already in practice in the
capital since the capital bureaus negotiated prices of various goods with mer-
chants. Once a series of commodity prices were established, it would always be
possible to revise them in the future as conditions changed. Once prices in rice
were determined, funds for the purchase of all commodities consumed by offi-
cials (oil, honey, pheasants, and chickens) could be added to the salaries for offi-