CENTRAL BUREAUCRACY 6I5
most corrupt and tyrannical officials, it was opposed by officials, who feared
the loss of their livelihood. '4
Li Chi-fu in the early ninth century repeated the same theme, that only 30
percent of the population was left to work the land in arduous labor because so
many men were enlisted in the army or functioning as merchants, Buddhist
monks, and Taoist adepts. They had to support the 10,000 officials of the capi-
tal with their taxes, and the size of districts had shrunk to support the plethora
of magistrates. Li, therefore, requested a reduction in the number of officials by
combining prefectures and districts, and reducing costs by limiting emoluments,
and Emperor Hsien-tsung followed his suggestion by eliminating 808 regular
and I ,700 irregular officials.'s
Attempts to lower the number of officials and the complexity of administra-
tion failed in the Sung dynasty because there were no fixed quotas of officials
for a number of offices, there was considerable overlap of duties and functions
because separate commissions were established to carry out tasks supposedly
the responsibility of established offices, and officials were given concurrencies
in more than one office. Capital officials, for example, were given additional
duties as magistrates of local districts but they often neglected them. Even the
reforms of Wang An-shih in the late eleventh century failed to correct the prob-
lems of confused organization and superfluous officials. ,6
While administrative rationality and economy had suffered severely in the Sung
dynasty, at least an attempt was made in the Ming dynasty to emulate the model
of the Six Ministries. Yu was apparently willing to accept the rather forced argu-
ment of his favorite Ming writer, Ch'iu Chiln, that the Six Boards of the Ming
were equivalent to the six ministers of the Chou even though their responsibil-
ities were somewhat different. For example. the Ming Board of Personnel was
equivalent to the Chou prime minister, the Board of Taxation was equivalent to
thc Chou minister of education, and the Board of Public Works was equivalent
to the Chou minister of the economy. '7 Nonetheless, he realized that the prin-
ciples of simplicity and rational assignment of specific tasks to one of six min-
isters had fallen by the wayside with the dcstruction of the Chou state by the
First Emperor of the Ch'in.'s
What Yu learned from Chinese experience was that the classical mode of gov-
ernment had to he organized under a prime minister and Six Ministries even
though they did not have to be exactly the same as those described in the Rites
of Chou. All the accretions of later dynasties, in particular additional ministries.
courts, directorates, overlapping commissions, and the like had either to be elim-
inated or their functions combined into or suhordinated under one of the six min-
istries. The creation of sinecures, irregular appointments, and superfluous
positions were all to be eliminated.