OFFICIAL SALARIES AND EXPENSES 817the classical principal of limiting state expenditures to available revenues
received (yang'ip wich 'ul), true economy could only be achieved if the state itself
reduced current levels of expenditure.
Yu remarked that all court officials had rejected the taedong system because
it would require a cadastral survey for it to be effective. Although Yu did not list
the reasons why they objected to a cadastral survey, one might speculate not
only that the cost of a national survey would have been too great, but that the
taxes of the rich landlords would have increased significantly by more accurate
registration. As Yu did say, there were only two ways to explain their attitude:
"If all they wanted (by their opposition) was (to perpetuate) unregulated tax quo-
tas, it was either a case of delusion or ignorance, or an extreme case of injus-
tice and national betrayal."6 Since Yu wanted to expand the taedong system
beyond replacing the cost of purchasing the old tribute items to cover almost all
government revenues, including some of the costs of military defense, he had
to demand an accurate, nationwide survey of all cultivated land to guarantee a
fair and equal distribution of taxes on the landowning and tenant population. Of
course. in his chapter on land he went much further by proposing the abolition
of landownership and tenancy and the redistribution of basic plots of land to all
peasant families.
Yu believed that obstruction to the taedong reform was the product of a vir-
tual conspiracy among provincial govcrnors and magistrates. While attending
a public discussion of the problem he once heard a governor and a magistrate
thanking each other for the role they had each played in keeping the taedong
system out of the province because if the reform were enacted, the magistrates
would have "no handhold or foothold" to rely on for their support. The conver-
sation appeared bizarre to him because they should have been talking about the
need for a public-spirited desire to serve the national and popular interest; the
only foothold worth considering was a national system of regular taxes and stan-
dard salaries for officials. Instead, what they had in mind was the satisfaction
of their own private interests and desires, behavior intolerable in a government
run under the laws of a virtuous king (\wzgbop).7
Yu was convinced that rational budget allocations for paying the costs of gov-
ernment goods and services and human and horse transport for the shipment of
those goods to the capital would replace all forms of tribute for the central gov-
ernment and the king. Miscellaneous forms of compulsory labor service
(chaby()k) that varied greatly from one district to another would be made equal
and uniform by calculating its cost, levying sufficient taxes. and paying those
costs from regular tax revenues. The honesty and probity of government offi-
cials and the efficiency of government operations could only be secured if the
government assumed full responsibility for paying adequate salaries for all func-
tionaries of the state, providing all costs required by government offices and agen-
cies, and prohibiting magistrates from levying arbitrary surtaxes to pay the salaries
of all their clerks and officials. Government finance would be based on funds
raised legally and openly by authorized state taxes (f...y·ongse), and all expendi-