Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/209

AGQBESSIYE WAB. 185 of the people of any nation. China vainly boasted, and continues to boast, as many another nation, which should know better, boasts of similar conduct — ^that she so thoroughly defeated Corea, made its crowded vallies the homes of the tiger and the wolf, and slew so many myriads of Corean lives. Ofifensive warfare rarely pays in the long run, however successful for a time. It is unnecessary to allude to the well- known aggressive character of the first French Bepublic, culminating and decaying in Napoleon. Alexander the Great reads us the same lesson. Spain lost herself in the Netherlands ; and Bome fell to pieces because of its unwieldy and heterogeneous character. Every large empire which has been, has fallen because it was too aggressive; and every empire now being founded in the same manner, will assuredly fall to the ground. Chinese history is full of lessons to the same effect But confining ourselves to Liaotung and Corea, we saw that the Swi dynasty dashed out its brains against the petty city of Liaotimg, as Liaoyang was then called. And the varied success with which the Tang^ynasty, emperor after emperor, fought against Corea, till it submitted or was annihilated, simply dug their own grave. Had the Tang dynasty, instead of sending so many hundreds of thousands of Chinese to leave their bones bleaching on every field and valley between the liao river and the sea of Japan, — directed its energies to crush internal abuses, and to enforce a strict, full, impartial justice, — ^placing wise ministers in the cabinet, and upright judges in the courts of law, the present occupant of the Dragon Throne might be a Tang. For a great change of policy has never upset a dynasty in China ; nor has the introduction of novel ideas, more enlightened or less enlightened, ever set a new man on the throne. The fighting against Corea was as much for what the French call " glory, as was any war of modem time& Corea could have done the Chinese no serious harm. It was then divided into three mutually hostile kingdoms. On its north was Bohai, friendly to Corea only because weak ; but quite ready to be hostile by a sub- sidy, which China has always been able and willing to give. Gaoli