Eu Empire Quotes

The ability of Britain to invade almost the entire planet and then for a significant portion of the country to proclaim themselves victims of some kind of invasion or colonisation may well not seem directly ‘racial’, but it certainly echoes quite clearly the way white America, with its long-term history of racist pogroms, lynching, slavery and segregation, has somehow emerged believing itself to be the victim of racial discrimination. Britain entered the EU freely, it has voted leave freely, the only blood that was shed around this issue was when a white-supremacist ultra¬ nationalist lunatic assassinated an MP perceived to be too kind to ‘immigrants’ during the campaign - hardly a country under siege like so many of those on the receiving end of Britain’s imperial conquests.

Those who advocated Brexit, the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, imagined a British nation-state, though such a thing never existed. There was a British Empire, and then there was Britain as a member of the European Union. The move to separate from the EU is not a step backward onto firm ground, but a leap into the unknown.

Finally, Europe’s post-war history is a story shadowed by silences; by absence. The continent of Europe was once an intricate, interwoven tapestry of overlapping languages, religions, communities and nations. Many of its cities—particularly the smaller ones at the intersection of old and new imperial boundaries, such as Trieste, Sarajevo, Salonika, Cernovitz, Odessa or Vilna—were truly multicultural societies avant le mot, where Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims, Jews and others lived in familiar juxtaposition. We should not idealise this old Europe. What the Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski called ‘the incredible, almost comical melting-pot of peoples and nationalities sizzling dangerously in the very heart of Europe’ was periodically rent with riots, massacres and pogroms—but it was real, and it survived into living memory. Between 1914 and 1945, however, that Europe was smashed into the dust. The tidier Europe that emerged, blinking, into the second half of the twentieth century had fewer loose ends. Thanks to war, occupation, boundary adjustments, expulsions and genocide, almost everybody now lived in their own country, among their own people. For forty years after World War Two Europeans in both halves of Europe lived in hermetic national enclaves where surviving religious or ethnic minorities the Jews in France, for example—represented a tiny percentage of the population at large and were thoroughly integrated into its cultural and political mainstream. Only Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union—an empire, not a country and anyway only part-European, as already noted—stood aside from this new, serially homogenous Europe. But since the 1980s, and above all since the fall of the Soviet Union and the enlargement of the EU, Europe is facing a multicultural future. Between them refugees; guest-workers; the denizens of Europe’s former colonies drawn back to the imperial metropole by the prospect of jobs and freedom; and the voluntary and involuntary migrants from failed or repressive states at Europe’s expanded margins have turned London, Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan and a dozen other places into cosmopolitan world cities whether they like it or not.

The US was forced to withdraw troops from Iraq after an extremely costly decade-long military occupation, leaving in place a regime more closely allied to Iran, the US’ regional adversary. The Iraq war depleted the economy, deprived American corporations of oil wealth, greatly enlarged Washington’s budget and trade deficits, and reduced the living standards of US citizens. The Afghanistan war had a similar outcome, with high external costs, military retreat, fragile clients, domestic disaffection, and no short or medium term transfers of wealth (imperial pillage) to the US Treasury or private corporations. The Libyan war led to the total destruction of a modern, oil-rich economy in North Africa, the total dissolution of state and civil society, and the emergence of armed tribal, fundamentalist militias opposed to US and EU client regimes in North and sub-Sahara Africa and beyond. Instead

In the first place, this is a history of Europe’s reduction. The constituent states of Europe could no longer aspire, after 1945, to international or imperial status. The two exceptions to this rule—the Soviet Union and, in part, Great Britain—were both only half-European in their own eyes and in any case, by the end of the period recounted here, they too were much reduced. Most of the rest of continental Europe had been humiliated by defeat and occupation. It had not been able to liberate itself from Fascism by its own efforts; nor was it able, unassisted, to keep Communism at bay. Post-war Europe was liberated—or immured—by outsiders. Only with considerable effort and across long decades did Europeans recover control of their own destiny. Shorn of their overseas territories Europe’s erstwhile sea-borne empires (Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal) were all shrunk back in the course of these years to their European nuclei, their attention re-directed to Europe itself. Secondly, the later decades of the twentieth century saw the withering away of the ‘master narratives’ of European history: the great nineteenth-century theories of history, with their models of progress and change, of revolution and transformation, that had fuelled the political projects and social movements that tore Europe apart in the first half of the century. This too is a story that only makes sense on a pan-European canvas: the decline of political fervor in the West (except among a marginalized intellectual minority) was accompanied—for quite different reasons—by the loss of political faith and the discrediting of official Marxism in the East. For a brief moment in the 1980s, to be sure, it seemed as though the intellectual Right might stage a revival around the equally nineteenth-century project of dismantling ‘society’ and abandoning public affairs to the untrammelled market and the minimalist state; but the spasm passed. After 1989 there was no overarching ideological project of Left or Right on offer in Europe—except the prospect of liberty, which for most Europeans was a promise now fulfilled. Thirdly, and as a modest substitute for the defunct ambitions of Europe’s ideological past, there emerged belatedly—and largely by accident—the ‘European model’. Born of an eclectic mix of Social Democratic and Christian Democratic legislation and the crab-like institutional extension of the European Community and its successor Union, this was a distinctively ‘European’ way of regulating social intercourse and inter-state relations. Embracing everything from child-care to inter-state legal norms, this European approach stood for more than just the bureaucratic practices of the European Union and its member states; by the beginning of the twenty-first century it had become a beacon and example for aspirant EU members and a global challenge to the United States and the competing appeal of the ‘American way of life’.

It seems likely that, for such ideas to work, participants must accept that politics can no longer be guided by absolutes, rather in the manner that conflict resolution in the Empire was about workable compromises, not questions of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Like current practice within the EU, the Empire relied on peer pressure, which was often more effective and less costly than coercion, and which functioned thanks to the broad acceptance of the wider framework and a common political culture. However, our review of the Empire has also revealed that these structures were far from perfect and could fail, even catastrophically. Success usually depended on compromise and fudge. Although outwardly stressing unity and harmony, the Empire in fact functioned by accepting disagreement and disgruntlement as permanent elements of its internal politics. Rather than providing a blueprint for today’s Europe, the history of the Empire suggests ways in which we might understand current problems more clearly.

You find nothing like that among humans. Yes, human groups may have distinct social systems, but these are not genetically determined, and they seldom endure for more than a few centuries. Think of twentieth-century Germans, for example. In less than a hundred years the Germans organised themselves into six very different systems: the Hohenzollern Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (aka communist East Germany), the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany), and finally democratic reunited Germany. Of course the Germans kept their language and their love of beer and bratwurst. But is there some unique German essence that distinguishes them from all other nations, and that has remained unchanged from Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel? And if you do come up with something, was it also there 1,000 years ago, or 5,000 years ago? The (unratified) Preamble of the European Constitution begins by stating that it draws inspiration ‘from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which “have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, democracy, equality, freedom and the rule of law’.3 This may easily give one the impression that European civilisation is defined by the values of human rights, democracy, equality and freedom. Countless speeches and documents draw a direct line from ancient Athenian democracy to the present-day EU, celebrating 2,500 years of European freedom and democracy. This is reminiscent of the proverbial blind man who takes hold of an elephant’s tail and concludes that an elephant is a kind of brush. Yes, democratic ideas have been part of European culture for centuries, but they were never the whole. For all its glory and impact, Athenian democracy was a half-hearted experiment that survived for barely 200 years in a small corner of the Balkans. If European civilisation for the past twenty-five centuries has been defined by democracy and human rights, what are we to make of Sparta and Julius Caesar, of the Crusaders and the conquistadores, of the Inquisition and the slave trade, of Louis XIV and Napoleon, of Hitler and Stalin? Were they all intruders from some foreign civilisation?

Tch’en Ché (Chen Sheng n.n.) fut le premier à commencer la révolte ; les braves s’élancèrent comme un essaim d’abeilles et se combattirent les uns les autres en nombre incalculable. Cependant (Hiang) Yu (Xiang Yu n.n.) n’avait ni un pied ni un pouce de terre ; profitant de l’occasion, il s’éleva du milieu des sillons’ ; au bout de trois ans, il commandait à cinq seigneurs’, il avait écrasé Ts’in, il partageait l’empire et nommait des rois et des seigneurs ; l’autorité émanait de (Hiang) Yu ; son titre était « roi suprême ». Quoiqu’il n’ait pas gardé cette dignité jusqu’au bout, cependant depuis l’antiquité jusqu’à nos jours, il n’y en a jamais eu de si grande. Ensuite (Hiang) Yu viola (le traité relatif aux) passes et regretta (le pays de) Tch’ou ; il chassa l’empereur juste et se donna le pouvoir à lui- même ; il s’irrita de ce que les rois et les seigneurs se révoltaient contre lui ; quelles difficultés (ne s’attirait-il pas !). Il s’enorgueillit de ses exploits guerriers, s’enivra de sa propre sagesse et ne prit pas modèle sur l’antiquité. Sous le prétexte d’agir en roi suprême, il voulait s’imposer par la force et régler à son gré tout l’empire. La cinquième année, il perdit soudain son royaume ; lui-même mourut à Tong-tch'eng mais il ne comprit point encore et ne s’incrimina pas lui-même ; quelle erreur ! En effet, « c’est le Ciel, dit-il, qui me perd et ce n’est point que j’aie commis aucune faute militaire. » N'est-ce pas là de l’aveuglement ?

Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox said in 2016, in the run-up to the EU referendum, that ‘the United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its twentieth-century history.’ Funny, because Britain is in fact one of the few countries in the world that literally did bury a good portion of its twentieth-century history. During the period of decolonisation, the British state embarked upon a systematic process of destroying the evidence of its crimes. Codenamed ‘Operation Legacy’, the state intelligence agencies and the Foreign Office conspired to literally burn, bury at sea or hide vast amounts of documents containing potentially sensitive details of things done in the colonies under British rule.25 Anything that might embarrass the government, that would show religious or racial intolerance or be used ‘unethically’ by a post-independence government was ordered destroyed or hidden. The Foreign Office were forced to admit in court about having hidden documents, then were unforthcoming about the scale of what was hidden, to the point that you’d be a fool to trust anything that is now said. But from what we know, hundreds of thousands of pages of documents were destroyed and over a million hidden, not just starting in the colonial period but dating all the way back to 1662. This operation was only exposed to the public in 2011 as part of a court case between the survivors of British concentration camps in Kenya and the government.

These are a substantial number of “they” who once a year meet to deliberate the fate of national economies and, hence, entire populations. Many of them also believe in the mandate of eugenics, the practice of improving the human race to include reducing the population. Know that we do not have the names of every attendee. Only those who authorize the release of their names get mentioned in the public media. Daniel Estulin, author of The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, wrote that the group’s membership and meeting participants have represented a “who’s who” of the world power elite with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen, and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others. Such invitees have included President Obama along with many of his top officials. Estulin said that also represented at Bilderberg meetings are leading figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, the Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Bank of England. David Rockefeller, the head of the Rockefeller family financial empire, is believed to have been a leading Bilderberg attendee for years. Other wealthy elite members merely send representatives.

It is quite unfathomable why the EU leadership fails to anticipate these potentially catastrophic possibilities, and fails to respond to popular concerns with more moderate immigration policies. One possible explanation for these perverse policies that has been put forward by highly regarded scholars, such as Samuel Huntington, is that the current leadership of the EU is composed of left-wing authoritarians who are enemies of the Western liberal tradition. According to Huntington, “Multiculturalism is in its essence anti-European... "and opposes its civilization. The official repression of dissent and pursuance of unpopular policies by undemocratic means suggests that such ideologues wish to turn the EU into a centrally controlled empire similar to the Soviet Union. If that is the case, then their current policies make a good deal of sense, in that they flood the continent with people who have lived under autocratic regimes and never lived in democratic republics. Such people may well be willing to tolerate repressive regimes provided they can maintain a moderate standard of living and their own traditional religious practices. As Hunnngton points out, imperial regimes often promote ethnic conflict among their minority citizens to strengthen the power of the central authority, with the not unrealistic claim that a powerful central authority is essential to maintain civil order. But if that is the case, then Europe will be transformed into an authoritarian and illiberal multiethnic empire, undemocratic, economically crippled and culturally retrograde. Is it any wonder that so many see Europe as committing suicide and its end coming "not with a bang, but a whimper?

In the first place, this is a history of Europe’s reduction. The constituent states of Europe could no longer aspire, after 1945, to international or imperial status. The two exceptions to this rule—the Soviet Union and, in part, Great Britain—were both only half-European in their own eyes and in any case, by the end of the period recounted here, they too were much reduced. Most of the rest of continental Europe had been humiliated by defeat and occupation. It had not been able to liberate itself from Fascism by its own efforts; nor was it able, unassisted, to keep Communism at bay. Post-war Europe was liberated—or immured—by outsiders. Only with considerable effort and across long decades did Europeans recover control of their own destiny. Shorn of their overseas territories Europe’s erstwhile sea-borne empires (Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal) were all shrunk back in the course of these years to their European nuclei, their attention re-directed to Europe itself. Secondly, the later decades of the twentieth century saw the withering away of the ‘master narratives’ of European history: the great nineteenth-century theories of history, with their models of progress and change, of revolution and transformation, that had fuelled the political projects and social movements that tore Europe apart in the first half of the century. This too is a story that only makes sense on a pan-European canvas: the decline of political fervor in the West (except among a marginalized intellectual minority) was accompanied—for quite different reasons—by the loss of political faith and the discrediting of official Marxism in the East. For a brief moment in the 1980s, to be sure, it seemed as though the intellectual Right might stage a revival around the equally nineteenth-century project of dismantling ‘society’ and abandoning public affairs to the untrammelled market and the minimalist state; but the spasm passed. After 1989 there was no overarching ideological project of Left or Right on offer in Europe—except the prospect of liberty, which for most Europeans was a promise now fulfilled. Thirdly, and as a modest substitute for the defunct ambitions of Europe’s ideological past, there emerged belatedly—and largely by accident—the ‘European model’. Born of an eclectic mix of Social Democratic and Christian Democratic legislation and the crab-like institutional extension of the European Community and its successor Union, this was a distinctively ‘European’ way of regulating social intercourse and inter-state relations. Embracing everything from child-care to inter-state legal norms, this European approach stood for more than just the bureaucratic practices of the European Union and its member states; by the beginning of the twenty-first century it had become a beacon and example for aspirant EU members and a global challenge to the United States and the competing appeal of the ‘American way of life’.

Fiecare noapte are acel moment de mare luciditate, de sinceritate nemiloasă, de care ești apărat, de obicei, prin somn. Eu nu aveam, de data asta, nici o protecție. Gândurile erau nude, usturătoare.

A crença certa é como um bom manto, julgo eu. Se vos servir bem, mantém-vos quente e segura. O ajuste errado, no entanto, pode sufocar.

Desde quando eu era uma garotinha, eu organizava meus planos para o futuro, que envolviam me graduar na universidade de Oxford e andar só de blusa e calcinha pelo meu apartamento em New York City, segurando uma caneca com café expresso. Eu teria um gato e trabalharia em casa, usando saltos e vestidos e maquiagem e joias quando fosse sair. E claro, eu continuaria assistindo mais e mais filmes de comédia romântica. Eu teria uma vida tranquila e independente. A única coisa diferente na minha vida agora é que eu decidi ter um cachorro.

Être de gauche consiste à avoir raison même lorsqu'on a tort, parce qu'on se trompe alors pour de justes raisons. Être de droite consiste a avoir tort même lorsqu'on a eu raison, car on aura eu raison pour des raisons idéologiques inadmissibles, intraduisibles dans la logique de l’émancipation.

Être de gauche consiste à avoir raison même lorsqu'on a tort, parce qu'on se trompe alors pour de justes raisons. Être de droite consiste à avoir tort même lorsqu'on a eu raison, car on aura eu raison pour des raisons idéologiques inadmissibles, intraduisibles dans la logique de l’émancipation.

Compreende-se por que, numa sociedade de indivíduos destinados à autonomia privada o atrativo do Novo é tão vivo: ele é sentido como instrumento de "liberação" pessoal, como experiência a ser tentada e vivida, pequena aventura do Eu.

The argument of Brexit is in some ways a sublimated, and quite correct, recognition that Britain’s relationship with the EU is actually about trade, and doesn’t offer it opportunities for exploitation. Because of the Empire, we developed an elite class addicted to enormous returns on investment, only possible through constant growth. As this becomes impossible, Brexit happens so profits can be delivered through cannibalising previously protected resources, including people.

The Bull-Lion Combat motif was developed by the Aryan Persians to express the theological civil war within the Osirian religion and the disintegration of the ancient Egyptian Mill which the Judeo-Christian is still trying to harmonize the constituents thereof (e.g. Ezekiel 1:10). That motif stems, however, from the Ouroboros symbol denoting the ever cyclically forking Aryan identity. Therefore, despite of the Jew's plagiarism of the Abrahamic sacrifice and the apparent practice of the ritual, the Jew's articulated his Osirian faith (as his mithraic Roman and Persian brethren) by fusing it into the Semitic scripture; after all, the Achaemenid Empire contributed to the emancipation of its Jew proxy where we later on witness the emergence of the main emblem of Persia of the Lion and the Sun signaling yet another attempt of plagiarism after the Jew's failure of accomplishing the Aryan's ultimate goal. Now and after which the Semitic Arab blow shattered the Aryan Christian face into pieces, a new Aryan schism surfaced and followed suit in total disregard to 1 Peter 5:8 forking thereby yet another Aryan identity anew (e.g. UK with its Lion Symbol vs. EU with its Bull Symbol).

Constantinople est née du caprice d'un despote en proie à une intense exaltation religieuse. Et cependant peu d'actes politiques concertés ont eu des effets plus considérables et plus durable. Pendant une longue suite de siècles, un grand État a eu ses destinées attachées à cette ville. À mainte reprise Constantinople a refait l'Empire. La culture hellénique, antique et médiévale a été sauvé d'une destruction totale parce qu'elle a trouvé dans le Bosphore un asile inexpugnable. Rien de tout cela n'aurait été sans la volonté de Constantin. Mais était-ce cela qu'il voulait? Il ne semble pas.

- Dar eu ce gândesc? - Că și dacă pot citi ce e-n mintea omului nu-nseamnă că trebuie să spun cu voce tare ceea ce văd.

Vous savez sans doute qu'on a souvent voulu rattacher, d'une façon ou d'une autre, le christianisme primitif aux écoles esséniennes ; mais le malheur est que, sur les esséniens eux-mêmes, on ne sait que bien peu de choses en réalité. En tout cas, il est au moins certain que, tant que le christianisme est demeuré dans le judaïsme, il ne pouvait pas comporter une loi exotérique distincte ; dans ces conditions, on ne voit pas ce qu'il aurait pu être d'autre qu'une voie initiatique. Peut-être faut-il admettre que l'"extériorisation" a commencé dès que le christianisme s'est répandu hors du milieu judaïque, donc très tôt puisque cela pourrait être ainsi en rapport surtout avec l'activité de saint Paul lui-même ; cela expliquerait qu'on trouve déjà dans les textes très anciens, des choses qui ne semblent guère compatibles avec un caractère initiatique et ésotérique (le baptême des enfants comme le signalait Clavelle). Il est vrai qu'il resterait encore de toute façon certains passages embarrassant dans les Évangiles eux-mêmes, comme ceux dont vous parlez ; mais comme il y en a aussi d'autres qui vont dans le sens de l'ésotérisme, il y a là une apparence de contradiction est loin d'éclaircir les choses ; il est possible que certaines paroles, quand elles ont été transcrites en grec, aient été rendue inexactement ou qu'elles n'aient pas eu la signification qu'on leur a attribué par la suite (je pense par exemple aux discussions auxquelles a donné lieu l'expression "toutes les nations" qui paraît parfois désigner l'ensemble des pays compris dans l'Empire romain, et parfois aussi seulement les Juifs qui étaient établis alors dans différents pays hors de la Palestine). Quant à savoir dans quelle mesure les rites ont été modifiés, cela parait à peu près impossible, puisque personne ne sait au juste ce qu'étaient les rites primitifs, même dans le cas du baptême [...] Lettre du 9-1-1950 "Lumière d'Orient" - Jean Tourniac - p.106

Hans Kundnani, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations and once a journalist in Berlin, seeks to relate Germany’s past to its recent behaviour in the eurozone crisis. He argues that history is in danger of repeating itself — not on the battlefield, but in the economy. His thesis is that today’s European Union is seeing a rerun of “the German question” that emerged after the founding of the Prussian empire. This time, Germany is not a military power but an economic one. Its economy is too dominant to preserve a stable balance with its eurozone and EU partners, yet too weak to enforce economic stability from above, he says. He calls it a “geo-economic semi-hegemon”, with the potential to cause a bitter and possibly disastrous conflict with its closest partners. Kundnani’s thesis is tempting. He believes that even today, Germans still feel they are victims — in the eurozone, suffering from the spendthrift behaviour of the southerners. A fear of Germany’s half-hearted hegemony is certainly shared in countries such as France, Italy and Greece. But this is not how Germans see themselves. The Germany that grew out of Stunde Null — the “zero hour” of 1945 — is a very different place from the insecure empire inaugurated by the Prussian Kaiser. The second world war, that greatest of self-inflicted national disasters, left the country divided and economically devastated. It has been overcome but not forgotten.

Si Eul-che (Qin Er Shi n.n.) s’était conduit comme un souverain ordinaire et avait confié les charges aux hommes loyaux et sages, si les sujets et le souverain avaient eu les mêmes sentiments et avaient pris en pitié le malheur du monde, si, quand il était encore vêtu de blanc, (Eul-che) avait réparé les fautes de l’empereur son prédécesseur, s’il avait divisé son territoire et distribué son peuple de façon à donner des fiefs aux descendants des plus méritants entre ses sujets, s'il avait fondé des royaumes et établi des princes de manière à honorer l'empire, s'il avait vidé les prisons et épargné les supplices, relâché ceux qui avaient été condamnés comme parents complices' et ceux qui avaient été condamnés comme calomniateurs, et renvoyé chacun dans son village, s'il avait répandu le contenu de ses greniers et distribué ses richesses afin de secourir les personnes abandonnées et misérables, s'il avait restreint les taxes et diminué les corvées afin d'aider le peuple en détresse, s'il avait adouci les lois et modéré les châtiments afin de sauve- garder l'avenir, il aurait fait que tous les habitants de l'empire auraient pu se corriger, qu'ils auraient redoublé de vertu et auraient réformé leurs actions, que chacun aurait veille sur sa propre conduite, que les espérances de la multitude du peuple auraient été satisfaites; puis, grâce au prestige et à la bienfaisance qu'il aurait exercés sur l'empire, l'empire tout entier se serait rassemblé autour de lui. Alors, à l’intérieur des mers, tous auraient été contents et chacun se serait trouvé heureux de son sort ; on n’aurait eu qu’une crainte, celle d’un changement ; même s’il y avait eu des fourbes dans le peuple, ils n’auraient pu distraire le cœur du souverain ; même s’il y avait eu des ministres déshonnêtes, ils n’auraient pu décevoir son intelligence ; le fléau des cruautés et des troubles aurait donc pris fin. Eul-che ne suivit point cette ligne de conduite, mais aggrava la situation par son manque de raison. Il ruina le temple ancestral aux yeux du peuple ; il recommença à construire le palais Ngo-pang; il multiplia les châtiments et aggrava les supplices ; ses officiers gouvernèrent avec la dernière rigueur ; les récompenses et les punitions furent injustes; les taxes et les impôts furent immodérés ; l'empire fut accablé de corvée; les officiers ne purent maintenir l'ordre ; les cent familles se trouvèrent à toute extrémité et le souverain ne les recueillit pas et n'eut pas pitié d'elles. A la suite de cela, la perversité surgit de toutes parts et l’empereur et ses sujets se trompèrent mutuellement. Ceux qui avaient encouru des condamnations étaient en foule ; ceux qui avaient été mutilés et suppliciés s’apercevaient de loin les uns les autres sur les routes, et l’empire en souffrait. Depuis, les princes et les hauts dignitaires jus- qu'au commun peuple, tous étaient tourmentés de l’idée de leur propre danger et se trouvaient personnellement dans une situation très pénible. Aucun d’eux ne se sentait à l’aise dans la place qu’il occupait ; aussi était-il facile de les ébranler. C’est pourquoi Tch’en Ché (Chen Sheng n.n.) sans avoir besoin d’être sage comme T’ang et Ou' (Wu n.n.), sans être au préalable élevé en dignité comme les ducs ou les marquis, n’eut qu’à agiter, le bras à Ta-tsé pour que l’empire entier lui répondit comme l’écho, car son peu-pie était en danger.

Quand Ts'in (Qin n.n.) eut dispersé les royaumes combattants et qu’il régna sur l’empire, sa conduite ne changea pas, son gouvernement ne se modifia pas ; c’est pourquoi il obtint des résultats différents lorsqu’il fit des conquêtes et lorsqu’il les conserva ; il était isolé en possession (de l'empire), et c’est pourquoi on pouvait attendre sa perte imminente. Supposez que le roi de Ts’in eût administré les affaires suivant les principes des générations anciennes et qu’il eût suivi les traces des Yn (Shang n.n.) et des Tcheou (Zhou n.n.) dans la direction qu’il donna à son gouvernement ; quand bien même dans la suite il y aurait eu un souverain dissolu et arrogant, la calamité de la ruine et du péril ne se serait point produite. C’est pourquoi quand les trois dynasties fondèrent leur empire, leur renommée fut éclatante et leur œuvre dura longtemps. Maintenant, lorsque Eul-che (Qin Er Shi n.n.) (de la dynastie) Ts'in prit le pouvoir, dans l'empire il n'y eut personne qui ne tendit le cou pour observer comment il gouvernerait; en effet, celui qui a froid apprécie fort des vêtements grossiers, celui qui a faim trouve agréable au goût la lie du vin et l'enveloppe du grain; l'empire retentissait de plaintes, c'était une ressource pour le nouveau souverain: cela signifie qu'auprès d'un peuple accablé il est aisé de passer pour bon.