of profit, buying
cheaply and selling as dearly as possible.

Thus the character of these laws was in no way socialistic; nor,
however, did they provide an El Dorado for the state finances, for Wang
Mang's officials turned all the laws to their private advantage. The
revenues rarely reached the capital; they vanished into the pockets of
subordinate officials. The result was a further serious lowering of the
level of existence of the peasant population, with no addition to the
financial resources of the state. Yet Wang Mang had great need of money,
because he attached importance to display and because he was planning a
new war. He aimed at the final destruction of the Hsiung-nu, so that
access to central Asia should no longer be precarious and it should thus
be possible to reduce the expense of the military administration of
Turkestan. The war would also distract popular attention from the
troubles at home. By way of preparation for war, Wang Mang sent a
mission to the Hsiung-nu with dishonouring proposals, including changes
in the name of the Hsiung-nu and in the title of the _shan-yue_. The name
Hsiung-nu was to be given the insulting change of Hsiang-nu, meaning
"subjugated slaves". The result was that risings of the Hsiung-nu took
place, whereupon Wang Mang commanded that the whole of their country
should be partitioned among fifteen _shan-yue_ and declared the country
to be a Chinese province. Since this declaration had no practical
result, it robbed Wang Mang of the increased prestige he had sought and
only further infuriated the Hsiung-nu. Wang Mang concentrated a vast
army on the frontier. Meanwhile he lost the whole of the possessions in
Turkestan.

But before Wang Mang's campaign against the Hsiung-nu could begin, the
difficulties at home grew steadily worse. In A.D. 12 Wang Mang felt
obliged to abrogate all his reform legislation because it could not be
carried into effect; and the economic situation proved more lamentable
than ever. There were continual risings, which culminated in A.D. 18 in
a great popular insurrection, a genuine revolutionary rising of the
peasants, whose distress had grown beyond bearing through Wang Mang's
ill-judged measures. The rebels called themselves "Red Eyebrows"; they
had painted their eyebrows red by way of badge and in order to bind
their members indissolubly to their movement. The nucleus of this rising
was a secret society. Such secret societies, usually are harmless, but