were the most skilful
players; it is doubtful if the game originated with them, or if it was
introduced from Persia, with which country China had relations at a very
early date. A statesman of the tenth century, disgusted at the way in
which the Emperor played polo to excess, presented a long memorial,
urging his Majesty to discontinue the practice. The reasons given for
this advice were three in number. "(1) When sovereign and subject play
together, there must be contention. If the sovereign wins, the subject
is ashamed; if the former loses, the latter exults. (2) To jump on a
horse and swing a mallet, galloping here and there, with no distinctions
of rank, but only eager to be first and win, is destructive of all
ceremony between sovereign and subject. (3) To make light of the
responsibilities of empire, and run even the remotest risk of an
accident, is to disregard obligations to the state and to her Imperial
Majesty the Empress."

It has always been recognized that the chief duty of a statesman is
to advise his master without fear or favour, and to protest loudly and
openly against any course which is likely to be disadvantageous to
the commonwealth, or to bring discredit on the court. It has also been
always understood that such protests are made entirely at the risk of
the statesman in question, who must be prepared to pay with his head for
counsels which may be stigmatized as unpatriotic, though in reality they
may be nothing more than unpalatable at the moment.

In the year A.D. 814 the Emperor, who had become a devout Buddhist, made
arrangements for receiving with extravagant honours a bone of Buddha,
which had been forwarded from India to be preserved as a relic. This was
too much for Han Yu (already mentioned), the leading statesman of the
day, who was a man of the people, raised by his own genius, and who, to
make things worse, had already been banished eleven years previously for
presenting an offensive Memorial on the subject of tax-collection,
for which he had been forgiven and recalled. He promptly sent in a
respectful but bitter denunciation of Buddha and all his works, and
entreated his Majesty not to stain the Confucian purity of thought by
tolerating such a degrading exhibition as that proposed. But for the
intercession of friends, the answer to this bold memorial would have
been death; as it was he was banished to the neighbourhood of the modern
Swatow, then a wild and barbarous region, hardly inco