heavy task. The happiness of his subjects absolutely depends upon him. To
provide for everything is his duty; his ministers are only put in office
to assist him," and also that "a prince who wishes to fulfill his
obligations, and to long preserve his people in the ways of peace, ought
to watch without ceasing that the laws are observed with exactitude." They
were stanch upholders of temperance, and they banished the unlucky
discoverer of the fact that an intoxicating drink could be obtained from
rice. They also held fast to the theory that all government must be based
on the popular will. In fact, the reigns of Yao, Chun and Yu are the ideal
period of Chinese history, when all questions were decided by moral right
and justice, and even now Chinese philosophers are said to test their
maxims of morality by the degree of agreement they may have with the
conduct of those rulers.

With them passed away the practice of letting the most capable and
experienced minister rule the State. Such an impartial and reasonable mode
of selecting the head of a community can never be perpetuated. The rulers
themselves may see its advantages and may endeavor as honestly as these
three Chinese princes to carry out the arrangement, but the day must come
when the family of the able ruler will assert its rights to the
succession, and take advantage of its opportunities from its close
connection with the government to carry out its ends. The Emperor Yu, true
to the practice of his predecessors, nominated the president of the
council as his successor, but his son Tiki seized the throne, and became
the founder of the first Chinese dynasty, which was called the Hia, from
the name of the province first ruled by his father. This event is supposed
to have taken place in the year 2197 B.C., and the Hia dynasty, of which
there were seventeen emperors, ruled down to the year 1776 B.C. These Hia
princes present no features of interest, and the last of them, named Kia,
was deposed by one of his principal nobles, Ching Tang, Prince of Chang.