 To ensure successful rule, a ruler must govern with “humanenness” (ren 仁), a concern for the wellbeing of the people that was a major topic of discussion in Pre-Han Confucian texts. Unlike these earlier Confucians, however, Jia Yi’s interest in humaneness was mainly with its practical benefits for ensuring the stability of the ruler’s position. Earlier Confucians were more concerned with the issue of moral development and the role of humaneness in the development of the person. Jia Yi’s concern with humaneness was about political expediency. Lacking humaneness, as he claims the Qin rulers did, will inevitably lead to the collapse of one’s rule. Securing the cooperation and support of the people is necessary to maintain a state, and thus the good ruler must attend to this. (Sanft 2005: 35–6) While concern for the people is necessary, Jia does not take the assent of the people to being governed as the ground or justification for the ruler’s authority. This authority, according to Jia, is independent of the people. The “people as root” position developed in the Xinshu is fully based in pragmatic considerations of rulership. In this way, Jia Yi links the ideas developed in early Confucian texts with the pragmatic “amoralism” of Legalists like Han Feizi who argued for the appropriateness of political strategies on the basis of their success in maintaining the power of the ruler, rather than on the basis of moral considerations. Jia’s political thought thus represents a new trend in the Han period, one that forms the basis for the ideology of what Dingxin Zhao calls “the Confucian-Legalist state” (Zhao 2015). The origins of the political philosophy that would guide Chinese dynasties through much of the rest of Chinese history are found in the Han.