愛育黎首
ài yù lí shǒu
"they loved and nurtured the black-haired ones"
The "black-haired ones" are obviously the Chinese people, but who exactly the "Chinese people" are is a much larger question. Usually, what's thought of as "Chinese" is the 漢 Han ethnic group, China's largest at over 90% of the population of the People's Republic; however, there are 55 other ethnic groups in China, and even among the Han, there are myriad languages (or 方言 'topolects', as they're sometimes known, since they're not exactly dialects) associated with different Han sub-groups around the country, groups that could be considered ethnic groups in their own right.
That level of complexity aside (and it could be made even more complex by considering north/south divisions, among other things), I mention this because in modern Chinese 黎 can refer to the Hlai people of Hainan island, who constitute a distinct ethnic group; it can also mean (as it does in classical Chinese) "multitude" or "numerous," which serves more or less the same purpose as "black-haired" does here.
Ultimately, whether 黎首 deals specifically with the Han, or with all of the ethnic groups that have been folded into China through a couple thousand years of imperial expansion and assimilation, what we're supposed to take away from this line is that they were all looked after by their slack-sleeved, beneficent rulers. Never mind that that almost undoubtedly involved some wars of pacification along the way.
微臣
史大偉
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