CO129-331 - Public Offices - 1905 — Page 579

(Translation.)

Inclosure 5 in No. 1.

Tsung Shan to Doyen of Consular Body.

Kuang Hsü, 31st year, 8th moon, 1st day (August 30, 1905).

I HAVE had the honour to receive a despatch from you and your colleagues of the Consular Body to the effect that your nationals residing or travelling in the interior have reported that objectionably-worded placards have been posted up all over the province. This, you say, has especially been the case at Yeuping Prefecture, where the local officials did not only refrain from putting a stop to the publication of these dangerous documents, but connived at the gentry themselves engaged in posting them up.

You state that the Consular Body does not concern itself with the boycott of American goods, but that they cannot view with indifference the danger to foreign life and property.

You say that the boycott of American goods in the interior is an unnecessary measure, for were it carried out at the ports effectively the goods would not get into the country at all, and that it is therefore evident that the boycott is merely being used as a pretext to raise an anti-foreign feeling, and you request me to issue strict orders to insure the protection of foreigners and the suppression of the placards.

The mercantile classes at the ports have devised a boycott as a means of resisting the Chinese Exclusion Treaty; and fearing that the vulgar might cause trouble by disseminating calumnies, I had on more than one occasion issned orders to the local authorities to use their best endeavours to take a lead in suppressing these as they arose.

On receipt of the despatch under acknowledgment I at once telegraphed to cach Paotai to order all the officials under his supervision to suppress and destroy the objectionable placards, and further to direct the gentry to show a good example to the merchants and people, and not to curry favour by yielding to popular sentiment. The local officials are also to take prompt and strenuous measures to keep themselves well- informed, and to exert themselves in the protection of foreign merchants and others, thereby consolidating international amity. I regard this matter as of the highest importance, and I can on no account allow the least remissness on the part of the local officials.

I shall be obliged if you will communicate this despatch to your colleagues.

(Seal of Acting Viceroy.)

TWO CHINESE EDITORS BANISHED FROM THE COLONY.

One of the Chinese newspapers in the Colong published on Sept. Ist a cartoon representing

a lady bag carried in a ch die by fou tortuisss. Though the lady was represented as a Chinese, the accompanying letterpress indicated that Miss! Roosevelt was referred t. Briefly the characters might be interpreted as stating that the Chins had been drives like unclean things fron the doors of the United States and that chair coolies who carried any m abers of the Taft party when they came to Hon kong would be unclean ind ed. We learn that the Government took action against the paper as soon as the objectionable cartoon came un their notice, and two editors of the paper ware banished from the Colony.

The cartoon is, we understand a reproduction of one which has ben extensively posted in Canton and for which one person, at least, has been arrested in pursuance of orders issued by the Viceroy.

Akong Weekly

9-9

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