Ture is an article on the Chefoo Telegraph Convention in the Chinese Times of the 25th February which has given a great deal of amusement here. it is in wuliar style, big with many words, and is occasionally insolent and always inflated and misleading. Many of the sentences read like disordered compilations of words by one who was suffering from a too free indulgence in dictionaries and the Thesaurus. A Calcutta Baboo, might, perhaps, have strung together so many pompous words and such bombastic phrases as this wordspinner has used. Nor can the public here believe that such high and mighty subjects "international" " Imperial" "provincial" " all of importance" were handed over to a body such as the Chinese Times describes the members of the Chefvo Telegraph Commission to have been. A Taotai, of some notoriety, and an English associate, known of all men in these parts, one Dane, one Russian, and another Englishman, the last three gentlemen representing the various telegraphic interests concerned. The assertion that to such a body of unskilled in-great international questions were submitted merely provokes laughter. They could not make even a business arrangement. What they did was to come to an agreement which would have injured foreign trade, which would have tied China's hands, as regards telegraphs, as effectually as the Mitkiewicz concessions would have tied them in other matters. Only the two telegraph companies were pleased with it. When i t terms were made known in Tientsin those advisers of the Viceroy, who-have any knowledge of business affairs, repeatedly urged him to have nothing to do with it; when the Convention reached Peking the injury it would have done to China was perceived at once, and despite all the influence of Li Hung-chang, and the pressure which two of the Ministers put on the 'I'sung-li Yamen, it was thrown out. The two foreign Ministers referred to acted under orders from their Governments; but we have been informed that one of them expressed his disgust at being obliged to support such a Convention. Further, it is well known that most, if not all the other ministers were actively opposed to the Convention. We know a good deal about what took place at Chefoo last year, and before at Lientsin and at Peking; we believe our information to be true, and it does nota with what the Chinese Times says. We have said all we think necessary about the romance of the Chefoo convention as told by the tientsin paper. We have hesitated about taking any notice of its malevolence, and are still doubtful when ther it would not be as well to let it pass in silence. The derisive laughter with which it has been received here,
mes has lately become the malicious re everybody knows why the Chinese busy-bodyitimany ways which it has been for the last few months, has shown that its misstatements are taken for what they are worth. But it is after all right to put the truth before the outside world, even although people here know it. One word about ourselves in this matter. The Chinese Times says that the statements in the protest of the Chamber were drawn from the Shanghai papers, "whose tainted sources of information in all that concerns this place and Peking, are by this time we should think, sufficiently notorious." Now the Correspondents in Tientsin who have written to us during the last year or so, on any matter of importance, are both known to the Editor of the Chinese Times; indeed, we believe he reposes in-them as much confidence as he has in himself—and that is saying a good deal.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.