To judge from all the local Chinese newspapers whose columns without exe-ption for the past three weeks or so have been norrly half ull, daily, with news frow all parts of the country about meetings among influential gentry ard merchants commending the action of the merchavia and gentry of Shanghai, "the American boycott idea" sorns to have taken on with all classes of Chinese ay the only effective way of showing their dislike of the unjust clauses in the uew Chinese Exclusion Treaty. Moreover, there seems to be a feeling among e Amer.cans that the mandarins have something to do with the movement xnd that the Chi Government xn be overced into putting a stop. The mandarins of & watter of fact, and this we have discovered after careful engi y, have nothing at all 10 do with the boycott on Americ". goods, as it is fapontansoUs action on the part of the merchants and in which it bins gentry, and the mauuer received throughout the ex that the mass; Atel ofthe agitation started cly the members of the Chines Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, there was indeed an attempt wade by the mandarins to stop the merchaute gentry from active protest agai the new Exclusion Treaty, but they were told that the Government had netiing to do in the matter. "The common people have had their eyes open-d by returning follow-countrymen to the American interpretation of the Exclusion Treaty as understood at Sen Francisco, New York, and other cities of the United States. This ha gone on for ten years already, against which those who tried to get into the States could do nothing, and we have to thank the makers of that treaty, for all our friends suffered. Now that this treaty has i been denounced by our culighteued Minister in Washington, we the gentry and merchants who have been the principal sufferers intend to do what we can to show our dislike of the treatment that has ltitherto been accord-edu. Your Excellencies need not fear our going to extremes. We will show t! world that we are civilised and patriotic, and as euch the best way will be simply to stop purchasing American-made goods. Your Excellencies surely cannot force to buy anything we do not care for.' To this Chinese mandarindom could make no reply, and so the boycott was inaugurated.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.