It is now understood that the Chamber will expel the
Comte de Paris and his son, and Prince Napoleon and his son, and leave the other Princes within France. Prince Napoleon, there- fore, has published a protest, in which he makes mincemeat of the supporters of the scheme. An "Orleans Prince," he says, "marries his daughter, and invites his friends to celebrate that domestic event." That is not a crime. "I had no connection with it; yet it is this which has suddenly transformed me into a Pretender, though I was not one the day before." The perils of the Republic do not spring from the Princes, but from a Constitution drawn up by Royalists, but shaped into an instrument of Jacobin oppression. "By what social improve- ments have you justified your rule ? You have neither been able to respect the Concordat nor to abolish it, to continue Free-traders nor to become Protectionists, to reform taxation nor to defend it, to soften international unfriendliness nor to procure an alliance." Proscription has commenced, and con- fiscation will come ; then the partisans of the Princes will be expelled, and then the Chamber will be driven to the " Loi des Suspects." It is all true, and Prince Napoleon might, had he chosen, have proved his case by a final illustration. His cousin, the Emperor, was driven on that precise declivity beginning with the proscription of the Orleanist Princes, continuing with the confiscation of their property, and ending with the terrible Law of Public Safety under which thousands of the best men in France were sent untried to Cayenne.
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