The Ordre, M. Rouher's organ, is trying to prepare the
ground for Prince Jerome in a fashion that will agree to some extent with his bitterly anti-clerical past. It asserts that Napoleonism has always made war on Clericals and Theocrats, as "dangerous enemies, both at home and abroad, of any careful and fruitful policy." And it states that the Bonapartists and the Republi- cans have exactly the same class of ends in view, though they propose to pursue those ends by different means, and that the means of the Republic are entirely inadequate, since " it hands over authority to the worst elements ; fatally disorganises the public powers ; and fatally betrays the true interests of the people." That is, of course, the right line for such an empire as Prince Jerome could alone, with any dignity, profess to establish. But it is not a line which has many friends amongst the masses. The masses, so far as they are Imperialists at heart, are with the Church ; and so far as they are not with the Church, they wholly disbelieve that the Republic " hands over authority to the worst elements." Your believers in Emperors and haters of priests, exist, of course,—thinly scattered through the cultured classes,—but they carry no body of popular feeling with them.
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