NEWS OF THE WEEK.
frHE Imperialist party assembled at Chislehurst have made a
virtue of necessity, and as we predicted last week, agreed on a policy of delay. The programme put forth of course exaggerates the unity of the party, when it says that the Empress and the -Prince Napoleon, " who will undertake the political guardianship of the Prince Imperial, and consequently the direction of the Bonapartist party," have put away from them "all divergence of -opinion and all varying shades of political feeling" in presence -of " that great memory and those immeasurable regrets which -occupied the hearts of all." It would be just as reasonable to Assert that Lord Melbourne and Sir Robert Peel put away from them all " divergence of opinion and all varying shades of feel- ing " on the demise of the Crown when William IV. died. How- ever, the chief point about the programme is that the Prince Imperial is not to bear the name of Napoleon IV., " except in 'the hearts of his faithful adherents,"—i.e., not at all. " He will call himself Prince Louis Napoleon, as his father did, before France by her eight millions of votes set on his head the Imperial Crown." This was inevitable. The Napoleonists are only distinguishable from the Legitimists in principle by their -rule of deference to the authority of the plebiscite. While -sojourning abroad, the young Prince is to take the name of the Comte de Pierrefonds,—Pierrefonds being a little place near -Compiegne, which was, no doubt, a part of the private property of the late Emperor.
