The centenary of Napoleon's Consulate, celebrated in Corsica on Christmas
Day, elicited a letter to the Mayor of Ajaccio from Prince Victor Napoleon. In this adroitly- worded and temperate document the First Consul is held up to admiration as the great social pacificator, who owed nothing to and expected nothing from party, but only aspired to serve the people from whom he issued. Prince Victor, who disclaims all intention to trouble his country by vain words or empty demonstrations, contents himself with con- gratulating his compatriots from the exile to which he has been relegated, not for his acts, but his doctrines, and longing for "the moment of national reconciliation," in which, it is to be inferred, he would be prepared to resume the role of the benevolent and tolerant social regenerator. M. de Blowitz, an acute if a fantastic observer, regards this manifesto as an adroit counterstroke to the ill-conditioned action of the Duke of Orleans, and believes it to be extremely well adapted to rally to the Bonapartist flag the sympathies which the Duke has done so much to alienate by his vulgar arrogance and mediasval fanaticism. Admitting, however, that Prince Napoleon is a great deal cleverer or better advised than the Duke of Orleans, we entirely endorse M. de Blowitz's earnest prayer for the maintenance in France of a regime which, whatever its shortcomings, has not yet made victims or martyrs. It was not the Republic that made the Dreyfus case possible, but the clerico-military reaction which is the one hope of the Pretenders.
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