THE PRINCE IMPERIAL'S PROGRAMME.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2864, 20 April 1878, Page 4

THE PRINCE IMPERIAL'S PROGRAMME.

(PABIS LBTTEB TO THE BOSTON JOUBNAL.)

"Nothing was kicking but that!" as the French are so fond of saying. The young Prince Imperial, who fancies that he is getting wisdom with his beard, has written a letter which has had a wide private circulation in France recently; It was addressed to M. Jules Amigues, and is a species of declaration of the programme which Napoleon IV. would adopt if—but there is the if. The youth has evidently learned something from the many demagogues he has seen and heard of in England, and he writes with a keen senße of the effect which liberal promises hare on the mind of certain classes "in France. He says: "My father yielded too much to those who surrounded him; He favored the bourgeois at the expense of the workmen. 1 should not follow out his first intention —that which dictated his writings when he was in the Castle of Ham. During my exile I have reflected, and I believe that the rights conquered by the people would remain barren if they did not pass from the domain of theory into practice." He adds : " Taxes profit only the'privileged classes 5 I wish them to be proportionate, progressive, and falling heavily only upon superfluous articles; because; it is monstrous to take ever ■0 little from him who has next to nothing. The poor man owes only his blood to his country; thai is why I desire the abolition of indirect taxes, and of the octroi. In a democratic society the state should constantly heap the heavier burdens on the rich, always solace the poor with the most abundant succor, and continually level down fortunes by the rights of successions. * * * The wages, especially of women, are insufficient; they will be augmented; the hours of labor shortened ; the right to strike shall be sacred] * * * I wish entire amnesty for those among the people who have been misled, but I will purge France of factions, noble and bourgeois, which dishonor her." It will be observed that Master Napoleon speaks in the last paragraph very much as if he expected to come back and assume power; that it is only a question of time. The youthful aspirant is anxious to win favor in the eyes of the working classes, but he cannot deceive them. They have little or no faith in promises; they demand guarantees. This lack of confidence on their part is the legitimate outcome of the deception, trickery and effrontery which, characterized all the dealings of the

Second Empire with popular classes. And it is especially this which will prevent the permanent re-establishment of the empire.