Prince Victor Napoleon has given to a Figaro reporter an interview which has many of the characteristics of a manifesto. However, as the Prince says that it is not a manifesto, but a conversation, let us describe it as a treatise on politics. The Prince’s premises are that France must, sooner or later, recognize that ‘‘the empire is precisely the ‘République autoritaire,’ organized, reconciled and fortified by stability.’’ This recognition will be forced upon the nation by the discredit of parliamentary Republicanism, the existing form of government in France being ‘‘an oppressive and confused oligarchy, in which the deputies wrangle for fleeting power.’’
— The New York Herald, European Edition, May 6, 1891