THE CODE AND THE UNIVERSITY[21]
[Footnote 21: Blanc: Napoleon Ier, ses institutions civiles
et administratives; Sabatier: Le Code Civil; Aucoc: Le
conseil d'etat; Duvergier de Hauranne: Histoire du
gouvernement parlementaire en France; Bignon: Histoire de
France; Ernouf: Maret, duc de Bassano; Helie: Les
constitutions de la France; Duruy: L'Instruction et la
Revolution; Hahn: Unterrichtswesen in Frankreich; Cambaceres:
Eclaircissements inedits--quoted at length in Vandal:
L'Avenement de Bonaparte, tome II; Nougaret de Fayet: Notice
sur la vie et les travaux de M. le comte Bigot de Preameneu;
Locre de Roissy: Proces-verbaux du conseil d'etat, contenant
la discussion du projet de Code Civil.]
The Preparation of the Code -- The Men who Made it -- Its Defects
-- The Changes it Wrought -- The Benefits it Conferred -- French
Education under Royalty -- Schemes of the Revolution --
Bonaparte's Aims in Education -- His Preliminary Measures -- The
University of France.
The climax of these beneficent changes was a corresponding reform and
simplification of the laws. The name of Napoleon has been erased from
many of his institutions, but it still endures on that splendid system
of jurisprudence known as the Code Napoleon, and in the annals of
law-making it vies in luster with that of Justinian. The monarchy,
before its fall, had become aware of the inconvenience attaching to
the diversity of legal practice in the various French provinces. At
one extreme was the old customary law of the northern inhabitants, at
the other was the nearly pure Roman law of the south, and between them
every variety of peculiar and complicated local practice. One of the
meanings of the Revolutionary watchword "Equality" was the reform of
this inequality; but the turmoil prevalent during the years of the
Assembly, the Convention, and the Directory had made it impossible to
complete the work. Nevertheless, those years had been full of
discussion, and Cambaceres had a project in readiness. So convinced
was Bonaparte of the urgency of reform that on the very night in which
he assumed the reins of government the two commissions were charged
with the performance of the repeated promises which every republican
government had made. A statute was formulated, and passed on August
twelfth, 1800. In accordance with its provisions, a committee of three
great jurists--Tronchet, Bigot de Preameneu, and Portalis, with
Malleville as secretary--was appointed to make a draft. This was
completed in four months, submitted to the courts of appeal for
suggestions, and then in the council of state, the sessions of which
Bonaparte regularly attended, was speedily revised into its final
form. In the following year the code was promulgated.
The famous body of laws owes its solid value to its historical
foundation; for it is a compound of the ancient customs, the Roman
law, and the experiences of the Revolution, the third element
dominating the other two. Cambaceres's project is its basis, the
deliberations of the commissions molded its form, its paragraphs were
polished in the council of state according to the opinions of Boulay
de la Meurthe, Berlier, Treilhard, Cambaceres, and Lebrun, and
Bonaparte himself was the author of many radical regulations
concerning marriage, divorce, and property. Simplicity, directness,
comprehensibility, and appropriateness are the marks of the entire
structure, as they are confessedly characteristic of the First
Consul's mind. His good sense and his diligence are stamped on every
page. On the other hand, in many places it bears also the marks of
his unscientific and untrained intellect; and Savigny, the Prussian
jurist, went so far as to characterize it as a "political malady."
This remark is true, but only in the sense that, as in the Roman
empire, so in Napoleonic France, civil liberty developed in an inverse
ratio to political liberty. Austin thought the code was compiled in
haste and ignorance, and that its lack of definitions to the terms
employed, together with the absence of expositions either of
principles or of distinctions, gave it a "fallacious brevity."
Nevertheless, this very simplicity and brevity have been its strength,
and to this day--with, of course, many substantive modifications, but
still in an undisturbed identity--it successfully dominates France,
Italy, Holland, Belgium, and many important parts of Germany.
Believing it to be the most enduring portion of his labors, Bonaparte
to the latest day of his life claimed the exclusive credit of its
creation, to the unjust disparagement of the other great minds which
cooeperated in its formation.
A few of the more easily comprehensible changes which it wrought will
illustrate its character. There are four divisions--one introductory,
the other three treating respectively of the law of persons, the law
of things, and the law of property and inheritance. The subject of the
civil law, the ego, the object of the civil law, the objective or
natural world, the relation between the two, or property--such is, in
a word, the method; the equality of all men before the law is its
principle; the respect for property and the directness of litigation
are its aims. Hereditary nobility and primogeniture were definitely
abolished--every child, of either sex, having equal rights of
inheritance before the law. The right of testamentary disposition was
extended so as to give greater liberty while not interfering with the
principle of family solidarity. To Jews were given the complete
rights of all other citizens, under a series of far-seeing and wise
provisions, set forth in special statutes, which destroyed many of
their antiquated customs, and all the shifts by which they had
hitherto avoided many civil obligations and still evaded the
performance of duties which weighed heavily on others. Every religious
confession was recognized, and all were alike supported by the state;
but the members of all were obliged to submit to official
registration, and to consent to the rite of civil marriage. While, on
the one hand, the necessity of divorce under certain conditions was
recognized and provisions were made for it; on the other, a series of
stringent and even barbarous regulations knitted the family more
closely together than ever before, or elsewhere in the world, and made
it a social rock against which political storms beat in vain to shake
the established order. Napoleon's iron will alone realized the notions
of regenerating feudal society which philosophers had formed and
agitators had sought in vain to establish.
The evils of both absolute royalty and feudalism were thus removed
from a vast population in western Europe which had groaned under their
burdens long after they had ceased to have any meaning or historical
vitality; and besides, the process of assimilation in life and thought
was measurably assisted by the adoption of identical laws among
millions of men differing in blood and language. The good work was
further promoted by a series of complementary codes of criminal
procedure and of commerce which are as potent and beneficent to-day as
when they were enacted. It is useless in this connection to compare
the respective merits of corresponding institutions among the Latin
and Teutonic state systems of Europe, or to enter on the long and
bitter controversy waged between French and English publicists. The
essential thing is a comparison between what Napoleon found and what
he left among the same peoples, and this proclaims him one of the
great social reformers of the world.
In no respect was the work of the Revolution more complete than in
regard to education. Royal France had a pompous list of academies,
scientific and special schools, universities, colleges, and common
schools. Their arrangements were haphazard, their origin and
management for the most part were ecclesiastical, and their patronage
was strictly ordered by social rank. Primary education, being
dependent altogether on the parishes, was in the main contemptible.
There were many great scholars and teachers, and a few choice
institutions; but the dependence of all on either the royal favor or
on the Roman hierarchy, or on both, rendered the measure of their
efficiency proportionate to the interest taken in them by crown and
church. There was consequently no general system efficacious either in
all its parts or even in all branches of one division.
The passion for national unity manifested itself, among other things,
in a demand for a system of national education. The great men of the
Assembly and of the Convention bent their shoulders to the task. For
the first time in the history of the nation it was recognized that
after the leveling of classes, the only guarantee for social order in
the future was to be found in the education of the masses.
Accordingly, they outlined a grand scheme of graded instruction. The
foundation was popular education by the primary school; then came a
system of middle or secondary schools; and then instruction by
professional faculties, including a magnificent normal school for the
training of teachers, and a polytechnic institution of the first
order. The whole was to be crowned by a museum, the College of
France, and the Institute. Education was to be gratuitous and
obligatory. The essential feature of the entire plan was the character
of the primary school, which was not to teach merely the necessary
rudiments of reading, writing, and ciphering, but the introductory
elements of the complete encyclopedia of instruction. The whole
structure was purely secular, and no account was taken of the
education of females after the age of eight. It was declared that
young girls should be trained by their parents, and entirely at home.
Condorcet alone believed in the intellectual equality of the sexes.
Lakanal secured a decree for mixed schools, under certain conditions,
in which the daughters of the republic should have the same
instruction as its sons "as far as their sex would permit"; but they
were to be chiefly occupied with spinning, dressmaking, and the
domestic arts then considered the chief ones proper to their sex. Some
parts of the enormous design were put into operation, but it was found
to transcend the abilities of an unsettled people. Talleyrand pared
down its dimensions, but at the fall of the Directory nothing had been
accomplished except the foundation of the polytechnic school.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON AS FIRST CONSUL
Profile in sepia by Lemoine. Belonging to M. Petit
Napoleon Exposition, 1895.]
It is well known that Bonaparte prepared himself for the role of
lawgiver by devouring the books lent him by Cambaceres, and by
studying the memorials already prepared by the Convention. Even then,
however, he was in the main guided by his instinct, combined with his
profound knowledge of men. The latter was his sole guide in
elaborating his scheme of public instruction. Talleyrand's plan was
before him, but the conclusion was his own. He was not at all
concerned to make scholars or to increase knowledge. He was stubbornly
determined to make citizens, as he understood the word. In a time of
utter chaos he professed himself indifferent to ideals, and was
animated by a purely practical spirit, doing nothing but what appeared
immediately essential. For this reason, in carrying out his plan, he
selected as an agent no expert with wide experience and settled
convictions, but an excellent chemist who had been a member of the
notorious Committee of Public Safety, and within a narrow horizon had
good capacities. To Fourcroy alone was intrusted the formulation of a
measure which, as Roederer said in its support, was a political
institution intended to unite the present generation with the rising
one, to bind the fathers to the government by their children and the
children by their fathers--in short, to establish a sort of public
paternity.
The religious societies which still retained their hold on such
instruction as there was had no connection with the state, and very
little with the new society. The new system was ingeniously devised to
bind up the youth of the nation with both the political and social
life of the new France. There was to be in every commune a primary
school with teachers appointed by the mayor, under supervision of the
subprefect. Next in order were secondary schools in the chief town of
every department, under supervision of the prefect; and cooerdinate
with these were such private schools as would submit to government
regulations. The next stage was composed of a limited number of
lyceums or colleges with both a classical and a modern side. These
were open only to such students as had gained distinction in the grade
below, and from them in turn a fifth were promoted to the professional
schools. Of these there were nine categories: law; medicine; natural
science; mechanical and chemical technology; higher mathematics;
geography, history, and political economy; the arts of design;
astronomy; music and the theory of composition. The First Consul
would listen to no more comprehensive or enlightened plan until this
should first be put into successful execution, as it soon was under
his impulse and Fourcroy's guidance.
Thereupon his ultimate object was unveiled. A few years later came
into existence the so-called University of France, whereby all
instruction was as perfectly centralized as administration had been.
There were three articulated degrees, primary, secondary, and
superior, controlled by a complete and rigid system of central
inspection. All institutions of each degree were divided by vertical
lines of territorial division into academies, each of which had its
own rector. These were in turn controlled by a superior council and a
grand master. The normal school was revived, military uniform and
discipline were introduced into the lyceums, and the instruction was
carefully directed toward imbuing the mind with notions suited to the
new conditions of French life, as Bonaparte meant to mold them. The
corporate university, as a whole, was not a portion of the ministry,
but while subordinate was distinct. This provision has probably been
the cause of a permanence which no political revolution has been able
to destroy. It is only since the Church secured permission for the
erection of faculties supported and controlled by itself that there
have been signs of any change of organization or any return to
academic liberty in the state institutions.