The Assemblies of the Revolution, besides the laws which, by abolishing feudalism, altered the character of real property, passed many others concerning civil law. The most important are those of 1792, passed by the Legislative Civil law. Assembly, which organized the registers of the état civil kept by the municipalities, and laid down rules for marriage as a purely civil contract. Divorce was admitted to a practically unlimited extent; it was possible not only for causes determined by law, and by mutual consent, but also for incompatibility of temper and character proved, by either husband or wife, to be of a persistent nature. Next came the laws of the Convention as to inheritance, imposing perfect equality among the natural heirs and endeavouring to ensure the division of properties. Illegitimate children were considered by these laws as on the same level with legitimate children. The Convention and the councils of the Directory also made excellent laws on the administration of hypothèques, and worked at the preparation of a Criminal law. Civil Code (see [Code Napoléon]). In criminal law their work was still more important. In 1791 the Constituent Assembly gave France her first penal code. It was inspired by humanitarian ideas, still admitting capital punishment, though accompanied by no cruelty in the execution; but none of the remaining punishments was for life. Long imprisonment with hard labour was introduced. Finally, as a reaction against the former system of arbitrary penalties, there came a system of fixed penalties determined, both as to its assessment and its nature, for each offence, which the judge could not modify. The Constituent Assembly also reformed the procedure of criminal trials, taking English law as model. It introduced the jury, with the double form of jury d’accusation and jury de jugement. Before the judges procedure was always public and oral. The prosecution was left in principle to the parties concerned, plaintiffs or dénonciateurs civiques, and the preliminary investigation was handed over to two magistrates; one was the juge de paix, as in English procedure at this period, and the other a magistrate chosen from the district court and called the directeur du jury. The Convention, before separating, passed the Code des délits et des peines of the 3rd Brumaire in the year IV. This piece of work, which was due to Merlin de Douai, was intended to deal with criminal procedure and penal law; but only the first part could be completed. It was the procedure established by the Constituent Assembly, but further organized and improved.

The Consulate and the Empire.—The constitutional law of the Consulate and the Empire is to be found in a series of documents called later the Constitutions de l’Empire, the constitution promulgated during the Hundred Days being consequently given the name of Acte additionnel aux Constitutions de l’Empire. These documents consist of (1) the Constitution of the 22nd Frimaire of the year VIII., the work of Sieyès and Bonaparte, the text on which the others were based; (2) the senatus consulte of the 16th Thermidor in the year X., establishing the consulate for life; and (3) the senatus consulte of the 28th Floréal in the year XII., which created the Empire. These constitutional acts, which were all, whether in their full text or in principle, submitted to the popular vote by means of a plébiscite, had all the same object: to assure absolute power to Napoleon, while preserving the forms and appearance of liberty. Popular suffrage was maintained, and even became universal; but, since the system was that of suffrage in many stages, which, moreover, varied very much, the citizens in effect merely nominated the candidates, and it was the Senate, playing the part of grand électeur which Sieyès had dreamed of as his own, which chose from among them the members of the various so-called elected bodies, even those of the political assemblies. According to the constitution of the year VIII., the first consul (to whom had been added two colleagues, the second and third consuls, who did not disappear until the Empire) possessed the executive power in the widest sense of the word, and he alone could initiate legislation. There were three representative assemblies in existence, elected as we have seen; but one of them, the Corps Législatif, passed laws without discussing them, and without the power of amending the suggestions of the government. The Tribunate, on the contrary, discussed them, but its vote was not necessary for the passing of the law. The Senate was the guardian and preserver of the constitution; in addition to its role of grand électeur, its chief function was to annul laws and acts submitted to it by the Tribunate as being unconstitutional. This original organization was naturally modified during the course of the Consulate and the Empire; not only did the emperor obtain the right of directly nominating senators, and the princes of the imperial family, and grant dignitaries of the Empire that of entering the Senate by right; but a whole body, the Tribunate, which was the only one which could preserve some independence, disappeared, without resort having been had to a plebiscite; it was modified and weakened by senatus consulte of the year X., and was suppressed in 1807 by a mere senatus consulte. The importance of another body, on the contrary, the conseil d’état, which had been formed on the improved type of the ancient conseil du roi, and consisted of members appointed by Napoleon and carefully chosen, continually increased. It was this body which really prepared and discussed the laws; and it was its members who advocated them before the Corps Législatif, to which the Tribunate also sent orators to speak on its behalf. The ministers, who had no relation with the legislative power, were merely the agents of the head of the state, freely chosen by himself. Napoleon, however, found these powers insufficient, and arrogated to himself others, a fact which the Senate did not forget when it proclaimed his downfall. Thus he frequently declared war upon his own authority, in spite of the provisions to the contrary made by the constitution of the year VIII.; and similarly, under the form of décrets, made what were really laws. They were afterwards called décrets-lois, and those that were not indissolubly associated with the political régime of the Empire, and survived it, were subsequently declared valid by the court of cassation, on the ground that they had not been submitted to the Senate as unconstitutional, as had been provided by the constitution of the year VIII.

This period saw the rise of a whole new series of great organic laws. For administrative organization, the most important was that of the 28th Pluviôse in the year VIII. It established as chief authority for each department a Administrative changes under Consulate and Empire. prefect, and side by side with him a conseil général for deliberative purposes; for each arrondissement (corresponding to the old district) a sub-prefect (sous-préfet) and a conseil d’arrondissement; and for each commune, a mayor and a municipal council. But all these officials, both the members of the councils and the individual agents, were appointed by the head of the state or by the prefect, so that centralization was restored more completely than ever. Together with the prefect there was also established a conseil de préfecture, having administrative functions, and generally acting as a court of the first instance in disputes and litigation arising out of the acts of the administration; for the Constituent Assembly had removed such cases from the jurisdiction of the civil tribunals, and referred them to the administrative bodies themselves. The final appeal in these disputes was to the conseil d’état, which was supreme judge in these matters. In 1807 was created another great administrative jurisdiction, the cour des comptes, after the pattern of that which had existed under the ancien régime.

Judicial organization had also been fundamentally altered. The system of election was preserved for a time in the case of the juges de paix and the members of the court of cassation, but finally disappeared there, even where Judicial changes. it had already been no more than a form. The magistrates were in principle appointed for life, but under the Empire a device was found for evading the rule of irremovability. For the judgment of civil cases there was a court of first instance in every arrondissement, and above these a certain number of courts of appeal, each of which had within its province several departments. The separate criminal tribunals were abolished in 1809 by the Code d’Instruction Criminelle, and the magistrates forming the cour d’assises, which judged crimes with the aid of a jury, were drawn from the courts of appeal and from the civil tribunals. The jury d’accusation was also abolished by the Code d’Instruction Criminelle, and the right of pronouncing the indictment was transferred to a chamber of the court of appeal. The correctional tribunals were amalgamated with the civil tribunals of the first instance. The tribunal de cassation, which took under the Empire the name of cour de cassation, consisted of magistrates appointed for life, and still kept its powers. The ministère public (consisting of imperial avocats and procureurs) was restored in practically the same form as under the ancien régime.

The former system of taxation was preserved in principle, Taxation. but with one considerable addition: Napoleon re-established indirect taxation on articles of consumption, which had been abolished by the Constituent Assembly; the chief of these were the duties on liquor (droits réunis, or excise) and the monopoly of tobacco.

The Concordat concluded by Napoleon with the papacy on the 26th Messidor of the year IX. re-established the Catholic religion in France as the form of worship recognized and endowed by the state. It was in principle drawn up on the lines of that of 1516, and assured to the The Concordat. head of the French state in his dealings with the papacy the same prerogatives as had formerly been enjoyed by the kings; the chief of these was that he appointed the bishops, who afterwards had to ask the pope for canonical institution. The territorial distribution of dioceses was preserved practically as it had been left by the civil constitution of the clergy. The state guaranteed the payment of salaries to bishops and curés; and the pope agreed to renounce all claims referring to the appropriation of the goods of the clergy made by the Constituent Assembly. Later on, a decree restored to the fabriques (vestries) such of their former possessions as had not been alienated, and the churches which had not been alienated were restored for the purposes of worship. The law of the 18th Germinal in the year X., ratifying the Concordat, reasserted, under the name of articles organiques du culte catholique, all the main principles contained in the old doctrine of the liberties of the Gallican Church. The Concordat did not include the restoration of the religious orders and congregations; Napoleon sanctioned by decrees only a few establishments of this kind.

One important creation of the Empire was the university. The ancien régime had had its universities for purposes of instruction and for the conferring of degrees; it had also, though without any definite organization, such The university. secondary schools as the towns admitted within their walls, and the primary schools of the parishes. The Revolution suppressed the universities and the teaching congregations. The constitution of the year III. proclaimed the liberty of instruction and commanded that public schools, both elementary and secondary, should be established. Under the Directory there was in each department an école centrale, in which all branches of human knowledge were taught. Napoleon, developing ideas which had been started in the second half of the 18th century, founded by laws and decrees of 1806, 1808 and 1811 the Université de France, which provided and organized higher, secondary and primary education; this was to be the monopoly of the state, carried on by its facultés, lycées and primary schools. No private educational establishment could be opened without the authorization of the state.

But chief among the documents dating from this period are the Codes, which still give laws to France. These are the Civil Code of 1804, the Code de Procédure Civile of 1806, the Code de Commerce of 1807, the Code d’Instruction Criminelle The Codes. of 1809, and the Code Pénal of 1810. These monumental works, in the elaboration of which the conseil d’état took the chief part, contributed, to a greater or less extent, towards the fusion of the old law of France with the laws of the Revolution. It was in the case of the Code Civil that this task presented the greatest difficulty (see [Code Napoléon]). The Code de Commerce was scarcely more than a revised and emended edition of the ordonnances of 1673 and 1681; while the Code de Procédure Civile borrowed its chief elements from the ordonnance of 1667. In the case of the Code d’Instruction Criminelle a distinctly new departure was made; the procedure introduced by the Revolution into courts where judgment was given remained public and oral, with full liberty of defence; the preliminary procedure, however, before the examining court (juge d’instruction or chambre des mises en accusation) was borrowed from the ordonnance of 1670; it was the procedure of the old law, without its cruelty, but secret and written, and generally not in the presence of both parties. The Code Pénal maintained the principles of the Revolution, but increased the penalties. It substituted for the system of fixed penalties, in cases of temporary punishment, a maximum and a minimum, between the limits of which judges could assess the amount. Even in the case of misdemeanours, it admitted the system of extenuating circumstances, which allowed them still further to decrease and alter the penalty in so far as the offence was mitigated by such circumstances. (See further under [Napoleon I].)

The Restored Monarchy.—The Restoration and the Monarchy of July, though separated by a revolution, form one period in the history of French institutions, a period in which the same régime was continued and developed. This Constitutional monarchy. was the constitutional monarchy, with a parliamentary body consisting of two chambers, a system imitated from England. The same constitution was preserved under these two monarchies—the charter granted by Louis XVIII. in 1814. The revolution of 1830 took place in defence of the charter which Charles X. had violated by the ordonnances of July, so that this charter was naturally preserved under the “July Monarchy.” It was merely revised by the Chamber of Deputies, which had been one of the movers of the revolution, and by what remained of the House of Peers. In order to give the constitution the appearance of originating in the will of the people, the preface, which made it appear to be a favour granted by the king, was destroyed. The two chambers acquired the initiative in legislation, which had not been recognized as theirs under the Restoration, but from this time on belonged to them equally with the king. The sittings of the House of Peers were henceforth held in public; but this chamber underwent another and more fundamental transformation. The peers were nominated by the king, with no limit of numbers, and according to the charter of 1814 their appointment could be either for life or hereditary; but, in execution of an ordinance of Louis XVIII., during the Restoration they were always appointed under the latter condition. Under the July Monarchy their tenure of office was for life, and the king had to choose them from among twenty-two classes of notables fixed by law. The franchise for the election of the Chamber of Deputies had been limited by a system of money qualifications; but while, under the Restoration, it had been necessary, in order to be an elector, to pay three hundred francs in direct taxation, this sum was reduced in 1831 to two hundred francs, while in certain cases even a smaller amount sufficed. In order to be elected as a deputy it was necessary, according to the charter of 1814, to pay a thousand francs in direct taxation, and according to that of 1830 five hundred francs. From 1817 onwards there was direct suffrage, the electors directly electing the deputies. The idea of those who had framed the charter of 1814 had been to give the chief influence to the great landed proprietors, though the means adopted to this end were not adequate: in 1830 the chief aim had been to give a preponderating influence to the middle and lower middle classes, and this had met with greater success. The House of Peers, under the name of cour des pairs, had also the function of judging attempts and plots against the security of the state, and it had frequently to exercise this function both under the Restoration and the July Monarchy.

This was a period of parliamentary government; that is, of government by a cabinet, resting on the responsibility of the ministers to the Chamber of Deputies. The only interruption was that caused by the resistance of Charles X. at the end of his reign, which led to the revolution of July. Parliamentary government was practised regularly and in an enlightened spirit under the Restoration, although the Chamber had not then all the powers which it has since acquired. It is noteworthy that during this period the right of the House of Peers to force a ministry to resign by a hostile vote was not recognized. By the creation of a certain number of new peers, a fournée de pairs, as it was then called, the majority in this House could be changed when necessary. But the government of the Restoration had to deal with two extreme parties of a very opposite nature: the Ultras, who wished to restore as far as possible the ancien régime, to whom were due the acts of the chambre introuvable of 1816, and later the laws of the ministry of Villèle, especially the law of sacrilege and that voting compensation to the dispossessed nobles, known as the milliard des émigrés; and on the other hand the Liberals, including the Bonapartists and Republicans, who were attached to the principles of the Revolution. In order to prevent either of these parties from predominating in the chamber, the government made a free use of its power of dissolution. It further employed two means to check the progress of the Liberals; firstly, there were various alterations successively made in the electoral law, and the press laws, frequently restrictive in their effect, which introduced the censorship and a preliminary authorization in the case of periodical publications, and gave the correctional tribunals jurisdiction in cases of press offences. The best electoral law was that of 1817, and the best press laws were those of 1819; but these were not of long duration. Under the July Monarchy parliamentary government, although its machinery was further perfected, was not so brilliant. The majorities in the Chamber of Deputies were often uncertain, so much so, that more than once the right of dissolution was exercised in order to try by new elections to arrive at an undivided and certain majority. King Louis Philippe, though sober-minded, wished to exercise a personal influence on the policy of the cabinet, so that there were then two schools, represented respectively by Thiers and Guizot, one of which held the theory that “the king reigns but does not govern”; while the other maintained that he might exercise a personal influence, provided that he could rely on a ministry supported by a majority of the Chamber of Deputies. But the weak point in the July Monarchy was above all the question of the franchise. A powerful movement of opinion set in towards demanding an extension, some wishing for universal suffrage, but the majority proposing what was called the adjonction des capacités, that is to say, that to the number of qualified electors should be added those citizens who, by virtue of their professions, capacity or acquirements, were inscribed after them on the general list for juries. But the government obstinately refused all electoral reform, and held to the law of 1831. It also refused parliamentary reform, by which was meant a rule which would have made most public offices incompatible with the position of deputy, the Chamber of Deputies being at that time full of officials. The press, thanks to the Charter, was perfectly free, without either censorship or preliminary authorization, and press offences were judged by a jury.