Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/946

INSTITUTIONS] 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 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, 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 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 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 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 ). 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 )

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 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