Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/153

117 NAPOLEON AND HIS CODE 117 set of positive laws well suited to the whole of France." Be that as it may, the Convention considered the work "too complex" and on November third referred it back to the Committee to be "sim- plified." Nothing more came of it, however, nor of a subsequent draft of two hundred and ninety-seven brief articles which Cam- baceres later presented to the Convention;^ and after a vain effort by him to interest the Council of Five Hundred in the project, it was allowed to languish for the»remainder of the eighteenth century. Napoleon's Code Commission Bonaparte was now first consul, and the victory of Marengo gave him leisure for the pursuits of peace. More than any man in France he saw that its greatest need was a thorough overhauling and unification of its laws. But still more he alone discerned the means by which reform was to be brought about. Napoleon dis- carded the old committee of the Assembly. He considered that it had demonstrated its incapacity, and on August 13, 1800, he pro- ceeded to appoint a new commission to draft a real code. This was eleven years after the outbreak of the Revolution, one of the purposes of which was to reform the laws. Little had been ac- complished in this direction in all that time, though startling changes had been taking place along other Hnes. Napoleon proceeded to look for the ablest and most competent men in the whole country; he disregarded all other considerations; he appointed no man as a codifier because of pohtical affiliations; and he omitted none because of personal dislike. Of the four who were selected everyone was past middle age and a conserva- tive, at heart attached to the old regime, and Napoleon knew it. He recognized perfectly well that their natural sympathies were with the past. At the head of the commission he appointed Tronchet, aged seventy-three, and president of the Cour de Cassation. And what were Tronchet's antecedents ? He was one of the counsel who had defended Loms XVI when prosecuted and finally executed by the revolutionists. In fact, he was called "The Nestor of the Aris- tocracy." Can one imagine a more remarkable appointment than that of a man who was practically the legal representative of the • Planiol, supra.