Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/578

 564 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY seems likely to occupy a position similar to our own in the western hemisphere. The constitutional position of this Con- federation of Powers is not unlike that of the states of the American Confederation in 1780, and in certain ways it is even further developed. Its legislation is not in the hands of a permanent congress, but it is accomplished by mutual consultation. For action, as Lord Salisbury once informed the world, " vmanimous consent is required," as was the case in our Confederation. Executive power has been exercised several times either by the joint show of force by two or more powers, or by deputing one power to accomplish the desired result. The judiciary, as a result of the Hague Convention, is much further developed than was that of the Confederation, even after 1781. All of this has been accom- plished in fifty years, and the prospect of peace and pros- perity for the whole world as a result of its further develop- ment is most promising. The progress that has been described is well indicated by the course of the movement for codification. Just a hundred years ago the first of the French Codes was adopted. These codes had two purposes : first, to unify the law which, before the adoption of the codes, had differed in every province and every commune of France; second, to simplify it so that every one might know the law. The first purpose appealed most strongly to lawyers and to statesmen. The second appealed to the people generally. Whatever reason weighed most with Napoleon, there is no doubt which made the codes permanent. The people of France, and of the other countries where they were intro- duced, hailed them as creating a law for the common people. They persisted in most countries where they had been intro- duced by Napoleon's arms in spite of the later change in gov- ernment; whether the country on which they had been im- posed was Flemish, German, Swiss, or Itahan, it retained the codes after the defeat of Napoleon, and they have remained almost the sole relic of his rule, the only governmental affairs which retain his name, and, except Pan-Germanism, the only lasting monument of his labor. They persisted because they