Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/606

 592 IV, THE NINETEENTH CENTURY to follow the system which prevailed on the European con- tinent. The fourth stage is that of codification. In many parts of Gaul, though less in Provence and Languedoc, the Roman law had gone back into that shape of a body of customs from which it had emerged a thousand yoars before; and in Northern and Middle Gaul some customs, especially in mat- ters relating to land, were not Roman. At last, under Lewis the Fourteenth, a codifying process set in. Comprehensive Ordinances, each covering a branch of law, began to be issued from 1667 down to 1747. These operated through- out France, and, being founded on Roman principles, further advanced the work, already prosecuted by the jurists, of Romanizing the customary law of Northern France. That of Southern France (the pays du droit ecrit) had been more specifically Roman, for the South had been less affected by Frankish conquest and settlement. The five Codes promul- gated by Napoleon followed in 1803 to ISIO.^ Others reproducing them with more or less divergence have been enacted in other Romance countries. In Prussia, Frederick the Second directed the preparation of a Code which became law after his death, in 1794. From 1848 onwards parts of the law of Germany (which differed in different parts of the country) began to be codified, being at first enacted by the several States, each for itself, latterly by the legislature of the new Empire. Finally, after twenty- two years of labour, a new Code for the whole German Em- pire was settled, was passed by the Chambers, and came into force on the first of January, 1900. It does not, however, altogether supersede pre-existing local law. This Code, far from being pure Roman law, embodies many rules due to mediaeval custom (especially custom relating to land-rights) modernized to suit modern conditions, and also a great deal of post-mediaeval legislation.^ Some German jurists com- model are Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, and Chili. See an article by Mr. E. Schuster in the Law Quarterly Review for January, 1896. many (by Dr. Erwin Griiber) may be found in the Introduction to Mr. Ledlie's translation of Sohm's Institutionen (1st edition).
 * Among the States in which the French Code has heen taken as a
 * An interesting sketch of the "reception" of Roman law in Ger-