Page:The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789-1907, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.pdf/300

270 12. These changes shall have for their object only to consolidated, guarantee, and consecrate inviolably the sovereignty of the French people, the republic one and indivisible, the representative system, the division of powers, liberty, equality, security and prosperity.

13. The consular commission can present its views to them in this respect.

14. Finally, the two commissons are charged to prepare a civil code.

15. They shall sit at Paris in the place of the legislative body and they can convoke it in extraordinary session for the ratification of peace or in a great public danger.

16. The present [document] shall be printed, sent by extraordinary couriers into the departments, and solemnly published and posted in all the communes of the Republic.

 58. Constitution of the Year VIII.

December 13, 1799. Duvergier, Lois, XII, 20–30.

This constitution although nominally framed by the two legislative commissions appointed by No. 57 was actually imposed upon them by Napoleon Bonaparte. It was submitted to the people and accepted by over three million votes against about fifteen hundred.

Fournier, Napoleon, 183–187; Dickinson, Revolution and Reaction in Modern France, 36–41; Rose, Napoleon, I, 209–214; Sloane, Napoleon, II, 81–86; Lanfrey, Napoleon, I, Ch. XIII; Cambridge Modern History, IX, 3–7; Lavisse and Rambaud, Histoire générale, IX, 5–12; Aulard, Révolution française, 704–711; Jaurès, Histoire socialiste, VI, 28–43.

Constitution of the French Republic.

Title I. Of the Exercise of the Rights of Citizenship.

1. The French Republic is one and indivisible.

Its European territory is divided into departments and communal districts.

2. Every man born and residing in France fully twenty-one years of age, who has caused his name to be inscribed upon the civic register of his communal district and has since lived for one year upon the soil of the Republic, is a French citizen.

3. A foreigner becomes a French citizen when, after having reached the full age of twenty-one years and having de-