Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/65

 ТIie Green Bag. law, with only some unessential concessions to local or provincial law and usage; or, in other words, they wrote the civil law over and above their local and tribal laws, with the result that they secured and now enjoy an orderly, enlightened and essentially scientific system of law and jurisprudence, fit for the governance of an highly ciyilized and pro gressive state. There is, indeed, much of sound reason in their boast that it is the most perfect legal machinery ever devised 'by the wit of man. It is not good only in theory, but it is as nearly perfect in practice as any legal system is ever likely to be that depends upon, human agency for its execution. No where on the earth, it may be confidently asserted, is there a more general respect for the law than in France; nowhere is life and human right safer and more secured, or jus tice more fairly and evenly meted out; no where is there a body of lawyers of greater accomplishment and learning; nowhere a bench with higher ideals or a finer purpose to hold the scales of justice even; nowhere bet ter results for the body of the people from the work of the law and the lawyers. So conspicuous has been the success of the French legal system in practice that, within the century in which it has been in operation, almost the whole civilized world has more or less adopted it; or, to be more exact, the Roman law in substantially the modern French form is now the law of probably more than three-quarters of civilized mankind. It is thus the law not only of France and all of her colonies, but also of Greece, Italy, and all the minor countries of southeastern Europe, of Spain and Portugal, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Hungary. Germany, Norway and Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Mexico, all the countries of Central and South America, of Scotland and the Philippine Islands, the West Indies, Louisiana, and a majority of the more important British colonies, e. g., Quebec, Ceylon and British Guiana, of Egypt, and all the other civilized parts of Africa, and many

of the islands of the seas. As against this formidable list, the English or Common Law prevails only in England and Ireland, and a few English colonies—like Canada (except Quebec) and Australia—and the United States (except Louisiana, the Philippines, Cuba and Porto Rico). The German empire, in spite of its jealousy of anything French, has recently adopted for the empire the Prus sian Code, which is a Germanized version of the Code Napoleon, and Japan as part and parcel of her scheme of civilization, has enacted a code of law on French lines, follow ing closely even its minor details. 'No new country like Japan, when called upon to adopt an alien system of law, could hesitate as between the French codification and any other existing system; and even old coun tries like Germany, in any serious scheme of legal reconstruction and reorganization, are equally remitted to the same selection. In neither case would the common law be a pos sibility. The French system of corporation or cornpan}- law is also well nigh universal. Out side of the United States and England incor porated companies organized under statutes draw closely along French lines, and known by the universal French names, Socictc Anonyme, Socictc par Actions, Société Commer ciale, are doing the corporate business of the world. When we get away from the immedi ate influence of the two English speaking countries, this form of incorporation seems to be taken for granted by commercial com munities everywhere, very much as we as sume inevitable the recurrence of the tides or that young children are apt to catch the measles. But I must tell you, as one of the humors of the subject, that once, in London. a guileless Briton—a lawyer, too, as solic itors go in that country—was possessed of sufficient facial control to keep his counte nance and seriously inform me that foreign 'nations generally preferred English company law to their ore1/) /