livre du
centenaire (Paris, 1904)--a volume of valuable
essays by French and foreign lawyers.]

*365. Other Codes.*--Aside from the Civil Code of 1804, containing an
aggregate of 2,281 articles, the larger part of the law of France
to-day is comprised in four great codes, all drawn up and promulgated
during the era of the Consulate and the Empire. These are: (1) the
Code of Civil Procedure, of 1,042 articles, in 1806; (2) the Code of
Commerce, of 648 articles, in 1807; (3) the Code of Criminal
Instruction, of 648 articles, in 1808; and (4) the Penal Code, of 484
articles, in 1810.[499] The last two codes were submitted to a general
revision in 1832, and various supplementary codes,--e.g., the Forest
Code, of 226 articles, in 1827,--have been promulgated. But the
modifications introduced since Napoleon's day have involved
principally mere details or the addition of subjects originally
omitted. No one of the codes represented at the time of its
promulgation a new body of law. On the contrary, all of them, and
especially the fundamental Civil Code of 1804, merely reduced existing
law to systematic, written form, introducing order and uniformity
where previously there had been diversity and even chaos. By the
process the law of France was given a measure of unity and precision
which it had never before possessed, with the disadvantage, however,
that it lost the flexibility and dynamic character that once had
belonged to it. Throughout the past hundred years the whole of France
has been a country of one written law--a law so comprehensive in (p. 337)
both principles and details that, until comparatively recently, there
has seemed to be small room or reason for its modification. The
history of French parliamentary assemblies has been affected
perceptibly by the narrowing of the field of legislation arising from
this circumstance.[500]

[Footnote 499: M. Leroy, Le centenaire du code
penal, in _Revue de Paris_, Feb. 1, 1911.]

[Footnote 500: J. Brissaud, History of French
Private Law, trans. by R. Howell (Boston, 1912).]

II. THE COURTS

*366. The Ordinary Courts: Justice of the Peace.*--In French practice
the distinction which is drawn between private law and public law is
so sharp that there have been built up two hierarchies of courts--the
ordinary and the administrative--each of which maintains practi