ers.[426]

[Footnote 426: For the text of the constitution of
1795 see Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions,
78-118; Helie, Les Constitutions, 436-466;
Anderson, Constitutions, 212-254. Summary in Block,
Dictionnaire General, 498-500. Cambridge Modern
History, VIII., Chap. 13; G. Dodu, Le
parlementarisme et les parlementaires sous la
Revolution, 1789-1799; origines du regime
representatif en France (Paris, 1911); Fisher,
Republican Tradition in Europe, Chap. 5.]

*316. The Constitution of the Year VIII. (1799): Electoral System.*--The
constitution of the Year III. continued in operation from October,
1795, to Napoleon's _coup d'etat_ of 18 Brumaire of the Year VIII.
(November 9, 1799). In the course of a month and a half following the
event mentioned there was drawn up a new fundamental law, prepared in
the first instance largely by Napoleon and Sieyes, put into final
shape by two commissions composed each of twenty-five members of the
old Councils, and subsequently ratified by popular vote.[427] Amended
from time to time by important organic enactments, the Constitution of
the Year VIII. (December 13, 1799) comprised the fundamental law under
which Napoleon ruled France until his abdication in 1814.

[Footnote 427: In favor of the new constitution
there were cast 3,011,007 votes; against it,
1,562.]

The new instrument, in ninety-five articles, was much briefer than the
one which it replaced,[428] but the scheme of government for which it
made provision was distinctly more complicated than that previously in
operation. In the main, the Napoleonic constitution dealt with three
subjects: the electoral system, the assemblies, and the executive.
Nominally there was established a system of thoroughgoing manhood (p. 294)
suffrage. But the conditions under which electoral powers were to be
exercised rendered the plan very much less democratic than on the
surface it appeared to be. The scheme was one devised by Sieyes under
the designation of "lists of notables." In each communal district
citizens twenty-one years of age and inscribed on the civil register
were authorized to choose one-tenth of their number to comprise a
"communal list." Those named on the communal list were to c