his
action herein was dictated by personal considerations. Others again
may point to the declarations of the French National Assemblies that
the law regarded marriage merely as a civil contract, and that divorce
was to be a logical sequel of individual liberty, "which an
indissoluble tie would annul." It is indisputable that extremely lax
customs had been the result of the law of 1792, divorce being allowed
on a mere declaration of incompatibility of temper.[164] Against these
scandals Bonaparte firmly set his face. But he disagreed with the
framers of the new Code when they proposed altogether to prohibit
divorce, though such a proposition might well have seemed consonant
with his zeal for Roman Catholicism. After long debates it was decided
to reduce the causes which could render divorce possible from nine to
four--adultery, cruelty, condemnation to a degrading penalty, and
mutual consent--provided that this last demand should be persistently
urged after not less than two years of marriage, and in no case was it
to be valid after twenty years of marriage.[165]

We may also notice here that Bonaparte sought to surround the act of
adoption with much solemnity, declaring it to be one of the grandest
acts imaginable. Yet, lest marriage should thereby be discouraged,
celibates were expressly debarred from the privileges of adopting
heirs. The precaution shows how keenly this able ruler peered into
the future. Doubtless, he surmised that in the future the population
of France would cease to expand at the normal rate, owing to the
working of the law compelling the equal division of property among all
the children of a family. To this law he was certainly opposed.
Equality in regard to the bequest of property was one of the sacred
maxims of revolutionary jurists, who had limited the right of free
disposal by bequest to one-tenth of each estate: nine-tenths being of
necessity divided equally among the direct heirs. Yet so strong was
the reaction in favour of the Roman principle of paternal authority,
that Bonaparte and a majority of the drafters of the new Code scrupled
not to assail that maxim, and to claim for the father larger
discretionary powers over the disposal of his property. They demanded
that the disposable share should vary according to the wealth of the
testator--a remarkable proposal, which proves him to be anything but
the unflinching champion of revolutionary legal ideas which popular
French histories have ge