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ART. II.-1. Codex Theodosianus.

HÄNEL. Bonnæ: 1843.

Instruxit GUSTAVUS

2. Civil Code of Lower Canada. Ottawa: 1866. From the Amended Roll deposited in the Office of Clerk of the Legislative Council, as directed by the Act 29 Vict. cap. 41: 1865.

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T is now just half a century since attention was called in these pages to certain proposals which had been put forth by perhaps the greatest theoretical jurist who has ever lived.* Mr. Bentham, despairing of encouragement from the Government of his own country, had offered his services as legislator to the United States of America, and to the Emperor of Russia. By neither were his offers accepted, but from both he obtained a respectful hearing. England in those days was indeed beginning to bestir herself towards legal reforms, but her first steps were not in the path which had been most carefully explored by the philosophic jurist. The object at which Bentham chiefly aimed was the re-expression and re-arrangement of the law according to a scientific method. A more pressing necessity for English. statesmen was to alter the law itself; to adapt to the ideas and wants of modern civilisation a system which had grown together in the comparative barbarism of the feudal ages. We had to get rid of a series of penal enactments, the indiscriminate severity of which defeated its own object, while it rendered our name a byeword throughout Europe; we had to sweep away some of the more obtrusive absurdities which beset all dealings with landed property; and we had to emancipate our procedure from a network of scholastic subtleties, which seemed woven expressly to prevent causes from being tried upon their real merits.

The Romillys, the Mackintoshes, the Peels, and the Broughams ve done their work; our laws, in humanity and in compreveness, are not unworthy of our civilisation; but the task Bentham devoted the best powers of his intellect has commenced. The form in which our law is expressed twhat it was, and is probably worse than that of urisprudence now extant in Europe or America. te at once what is meant by so sweeping is simply this: while almost every ged its laws upon some sort of

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With these extracts we must bring our review to a close, not without a regret that we have had to leave unnoticed many attractive subjects and withstand many temptations to digress. The fifteenth and last volume of what may properly be termed the first series of Napoleon's Correspondence ends with the return of the triumphant Emperor to Paris after the conclusion of the Peace of Tilsit. The year 1807 was the crowning point of Napoleon's reign. With the exception of England and Turkey he held all Europe directly or indirectly in his dependence. The Czar was to be henceforward his friend, and they had agreed at Tilsit to divide the world between them. He had at last found an ally with whose help he might hope to reduce England to the alternative of submitting, or of making war against United Europe. His brother Joseph was the recognised king of Naples, Louis reigned in Holland, and a kingdom, Westphalia, had been cut out for Jérome. Eugène was his viceroy for Italy. He was the protector of the Confederation of the Rhine. He had wrested from vanquished nations spoils with which he might hope that even his insatiate generals would be satisfied. Trade and agriculture languished, but the treasury of his army was overflowing and the sinews of war were his. France was so thoroughly mastered that he had been able to remain absent from his capital without fear during a whole twelvemonth. Apparently no irremediable fault had as yet been committed, and the Spanish war, that first downward step, was not contemplated. Well might he suppose, in the intoxication of his power, that he had laid the foundations of the second Empire of the West! But it is impossible to read in the present day the volumes in which his whole system of government is laid bare without coming to the conclusion that his Empire, even at its most glorious period, rested on sand, and that his accumulated conquests were but the heaped-up materials for a gigantic ruin.

As regards the man himself, the dominant impression that will be left on the reader's mind will, we think, be that of meanness of moral littleness, strangely combined with great strength of will and unrivalled activity of mind. Napoleon 1800-1814. We should scarcely be fulfilling our duty towards the public, if we did not take this opportunity of likewise calling attention to M. Lanfrey's very remarkable work: 'Histoire de Napo' léon 1er.' For the first time, the character of Napoleon has been dealt with, by a French historian, in a liberal and equitable spirit. The first volume only of the 'Histoire de Napoléon 1er' has been published as yet, but the second is, we believe, now going through the press. The work promises to be most valuable, when completed.

was in truth an actor, and in his Correspondence we view him from behind the scenes. The vulgar applause of the multitude can no longer deceive those who know his history as it is there written with his own hand. His duplicity, his bombast and mock heroism, his studied violence, his love of false grandeur, his envy in the midst of unrivalled greatness, his hatred and distrust of all that was really good and great, his vulgar arrogance, his indifference to the sufferings of others, his selfish and insensate ambition, are conspicuous in every page. This greatest of modern conquerors was not a hero, for the great soul-the magnanimity-which alone makes heroes, he never possessed.

He belonged neither to the nation over which he ruled, nor to the age in which he lived. He was a phenomenon, a scourge of God, as our forefathers would have said, a man of the middle ages rather than of our times. In no respect was he French. He had the subtleness of the Italian and the stubborn will of the Corsican, but he showed neither the good nor the bad qualities which are distinctive of the French character. Had he possessed the national failings, a love of pleasure and of ease, a desire for material enjoyments would have made him seek repose when he had reached the summit. He Iwould have wearied of war as all his French marshals and generals—even the bravest-wearied of it, and Europe might have found peace in his sensuality. Had he been a Frenchman, some pity-pity such as even Louis XIV. felt-might have touched his heart for the nation which poured out so freely for him her blood and her treasure. Even in their excesses, the Frenchmen of the Revolution had generally shown one redeeming quality, mistaken though they might be--a wish for the general improvement of the world. A feeling, call it as one will, love of progress or love of mankind, but, in short, an ennobling and generous feeling, had been theirs. In this respect, too, Napoleon was not French, and, to borrow the words of Fichte, no idea of the higher moral destiny of man 6 ever entered his mind.'

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It seems almost incredible that the name of Napoleon should ever have been the watchword of a party, which reproached the successive Governments of France with unconstitutional tendencies. Under the Restoration, Bonapartism and liberalism were synonymous; even in our time, we have seen the resurrection of Cæsarism hailed by a large fraction of the democratic party who denounced Louis-Philippe as a tyrant. Strange to say, Literature, which suffered so much at the hands of Bonaparte, has been mainly instrumental in creating this

confusion of ideas. Béranger the popular chansonnier, and, at a later day, Thiers-the Béranger of history-have been the chief authors of the Napoleonic legend. This latter has stated the only good reason for Napoleon's enduring popularity, when, in recording a tardy censure at the end of the twentieth volume of an unwearied apology, he says that Frenchmen should preserve for his memory those feelings that every army ' owes to the general who has long led it to victory.' But even this implies forgetfulness of the fact, that the long-victorious general brought on his country the humiliation and misery of a two-fold invasion. Be that as it may, it is certain that the advent of the Second Empire has alone had the power of thoroughly and finally dissociating the idea of Napoleonism from that of liberty in the popular mind of France.

Even in the present day there are many liberal Frenchmen, who, while they blame the policy of the great Napoleon, profess deep respect for the legislation and administration which he bequeathed to France, and which, to use a French cant phrase, 'all Europe envies.' Yet it is as a legislator and political administrator that Napoleon has done most mischief to France, as we have already pointed out. He left her, and she has remained to this day, completely organised for despotism, with a central authority armed and equipped at all points with irresistible power. Self-government, a word which has been introduced bodily into the French language, has many partisans in France; but the first tools and implements for the work of self-government are wanting. Even were France suddenly placed in a condition of complete political freedom it would require long and patient application of the law of natural selection' to enable her to discard gradually the institutions which would be worse than useless in her new state, and to develope the barely rudimentary capabilities of self-government which a long course of centralisation has condemned to atrophy. As it is, one might as well expect a bird to use its wings under water or a fish to soar in the air, as to expect that France, with her present organisation, can practise self-government. Few Frenchmen, however, acknowledge this, and, if they did, it is a difficult task to alter the whole political understructure of a nation. It is far easier to exchange a constitutional king for a republic, or a republic for a dictator.

We cannot take leave of the Imperial Editorial Commission without once more expressing our gratitude for the service which it has voluntarily or involuntarily-rendered to the cause of historic truth. It has dealt an irrecoverable blow to one of the most wide-spread delusions of the present day-the great Napoleonic superstition.

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