must be extended and modified by judges, and every year will
produce its quota of new legislation by the state. The courts should be
left to interpret a code as they now interpret statutes, and provision
should be made for the continual revision of the code, so that the new
law created by judges or directly by the state may from time to time be
worked into the code.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The most ancient code known, that of Khammurabi, is dealt with in
the article BABYLONIAN LAW.

CODE NAPOLEON, the first code of the French civil law, known at first as
the _Code civil des Francais_, was promulgated in its entirety by a law
of the 30th Ventose in the year XII. (31st of March 1804). On the 3rd of
September 1807 it received the official name of Code Napoleon, although
the part that Napoleon took in framing it was not very important. A law
of 1818 restored to it its former name, but a decree of the 27th of
March 1852 re-established the title of Code Napoleon. Since the 4th of
September 1870 the laws have quoted it only under the name of the Code
Civil.

Never has a work of legislation been more national in the exact sense of
the word. Desired for centuries by the France of the _ancien regime_,
and demanded by the _cahiers_ of 1789, this "code of civil laws common
to the whole realm" was promised by the constitution of 1791. However,
the two first assemblies of the Revolution were able to prepare only a
few fragments of it. The preparation of a coherent plan began with the
Convention. The _ancien regime_ had collected and adjusted some of the
material. There was, on the one hand, a vast juridical literature which
by eliminating differences of detail, had disengaged from the various
French "customs" the essential part which they had in common, under the
name of "common customary law"; on the other hand, the Roman law current
in France had in like manner undergone a process of simplification in
numerous works, the chief of which was that of Domat; while certain
parts had already been codified in the _Grandes Ordonnances_, which were
the work of d'Aguesseau. This legacy from the past, which it was desired
to preserve within reason, had to be combined and blended with the laws
of the Revolution, which had wrought radical reforms in the conditions
affecting the individual, the tenure of real property, the order of
inheritance and the system of mortgages. Cambaceres, as the
representative of a commission of the Convent