57. The Brumaire Decree.

November 10, 1799 (19 Brumaire, Year VIII). vember 12, 1799 (21 Brumaire, Year VIII).

Moniteur, No

By the coup d'etat of Brumaire the government of the Directory was overthrown. This decree was passed by a small number of members of the Council of the Five Hundred whom Lucian Bonaparte gathered about him after the dispersion of the councils by force. It gave to the coup d'etat some semblance of legal sanction.

REFERENCES. Fyffe, Modern Europe, I, 197-207 (Popular ed., 133-139); Fournier, Napoleon, 166-182; Rose, Napoleon, I, Ch. x; Sloane, Napoleon, II, Chs. X-XI; Lanfrey, Napoleon, I, Ch. XII; Lavisse and Rambaud, Histoire Generale, VIII, 403-411; Aulard, Revolution Francaise, Part III, Ch. v.

The Council of the Five Hundred, considering the situation of the Republic, declares urgency and takes the following resolution:

1. The Directory is no more, and the following named persons, owing to the excesses and the crimes in which they have constantly engaged, and especially as regards the majority of them in the session of this morning, are no longer members of the national representation: . . . [Here follow the names of sixty-one persons.]

2. The Corps-Legislatif creates provisionally a consular executive commission, consisting of Citizens Siéyès, RogerDucos, and General Bonaparte, who shall bear the name of Consuls of the French Republic.

3. This commission is invested with the plenitude of directorial power and is particularly charged to organize order in all parts of the administration, to re-establish internal tranquility, and to procure honorable and enduring peace.

4. It is authorised to send out delegates having powers which are fixed and are within the limits of its own [powers].

5. The Corps-Legislatif adjourns to the following I Ventôse [Feb. 20, 1800]; it shall reassemble with perfect right upon that date in its palace at Paris.

6. During the adjournment of the Legislative Body the adjourned members preserve their indemnity and their constitutional guarantee.

7. Without loss of their character as representatives of the

people, they can be employed as ministers, diplomatic agents, delegates of the consular executive commission, and in all other civil functions. They are even invited in the name of the public welfare to accept these [employments].

8. Before its separation and during the sitting, each Council shall appoint from its own body a commission consisting of twenty-five members.

9. The commissions appointed by the two Councils with the formal and requisite proposal of the consular executive commission, shall decide upon all urgent matters of police, legislation, and finance.

II.

IO. The commission of the Five Hundred shall exercise the initiative; the commission of the Ancients, the approval. The two commissions are further charged, in the same order of labor and co-operation, to prepare the changes to be brought about in the organic arrangements of the constitution, of which experience has made known the faults and inconveniences.

12. These changes shall have for their object only to consolidate, guarantee, and consecrate inviolably the sovereignty of the French people, the Republic one and indivisible, the representative system, the division of powers, liberty, equality, security and property.

13.

The consular executive commission can present its views to them in this respect.

14. Finally, the two commissions are charged to prepare a civil code.

15. They shall sit at Paris in the place of the Legislative Body and they can convoke it in extraordinary session for the ratification of peace or in a great public danger.

16. The present [document] shall be printed, sent by extraordinary couriers into the departments, and solemnly published and posted in all the communes of the Republic.

58. Constitution of the Year VIII.

December 13, 1799. Duvergler, Lois, XII, 20-30.

This constitution although nominally framed by the two legislative commissions appointed by No. 57 was actually imposed upon

them by Napoleon Bonaparte. It was submitted to the people, and accepted by over three million votes against about fifteen hundred.

REFERENCES. Fournier, Napoleon, 183-187; Dickinson, Revolution and Reaction in Modern France, 36-41; Rose, Napoleon, I, 209-214; Sloane, Napoleon, II, 84-86; Lanfrey, Napoleon, I, Ch. XIII; Lavisse and Rambaud, Histoire Generale, IX, 5-12; Aulard, Revolution Francaise, 704-711.

CONSTITUTION OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

TITLE I. OF THE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHTS OF CITIZENSHIP.

I. The French Republic is one and indivisible.

Its European territory is divided into departments and communal districts.

2. Every man born and residing in France fully twentyone years of age, who has caused his name to be inscribed upon the civic register of his communal district and has since lived for one year upon the soil of the Republic, is a French citizen.

3. A foreigner becomes a French citizen when, after having reached the full age of twenty-one years and having declared his intention to settle in France, he has resided there for ten consecutive years.

4. The title to French citizenship is lost:

By naturalization in a foreign country;

By the acceptance of appointments or pensions tendered by a foreign Government;

By affiliation with any foreign corporation which may imply distinctions of birth;

By condemnation to afflictive or infamous punishments.

5. The exercise of the rights of French citizenship is suspended by the state of bankruptcy or of direct inheritance, with gratuitous title, to the succession, in whole or in part, of a bankrupt;

By the condition of domestic service for wages either for a person or a household;

By the condition of judicial interdiction, of accusation, or of contempt of court.

6. In order to exercise rights of citizenship in a communal district, it is necessary to have acquired domicile there by one year of residence and not to have lost it by one year of absence.

7. The citizens of each communal district designate by their votes those among them whom they believe the most fit to conduct public affairs. Thus the result is a list of the trustworthy, containing a number of names equal to one-tenth of the number of citizens having the right to co-operate there. It is from this first communal list that the public functionaries of the district must be taken.

8. The citizens included in the communal lists of a department designate likewise a tenth of themselves. Thus there results a second list, known as the departmental list, from which the public functionaries of the department must be taken.

9. The citizens comprised in the departmental list designate in like manner a tenth of themselves: thus there results a third list which comprises the citizens of that department eligible to the national public functions.

10. The citizens who have the right to co-operate in the formation of one of the lists mentioned in the three preceding articles, are called upon every three years to provide for replacing those of the enrolled who have died or are absent for any other cause than the exercise of a public function.

II. They can, at the same time, remove from the lists the enrolled whom they judge unfit to remain there, and replace them by other citizens in whom they have greater confidence.

12. No one is removed from a list except by the votes of the majority of the citizens who have the right to co-operate in its formation.

13. No one is removed from a list of eligibles by the mere fact that he is not kept upon another list of higher or superior degree.

14. Inscription upon a list of eligibles is necessary only with reference to those of the public officers for which that condition is expressly required by the constitution or the law. The lists of eligibles shall be formed for the first time during the course of the Year IX.

Citizens who shall be selected for the first formation of the constituted authorities, shall form a necessary part of the first lists of eligibles.

TITLE II. OF THE CONSERVATIVE SENATE.

15. The Conservative Senate is composed of eighty members, irremovable and for life, of at least forty years of age.

For the formation of the Senate, there shall at first be chosen sixty members: that number shall be increased to sixty-two in the course of the Year VIII, to sixty-four in the Year IX, and it shall thus be gradually increased to eighty, by the addition of two members in each of the first ten years.

16. Appointment to the place of senator is made by the Senate which chooses among three candidates presented, the first by the Corps-Legislatif, the second by the Tribunate, the third by the First Consul.

It chooses between only two candidates if one of them is proposed by two of the three presenting authorities: it is required to admit that one who may be proposed at the same time by the three authorities.

17. The First Consul, upon leaving his place, either by expiration of his office or by resignation, necessarily and with perfect right becomes a senator.

The other two Consuls, during the month following the expiration of their duties, can take seats in the Senate, but they are not required to make use of this right.

They do not have it if they leave their consular duties by resignation.

18. A senator is forever ineligible to any other public office.

19. All the lists made in the departments, in virtue of article 9, are despatched to the Senate: they constitute the national list.

20.

It chooses from this list the legislators the tribunes, the Consuls, the judges of cassation, and the commissioners of accounts.

21. It sustains or annuls all the acts which are referred to it as unconstitutional by the Tribunate or the Government : the lists of eligibles are included among these acts.

22. Fixed revenues from the national domains are set apart for the expenses of the Senate. The annual stipend of each of its members is taken from these revenues, and is equal to a twentieth of that of the First Consul.

23. The sittings of the Senate are not public.