128 HARVARD LAW REVIEW Professor Walton ^^ adds, "It has, indeed, made itself, to a great extent, the code of all the Latin races." The progressive extension of the Code Napoleon's influence throughout the world will appear from the following table showing the date of promulgation of the codes of those niunerous countries which have made the French code their model : Belgium 1804 Portugal 1867 Louisiana ^^ 1808 Uruguay 1868 Austria 181 1 Argentina 1869 Hayti 1825 Mexico 1870 Greece 1827 Nicaragua 1871 Holland 1838 Guatemala 1877 Bolivia 1843 Honduras 1880 Peru 1852 Spain " 1889 Chili 1855 Salvador 1889 Italy 1865 Venezuela 1896 Lower Canada (Quebec) ^ . 1866 Estimates of the Code Aside from the great achievement of unifying French law the chief merits which Napoleon himself would probably have claimed for his code are clearness, conciseness,^^ and simplicity. To the Anglo-Saxon lawyer, indeed, the first impression of this and similar codes is that simpHcity has been carried to the point of superfici- " "The New German Civil Code," 16 Juiodical Rev. 148, 149.
- ^ "It was modeled on the draft of the Code Napoleon (for a complete copy of the
latter was not at that time accessible), and the whole body of French legal learning was thus introduced into the argimients and decisions of the courts of Louisiana." Dean Wigmore, "Louisiana, The Story of its Legal System," i So. L. Quart. 12. Cf. City of New Orelans v. Camp, 105 La. 288, 29 So. 340 (1901). " See 13 Col. L. Rev. 213, 215. " See the present writer's "A Spanish Object Lesson in Code Making," 16 Yale L. J. 411. The Spanish movement for codification in the nineteenth century received its inspiration from France, and the Civil Code of Spain, which is still in force, for the most part, in the Philippines, and Porto Rico follows the Code Napoleon so closely that article after article will be found practically a translation from the latter. So the Spanish Penal Code, of which the present edition dates from 1870 and is still largely in force in the Philippines, is modeled closely on the French Penal Code, particularly in the subject of penalties. ^ "The precision and the clearness of detail, in the phraseology of the articles^ reached a grade which has never been surpassed and very rarely equalled. Certainly the laws passed in France since 1804 cannot bear comparison with the Code from this point of view; in contrast, the limpidity of the Code Napol6on becomes striking." I Continental Legal History Series, 290.
