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 generally depicted him.

This proposal would have re-established liberty of bequest in its most pernicious form, granting almost limitless discretionary power to the wealthy, while restricting or denying it to the poor.[166] Fortunately for his reputation in France, the suggestion was rejected; and the law, as finally adopted, fixed the disposable share as one-half of the property, if there was but one heir; one-third, if there were two heirs; one-fourth, if there were three; and so on, diminishing as the size of the family increased.  This sliding scale, varying inversely with the size of the family, is open to an obvious objection:  it granted liberty of bequest only in cases where the family was small, but practically lapsed when the family attained to patriarchal dimensions.  The natural result has been that the birth-rate has suffered a serious and prolonged check in France.  It seems certain that the First Consul foresaw this result.  His experience of peasant life must have warned him that the law, even as now amended, would stunt the population of France and ultimately bring about that [Greek:  oliganthropia] which saps all great military enterprises.  The great captain did all in his power to prevent the French settling down in a self-contained national life; he strove to stir them up to world-wide undertakings, and for the success of his future imperial schemes a redundant population was an absolute necessity.