Of the laws.
It is well known, that good laws are scarce, and that the due execution of them is still more so. The greater the extent of any state, and the variety of people of which it is composed, the more difficult it is to unite them by the same body of laws. The father of czar Peter formed a digest or code under the title of Oulogenia, which was actually printed, but it by no means answered the end intended.
Peter, in the course of his travels, had collected materials for repairing this great structure, which was falling to decay in many of its parts. He gathered many useful hints from the governments of Denmark, Sweden, England, Germany, and France, selecting from each of these different nations what he thought most suitable to his own.
There was a court of boyards or great men, who determined all matters en dernier ressort. Rank and birth alone gave a seat in this assembly; but the czar thought that knowledge was likewise requisite, and therefore this court was dissolved.
He then instituted a procurator-general, assisted by four assistors, in each of the governments of the empire. These were to overlook the conduct of the judges, whose decrees were subject to an appeal to the senate which he established. Each of those judges was furnished with a copy of the Oulogenia, with additions and necessary alterations, until a complete body of laws could be formed.
It was forbid to these judges to receive any fees, which, however moderate, are always an abusive tax on the fortunes and properties of those concerned in suits of law. The czar also took care that the expenses of the court were moderate, and the decisions speedy. The judges and their clerks had salaries appointed them out of the public treasury, and were not suffered to purchase their offices.
It was in the year 1718, at the very time that he was engaged in the process against his son, that he made the chief part of these regulations. The greatest part of the laws he enacted were borrowed from those of the Swedes, and he made no difficulty to admit to places in his courts of judicature such Swedish prisoners who were well versed in the laws of their own country, and who, having learnt the Russian language, were willing to continue in that kingdom.
The governor of each province and his assistors had the cognizance of private causes within such government; from them there was an appeal to the senate; and if any one, after having been condemned by the senate, appealed to the czar himself, and such appeal was found unjust, he was punished with death: but to mitigate the rigour of this law, the czar created a master of the requests, who received the petitions of those who had affairs depending in the senate, or in the inferior courts, concerning which the laws then in force were not sufficiently explanatory.
At length, in 1722, he completed his new code, prohibiting all the judges, under pain of death, to depart therefrom in their decrees, or to set up their own private opinions in place of the general statutes. This dreadful ordonnance was publicly fixed up, and still remains in all the courts of judicature of the empire.
He erected every thing anew; there was not, even to the common affairs of society, aught but what was his work. He regulated the degrees between man and man, according to their posts and employments, from the admiral and the field-marshal to the ensign, without any regard to birth.
Having always in his own mind, and willing to imprint it on those of his subjects, that services are preferable to pedigree, a certain rank was likewise fixed for the women; and she who took a seat in a public assembly, that did not properly belong to her, was obliged to pay a fine.
By a still more useful regulation, every private soldier, on being made an officer, instantly became a gentleman; and a nobleman, if his character had been impeached in a court of justice, was degraded to a plebeian.
After the settling of these several laws and regulations, it happened that the increase of towns, wealth, and population in the empire, new undertakings, and the creation of new employs, necessarily introduced a multitude of new affairs and unforeseen cases, which were all consequences of that success which attended the czar in the general reformation of his dominions.
The empress Elizabeth completed the body of laws which her father had begun, in which she gave the most lively proofs of that mildness and clemency for which she was so justly famed.