ittee contains three representatives of
each bureau. This committee and another constituted to audit the
accounts of the Government are created for a year. Others serve a
single month. Theoretically, indeed, every measure is referred to a
committee constituted specifically for the purpose; but practically
the consequence of such a procedure would be confusion so gross that
the greater committees, as those on labor, railways, and the army, are
allowed to acquire some substantial measure of permanence. Committee
positions are quite generally objects of barter on the part of party
groups and leaders.[487]

[Footnote 487: A. de la Berge, Les grands comites
parlementaires, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Dec. 1,
1889.]

*354. Procedure.*--Immediately upon assembling, each of the chambers
validates the elections of its own members, chooses its bureau of
president, vice-presidents, secretaries, and questors, and adopts its
own rules of procedure. At an early date the premier communicates
orally a "ministerial declaration," in which are outlined the policies
to which the Government is committed; and certain of the measures
therein proposed are likely to take precedence in the ensuing
deliberations. The hall in which each body sits is semi-circular, with
as many seats and desks as there are members to be accommodated. In
the centre stands a raised arm-chair for the use of the president, and
in front of it is a platform, or "tribune," which every member who
desires to speak is required to mount. On either side of the tribune
are stationed stenographers, whose reports of the proceedings are
printed each morning in the _Journal Officiel_. The first tier of
seats in the semi-circle, facing the tribune, is reserved for the
Government, i.e., the members of the ministry; behind are ranged the
remaining members of the Chamber, with the radicals on the president's
left and the conservatives on his right.

Of the bureaus into which, at the beginning of each month, the members
of each chamber are divided, there are, as has been said, eleven in
the Deputies; in the Senate there are nine. When a bill is (p. 327)
introduced it is referred first of all to these bureaus, each of which
designates one or more commissioners, who, acting together as a
committee, are expected to make a careful examination of the measure.
The report of this committee is printed and distributed, whereupon