ARLIAMENT: THE SENATE

*409. Composition.*--Legislative power in Italy is vested conjointly in
the king and Parliament, the latter consisting of two houses--an
upper, the _Senato_, and a lower, _the Camera de' Deputati_. The
Senate is composed entirely of members appointed for life by the
crown. The body is no true sense a house of peers. Its seats are not
hereditary and its members represent not alone the great proprietors
of the country but a wide variety of public functionaries and men of
achievement. In the making of appointments the sovereign is restricted
by the necessity of taking all appointees from twenty-one stipulated
classes of citizens, and it is required that senators shall be of a
minimum age of forty years. The categories from which appointments are
made--including high ecclesiastics, ministers of state, ambassadors,
deputies of prolonged service, legal and administrative officials, men
who during as much as seven years have been members of the Royal
Academy of Sciences or of the Superior Council of Public
Instruction--may be reduced, broadly, to three: (1) high officials of
church and state; (2) persons of fame in science or literature, or who
by any kind of services or merit have brought distinction to the
country; and (3) persons who for at least three years have paid direct
property or business taxes to the amount of 3000 lire ($600). The
total number of members when the _Statuto_ was put in effect in 1848
was 78; the number in 1910 was 383. The last-mentioned number comprised
the president of the Chamber of Deputies, 147 ex-deputies of six (p. 373)
years' service (or men who had been elected to as many as three
parliaments), one minister of state, six secretaries of state, five
ambassadors, two envoys extraordinary, 23 officials of the courts of
cassation and of other tribunals, 33 military and naval officials,
eight councillors of state, 21 provincial functionaries, 41 members of
the Royal Academy of Sciences, three members of the Superior Council
of Public Instruction, two persons of distinguished services to the
country, 71 payers of direct taxes in the amount of 3,000 lire, and 19
other scattered representatives of several categories. The absence of
ecclesiastical dignitaries is to be accounted for by the rupture with
the Vatican. The last members of this class to be named were appointed
in 1866.

*410. Legislative Weakness.*--The prerogative of senatorial appointment
has been exercised upon